By Eliza PARTIKA 

The Glendale Unified School District (GUSD) board of education has launched its new ethics policy after extensive review by other state school boards and multiple public discussions in board meetings, culminating in the passage of the policy on Oct. 14. 

Board member Shant Sahakian sat down with the Crescenta Valley Weekly to voice his hopes for a new complaint procedure and ethics policy, and to have a deeper conversation about school board ethics across the state. He said he hopes GUSD’s adoption of the policy can be a blueprint for other school districts, and maybe prompt state action, on the conduct of school board members. 

The current policy includes an ethics complaint procedure that is now live for use by community members and board members, if needed. Sahakian said that while this system hopefully “never gets used” it is there as a guardrail against statewide problems with the conduct of school board members. 

“In our training and how our role is explained to us [by the state], it is accountability, transparency and public trust. Board members are told what they should and shouldn’t do but [there is] almost never any way to enforce or hold any board members accountable, or redirect board members should they run afoul of these rules. There is an unspoken expectation but nothing grounded in policy,” he said.

According to Sahakian, board members in California are often told to show a united front, resulting in difficulty if and when criticizing one another. He also said that the complaint procedures across California are mired in difficult language and made hard to understand so the public doesn’t use them. With this in mind, Sahakian  focused on creating a more transparent, understandable complaint procedure because he didn’t see one anywhere else in the state. 

“There are two kinds of districts in the state: ones that have learned there is an issue and districts that will soon learn there is an issue,” he said. Sahakian has given presentations on his ethics policy, the most robust for board members anywhere in California, to other school districts and to state leaders.

“My hope was that this was a proactive step that we could take as a district, but hopefully also launch a wider conversation across the state, both the local districts that today have the authority to launch the same type of step [as GUSD] , but also with state leaders to look long term in terms of what the state does to make sure all districts have a process in place,” he said. 

When asked what that would look like, Sahakian said districts would maintain their local control of their policy and do what was best for their individual school sites, similar to the statewide changes to how cellphones are used in school. 

“It was an approach I appreciated as a board member because [the state] made it clear there was a priority, but it didn’t say that for your local community you must do it this way. They recognized there was a need for districts to act and they allowed us to collaborate with our school community and develop the policies that work best for our parents’ needs, our teachers’ needs and our students’ needs,” Sahakian said. “I don’t think the state should take a top down approach with this.”

To view the full ethics and complaint procedure and see how it works, visit the GUSD page about the ethics policy at  https://www.gusd.net/ethics.