Dearest reader,
Here is the question Lady Budgetdown would ask Hemlock Public School District:
Your own nepotism policy declares its intent to avoid "favoritism as well as the appearance of favoritism" toward relatives in district employment. The policy proceeds to state that no employee may participate in personnel actions involving a relative, and that no employee may "directly supervise or evaluate" one. A spouse, the policy is careful to specify, falls squarely within its definition of relative.
Hemlock Superintendent Dr. Don Killingbeck's wife, Becky Killingbeck, is employed by the district as a school nurse.
So how, precisely, does that arrangement function in practice?
What safeguards, Dear Reader, has Hemlock put in place to ensure the superintendent holds no involvement whatsoever, direct or indirect in personnel decisions touching his own spouse? And how does the district reconcile such an arrangement with a policy that promises to avoid not merely favoritism, but even its faintest appearance?
It was that very wording, Dear Reader, that caught this Author's eye and refused to let go.
Let it be said plainly: the policy does not forbid relatives from working within the district. Indeed, it states quite expressly that it ought not be read that way. Nor has this Author found anything establishing that preferential treatment has, in fact, occurred.
But there remains a curious distance between the policy's stated ambition and its narrower prohibition.
The ambition is sweeping: avoid favoritism, and avoid even its appearance.
The prohibition, by comparison, is rather more modest: do not participate in certain personnel actions, do not directly supervise or evaluate one's relative.
And a superintendent, Dear Reader, sits at the very apex of a district's administrative structure. So even where a spouse reports, on paper, to someone else entirely, to whom does that supervisor ultimately answer? Who handles the recommendations touching the spouse's assignment, compensation, discipline, or evaluation? And what becomes of such a matter should it, by whatever route, eventually arrive upon the superintendent's own desk?
There may well be a perfectly sound firewall in place.
This Author would simply like to see it.
With receipts and respect.
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