The community needs to give some very hard thought in the weeks ahead – seeing well beyond the Ryan Land affair – into what role they want their seven-member board of trustees for the School District of Mystery Lake to play in day-to-day education and what should constitute a conflict of interest, ethically as well as legally, if that distinction is indeed to be drawn.

What is needed is clear thinking, not the heated emotionalism of the moment, regardless of where you stand on the Land issue and regardless of whether or not the board reverses course and reinstates him April 5.

If we can summarize the argument of those alleging a conflict of interest – at least ethically, if not legally – has occurred in the dismissal of Land, a probationary employee who had been principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate since 2009, it would be this: Vice-chair Guido Oliveira’s spouse, Tracy Hanson, is a guidance counsellor at R.D. Parker, and trustee Vince Nowlin’s wife, Gwen, works in the school library. As principal, Land, of course, had supervisory authority over staff.

But it wasn’t unlimited supervisory authority. Land and Hanson are both in the same union bargaining unit: Thompson Teachers’ Association No. 45-3 of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society. One of the key tests in defining who is in management and who is not in Canadian labour law is the power to hire and fire. If you can’t hire and fire – and Land couldn’t hire or fire Hanson – you have limited supervisory authority and are a “boss” in a limited sense only.

One of the issues debated at some length in both the comments by readers to some of our stories on Land’s firing and on Facebook has been the suggestion that some unnamed guidance counsellors at the high school spend an inordinate time away from the building, although there seems to be some begrudging recognition, that unlike classroom teachers, guidance counsellors likely have legitimate reasons to be off the premises some of the time during instructional hours.

Frankly, we have no idea whether Land had “issues” with Hanson over how she does her job as guidance counsellor and how much time she spends in or out of the school. But whether he did or didn’t have such issues, it seems quite a stretch to suggest without evidence that Oliveira was somehow influenced improperly to fire Land because his wife may or may not have got along well with him. Unless evidence – not conjecture – to the contrary surfaces, we work on the presumption that Oliveira’s vote to fire Land, whether well or ill advised, was cast on the basis of superintendent Bev Hammond’s confidential report and recommendations to trustees.

In the case of Nowlin’ wife, Gwen, the nexus seems even farther removed.

While we hear grumbling now about trustees having spouses working for the School District of Mystery Lake, this so-called conflict of interest issue was a non-issue at two trustee election debates last October. Voters re-elected both Oliveira, and Rob Pellizzaro, the current trustee chair, and longest serving member of the board, whose wife, Cathy, teaches at Deerwood Elementary School. They also elected rookie Nowlin.

On the other hand, board chair Cheryl Davies, whose husband, Bob, is a graphic arts teacher at R.D. Parker Collegiate, was defeated. That’s an awfully mixed verdict by voters to draw conclusions from if we’re supposed to be expected now to cobble together new conflict of interest guidelines or rules that go beyond the Public Schools Act, which addresses only direct and indirect pecuniary interests.

During the bargaining that resulted in the current contract between the board and teachers the trustees’ negotiating committee was composed of two members whose spouses were not employees of the district. Davies, Pellizzaro and Oliveira did not vote on the contract ratification Nov. 25, 2008. The remaining four-trustee majority approved it unanimously. The deficiency – and it is a serious one – is the board’s official minutes do not reflect that Davies, Pellizzaro and Oliveira did not take part in the ratification vote. That is an omission of the board’s own doing and should not happen again. Lesson learned, we hope.

“It is my opinion that no pecuniary interest, direct or indirect, reasonably arises from this situation,” wrote Kristin Gibson, a lawyer with the Winnipeg law firm Aikins, MacAulay & Thorvaldson, in an opinion solicited by the board. “Mr. Land is in the same bargaining unit as at least one of the spouses in question, and the issue voted upon by the board of trustees is well removed from influence by or on behalf of those individuals. Gibson limited her analysis to pecuniary interests – defined in the Public Schools Act as interests where a trustee, their spouse, or another dependent will receive money or another type of compensation through the result of the decision – because that is the only reason a trustee could find themselves in a conflict-of-interest position under the Public Schools Act.

The Manitoba Association of School Boards has asked boards to voluntarily go beyond the act and develop their own guidelines for conflicts of interest. The School District of Mystery Lake is conducting a policy review and says it will take the recommendations of the association into consideration.

While transparency is generally a public good, we wonder how smart a policy is likely to be forged in the immediate emotional crucible of the Ryan Land debacle, no matter where you come down on the board’s original – or perhaps soon-to-be-revised – decision?

The board’s own procedural bylaw already says: “Each trustee shall be required to vote on every question unless excused by the chair or by a majority vote of the board for some particular reason. One reason acceptable for abstention could be an actual conflict of interest as defined in the Public Schools Act or where the trustee desiring to abstain from voting perceives having a conflict of interest even where such is not considered to be a conflict of interest as defined in the Public Schools Act.”

What more, if anything, is needed is the question?