Ethical Considerations in school leadership - Research Paper Example

42). In other words, whether a school succeeds of fails is contingent upon the individual schools culture of trust. Trust is also important to the community that surrounds the schools. If schools continue to fail, then the community will grow impatient and find ways to enroll their children in private schools. This, in turn, will mean less funding for public schools, and that the parents will be less willing to pay taxes to fund the public schools. This will further erode the public schools, and make them “a poor service for poor people” (Fullan, 2003, p. 4). Therefore, it is imperative that schools deliver, and is seen to deliver real quality.

This makes schools important to the community, the parents, and the public good overall, because it might prevent the segregation that occurs when the haves go to private schools and the have-nots are languishing in ever-failing public schools. Because trust is so important for both a functioning school and for the community surrounding this school, understanding the elements of trust and what goes into building trust is crucial and is the subject of this paper. According to Strike (2007), trust is essential for building the community.

Communities “exist to enable cooperation aimed at the achievement of certain shared goods” (Strike, 2007, p. 17). In communities, cooperation is more important than competition. The success of the educational community in question is contingent upon how successful the parts of the whole are integrated and successful in their own right - “success of each contributes to the success of all” (Strike, 2007, p. 17). Essential to keeping the community together is solidarity, which means that the community is functioning as a unit, and each member is committed to the goals of the community and the other members of the community.

Trust is essential to this process because, when it