Appreciate trustees by following the rules

Columbia County, and other Georgia communities, this week are celebrating School Board Member Appreciation Week.

Locally, the public schools each year have friendly competition to see who can lavish their elected officials with the most trinkets and accolades. Trustees will be feted and fawned-over this week, perhaps to silly excess in some cases.

But no manner of gifts and admiration can make up for one simple way in which the schools can best show support for the school board: Follow the policies the trustees set, and don't embarrass them.

Because that doesn't always happen, board members this week had to discuss a little tweaking of their policy for allowing students to be released early from school.

They were a little red-faced - from both embarrassment and anger - when the front office at Greenbrier High School in February allowed a 17-year-old boy posing as a 14-year-old girl's brother to sign her out of school.

The two were later caught half-naked, getting a little too cozy in a stairwell at Augusta Mall.

The incident would never have happened if the personnel that day in Greenbrier's front office had followed existing policy; now, the school board is forced to make it more difficult to not follow the policy that the school had already failed to follow.

And the trustees, certainly, would appreciate it very much if the schools would follow that policy from now on.