Crane chief chastised for policy violation

Superintendent Cindy Didway received a verbal warning and must provide training to staff after violating the Crane Elementary School District's election policy.

The district's governing board met Wednesday for a public special meeting to discuss the matter. Board member Jim Colby stated that Didway carried a petition for the upcoming school board elections during school hours, which Colby said is against board policy as well as staff ethics.

“According to Crane policy, Mrs. Didway violated points campaigning and other election activities that should be done on off-duty hours. Political circulars or petitions many not be posted or distributed in schools, employees in the district may not use the authority of their position to influence the vote or political activities,” Colby said to the school board during a discussion about the alleged violations.

Crane communications director Chris Weigel explained that Didway failed to remember the policy, as did he and many other staff members. Weigel said that as soon as Didway realized that her error, she made a full disclosure to let everyone know whom she felt needed to be notified at the county, local and state level about her mistake.

During the public portion of the meeting, school board member Brenna Paulin said, “I move that we issue a verbal warning to Cindy Didway in an executive session and I also move as part of that motion, I would like to direct Cindy to provide training to the staff employees regarding the election laws.”

Colby stated that he wanted to make an amendment to Paulin's motion by having Didway pay for attorney fees in reference to this issue, and one way he suggested she could do that is through temporary suspension. The amendment was not seconded by other board members so the amendment did not carry.

However, the board did approve, in a 4-1 vote, Paulin's motion.

In the meeting, Colby explained his reasoning for opposing the motion.

“According to staff ethics, staff is supposed to obey local, state and national laws, whether they know them or not they probably should refrain from using school contacts and privileges to promote partisan politics. When you are asking someone to sign a petition, it's basically a signature endorsing this person, and this person is a future employer of our superintendent.”

Sarah Reed can be reached at sareed@yumasun.com or 539-6858.