Ethics Office - San Diego Unified School District

9. Use of Authority

We will not use our authority to intimidate, threaten or retaliate against a person to attempt to interfere with the disclosure of potentially improper governmental activity.

Overview
Examples
Resources

Overview
Employees may not use a position of authority to intimidate, harass or threaten—directly or indirectly—another employee. A significant one-time incident or a series of minor incidents over a period of time can constitute personal harassment.

Bullying
Bullying is a form of personal harassment characterized by persistent and offensive, abusive, intimidating, malicious, or insulting behavior. Bullying may include emotional abuse, isolation, economic abuse, abuse of authority, denying and blaming, coercion, and threats that create a risk to an individual’s health and safety.

Improper Governmental Activities
Employees who disclose improper activity cannot be subjected to acts or attempted acts of reprisal. Employees have the right to disclose activities that violate state or federal law, are economically wasteful, or involve gross misconduct, incompetence, or inefficiency.

Examples
A supervisor may not:

Intimidate, humiliate or undermine a subordinate by belittling or excessively, destructively, or inappropriately criticizing or reprimanding him/her, or excessively scrutinizing his/her work.
Make demands that are unreasonable or outside the subordinate's role or work scope.
Make a demand to perform an action that breaches district policy.

Resources
Information on the district’s use-of-authority policies can be found in Administrative Procedures 1700 and 7111; and Board Policy I-1800.

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