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Becoming an ethical leader requires a personal journey toward integrity and a public commitment to a common good. This begins with claiming one's core values, finding a personal voice, developing a vision, and consciously aligning one's attitudes and beliefs with one's actions and behaviors. In the process, ethical leaders create spaces where people can listen to others and have their ideas and insights valued and heard. The leadership that results encourages people to work together to envision and construct a common good. The authors talk about a schoolwide culture of ethical leadership that enables people to work together for a common good. Ethical leadership involves the entire school community and can be facilitated with the help of some free tools and resources. The authors discuss the tools discovered by West Springfield (Massachusetts) High School that foster a culture of ethical leadership at the Center for Ethical Leadership in Seattle, Washington, and at the Center for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. The tools help the school community align its core values with its actions, understand its ethical style, create "gracious space," and foster interdependent decision making and inquiry. (Contains 3 resources.)

The Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative, organized in 1974, consists of seven school districts legally bound in a governance structure. Although the member districts are located in Hampden County, Massachusetts, the collaborative provides educational programs and services to school districts and municipalities throughout western Massachusetts. The educational service agency in western Massachusetts outsources a number of services. The agency purchases food services from a local school district, and it outsources custodial services for its career and technical education center and central office. Outsourcing reduces fringe-benefit expenses and other post-employment benefit liabilities, or OPEB. When the authors and their colleagues initially explored the concept of outsourcing, they recognized the need for a methodical and thoughtful approach. They weighed instructional impact against the potential cost savings from outsourcing. They asked questions about the proximity of a service to a student's learning experience. They analyzed the effect outsourcing a particular service would have on teaching and learning. In a two-year period, the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative has realized a cost savings of $208,300 in the operating budget.