In defending the fractious Clayton County School Board, member Norreese Haynes said, "Our school board does not need to be a garden club, serving tea and crumpets."

But neither should it be a fight club, where members jab at one another, toss around wild accusations and manhandle the teachers. Now the board's incessant brawling has delivered a body blow to the future of Clayton schools and the college dreams of its 52,800 students.

Last week, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools — citing infighting among school board members, meddling in day-to-day operations of schools and violations of board procedures — recommended that Clayton's accreditation be revoked. This is the second time in five years the district is facing loss of its vital accreditation. After its review of the SACS recommendation, the National Accreditation Commission will vote March 15 whether to follow SACS' lead.

If that occurs, Clayton will become the first Georgia system to lose that stamp of approval, and the children of the county will pay a high price. Clayton students would not be eligible for HOPE Scholarships. Elite schools would look at their college applications with skepticism. Their hard work and their achievement would be suspect. No wonder students, parents and teachers burst into tears upon learning of SACS' findings.

If warring board members had the best interest of students at heart, their resignations would already be on the desk of the interim Clayton school superintendent, Gloria Duncan. Duncan took the helm of the troubled system after the abrupt resignation of Superintendent Barbara Pulliam in July. (Duncan's employment itself is symptomatic of Clayton's dysfunction; she was fired from her job as principal of a Clayton middle school in 1996 after distributing copies of a standardized test before the exam, but was rehired four years later.)

Instead of bowing their heads in shame, some board members are attacking SACS and its president, Mark Elgart. In a statement, Haynes slammed the SACS report as "a sham and a farce" and complained, "Mr. Elgart does not need to wag his prejudicial finger toward Clayton County."

If recalcitrant board members will not step down, the community must step up efforts to force them out through recall petitions. Clayton parents cannot look to the state to rescue them from the dysfunctional school board that they entrusted with their children's education and a $566 million annual budget.

A random drawing would probably have produced a more responsible school board than the one that voters put in power. Consider: Haynes heads a teachers union that picketed an elementary school to call for the principal's resignation. He has accused colleagues of false arrest, assault and battery, open meetings violations and nepotism.

Board member Sandra Scott called a meeting with a football coach to demand highlight tapes of her son, and she charged the school system $966 to retrieve e-mail records of her colleagues. Scott also ran up $200 in charges to open Morrow High School after hours to conduct a personal meeting.

Board member Lois Baines-Hunter spent more than $500 in taxpayer money for phone calls and room service at an Atlanta hotel where she stayed during a two-day education conference less than a half-hour from her home in Jonesboro. Board member Rod Johnson recommended that the superintendent hire a bodyguard under investigation for alleged child molestation.

While there have been calls for Gov. Sonny Perdue to remove this cast of characters, the law permits his involvement only in narrow situations. "If there's been an indictment or a felony, the governor does have the power to change the school board and appoint a new one or call for an election. But the state cannot take over a district because they lose accreditation," said Department of Education spokesman Dana Tofig. "Accreditation is not a federal or state issue. It is, by definition, a local issue."

In other words, the voters of Clayton County created this monster; they have to slay it.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board