In explaining why she hasn't yet resigned, Clayton County school board member Michelle Strong said, "I have had people who have asked me to stay."

Who? Her mother?

Strong and the other four Clayton board members clinging to their seats need to go. The public demands it. More important, the future of Clayton schools depends on it.

Because the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools concluded that "the effectiveness of the Clayton County Board of Education is fatally flawed," the ability of Clayton County to avert loss of accreditation hinges on the installation of a new board. The National Accreditation Commission board voted unanimously last month to revoke the 52,800-student district's accreditation on Sept. 1 unless the system makes dramatic changes in direction and leadership.

As one of two state Board of Education members appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue to assist Clayton, William Bryant said, "I hold a great amount of hope for the system — not this current board. ... It is obvious from the SACS report and the wisdom of the Clayton community that the board must be reconstituted in its entirety. The last choice the current members have is to allow this to happen through their voluntary action or, in the alternative, allow it to happen through a loss of accreditation."

Thousands of panicked parents — facing the possibility their children could lose HOPE scholarships and be snubbed by select colleges if accreditation is lost Sept. 1 — have implored the board to surrender their seats. Students themselves have pleaded with the board to put the good of the system ahead of their own agendas.

The board's own lawyer has advised members to resign. So has Clayton County's largest teachers union. Describing the board as "totally dysfunctional," Clayton County Commission Chairman Eldrin Bell has also told the board to leave.

Yet some hang on, owing to ego, arrogance or the mistaken notion that they're still capable of helping the wounded school system recover. They're wrong.

In the last six years, members have sullied the system, run off two superintendents and endangered the aspirations of the students with infighting, meddling and self-aggrandizement. Certainly, the board had some honorable members, but they could not overcome the divisiveness and self-serving actions of their colleagues.

As examples, 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. Sandra Scott charged the school system $966 to retrieve colleagues' e-mail records and ran up $200 in charges to open a high school so she could hold a personal meeting. A Morrow High School football coach was allegedly fired after he declined to provide Scott game tapes of her son.

Rod Johnson micromanaged and voted on issues that affect his wife, a teacher, according to the report of the accreditation review team. Norreese Haynes heads a teachers union that picketed an elementary school to call for the principal's resignation; further, he accused colleagues of false arrest, assault and battery, and nepotism.

The board has voted Haynes off after a police investigation showed that he didn't even live in Clayton County. Johnson has said he will resign, but he refuses to say exactly when. To her credit, board Chairwoman Ericka Davis resigned effective April 11. Eddie White, the board's vice chairman, has also announced his resignation, effective June 15.

The school board has one final job, and that's to hire a temporary superintendent to help the system address the concerns of SACS and avert the loss of accreditation. But members seem to be botching even that. Longtime educator Santiago V. Wood withdrew his name from the running last week, citing Clayton's longstanding dysfunction. "It does not lend itself to effective governance and leadership stability," said Wood. "It's beyond belief."

No kidding.

— Maureen Downey, for the editorial board