In my opinion, if I am the principle of the High School, I will do the following to reduce conflicts.
First, I will have a private meeting, letting both Taxman and Williams to sit down face to face. Tell them to understand with each other, because the cause of the conflict was attributed to the board’s decision, instead of any of them. I will be behalf of the High School to make an apology for this behavior. Since things have gone a long time, both of them will not upset. I will encourage both of them to work hard and prove to deserve this job.
Second, I will inform employees that we will not easily make any layoff in future to improve the morale among employees. In addition, we will not layoff any employees only based on his or her gender and race. We pay more attention on the job performance, which could stimulate people to work harder.
I think the direct cause of this event is because High School made the layoff decision only according to the race. It went against the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which says that individual should be treated fairly and cannot be selected based on their skin color (Daly, 2012). I think school board should create one standard on what conditions we should consider when facing layoff. We can only treat people based on their skills, knowledge, abilities and performance when they work rather than other issues which are not related to the job.