The Moniteau School Board’s lesson from the player-to-player football team hazing incident is that the board shouldn’t be hasty in regard to addressing troubling situations and should follow established policy.

All considered, it’s been made clear that the board didn’t follow policy in place that situations not involving possible student expulsion would be handled by the administration.

And, even when the board decided to become involved with the issue, the board, at least initially, didn’t fully ponder all aspects of the incident at hand, including district residents’ possible reaction, before making its initial ruling.

At least the majority of the board members were open to changing their mind when it was shown that they might have initially overreacted. The public can be commended for coming forward with their opinions and expressing them in a respectful, orderly way.

The decision from which the board backtracked on Monday was that the football team would forfeit its upcoming games against Karns City and Clarion, but play the games nonetheless.

Playing the games with a predetermined forfeit in place would have been wrong.

The football program also was put on probation for four years, information about which was revealed at Monday’s session.

The probation is a reasonable response to which the board should continue to demand compliance.

The probation requires the football program to be under strict scruntiny, and coaches and players will be required to attend two mandatory sessions of hazing education. Any player or coach who doesn’t attend the sessions will not be permitted to play or coach.

Although most of the board members now have demonstrated that they will change their mind in response to public pressure, that is not a bad thing, since the public has a right to voice support or opposition to decisions made by district officials.

What’s important is that the board shouldn’t resort to knee-jerk reactions, and unfortunately it did so this time.

It’s appropriate to note that the Moniteau School District would benefit from routine public interest of the scope that burst forth in support of the football team members who were not part of the hazing incident.

For the most part, in Moniteau as well as in other districts, the public doesn’t show up for meetings until a controversy evolves.

Due to confidentiality guidelines, Moniteau officials haven’t revealed the punishment meted out to the three players who reportedly carried out the hazing.

But if members of the public at Monday’s board meeting were correct that the three players were suspended from playing only five football games, the players should consider themselves lucky.

If the incident in question was as serious as it has been portrayed in some quarters, the players should have been suspended for the rest of the season, not just five games.

It’s for the Moniteau public to reflect on whether the 10-day out-of-school suspensions that, according to members of the public, also were handed out to the three players, as well as community-service requirements, were sufficient punishment.

Former board member Stacey Armagost criticized school directors for their handling of the incident, particularly that the board didn’t follow past policy by immediately taking the issue out of the administration’s hands.

She made good points, and it’s true that the board should follow established policy when there isn’t good cause for doing otherwise.

However, it’s easy to see how the scope of what allegedly occurred caused the board to want to jump into the situation without allowing the usual procedures to play out first.

It would have been unfortunate for innocent members of the team to have been punished, just as members of the Penn State football team past and present have been unfairly punished by NCAA sanctions stemming from a sexual-abuse scandal in which they had no involvement.

It would have been troubling if a Moniteau or opponent’s player would have been injured in a game whose outcome was decided before the opening kickoff.

In this hazing incident, haste initially reigned and, hopefully now, the board will steer clear of making hasty decisions that it will quickly regret.