Conspicuous in their absence

A number of people should be at the school board meeting tonight.

The board is prepared to abandon honest accountability to any meaningful standard of conduct. They are abdicating as the senior role models for 90,000 students and 12,000 employees in the APS. They are betraying the fundamental principles of Character Counts.

A number of people should be there to stop them.

• Senator Pete Domenici, founding father of Character Counts.
• Representative Heather Wilson, whom Beth Everitt misled about her own abdication of the responsibilities of the senior administrative role model.
• Governor Bill Richardson, who promised voters that he would address the issues if only voters supported the last big mill levy.
• Mayor Marty Chavez, who claims to be an advocate of Character Counts, and who is an outspoken critic of the lack of accountability in the leadership of the APS.
• Terri Cole, President of the Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce, who is also a vocal critic of the leadership of the APS. She and the chamber have also abandoned Character Counts.
• The Character Counts Leadership Council whose responsibility it is to stand up for honest accountability and the importance of role modeling. (Board President Paula Maes is the President of the Character Counts Leadership Council; despite her refusal to hold herself honestly accountable to it.)
• Any administrator in the APS whose record is not one of corruption and/or incompetence.
• The Journal and the Trib who have an obligation to inform the community on issues of importance to the community. They will have reporters at the meeting, but they will not write about the adoption of a meaningless and completely unenforceable code of ethics.
  

The only hope for the public exposure of the betrayal of public trust will be the broadcast media. They will have the opportunity to videotape board members voting to except themselves from honest accountability to any meaningful standard of conduct; thus abdicating their responsibilities as the senior role models in the District.

It is my hope that Paula Maes, using her influence
as the President of the NM Broadcasters Association,
cannot keep the community from viewing the

…film at 10:00