"... and now none of us care about it anymore."

It is a violation of school board policy for students to sag.

It doesn't make any difference at all whether or not,
sagging should be a violation of school board policy.

The negotiated agreement between the teachers union
and the district, the teacher contract,
stipulates that the burden of enforcing school rules
is a shared responsibility, and the ultimate responsibility
for enforcing discipline policies falls upon administrators.

"All" teachers enforce the rules for a while.

But it doesn't take them long to figure out that
they have neither the decision making power,
nor the resources to deal effectively with students
who are chronic discipline problems.

A teacher's only recourse with chronically disruptive students, is the administration.

If the administration doesn't step up, and it has not,

the teacher finds that the student back in the classroom
after having been given, for the umpteenth time the
"... if you do not stop your disruptive behavior immediately;
there will be consequences." talk.

Teachers, rule enforcers, are the bad guys
and the gutless administrators are the good guys.

After awhile, you start to hear teachers say;

"Several of us (teachers) at a NE High School (asked) our admin ... "why should we have to enforce the sagging pants policy if these kids walk through, and stay in, the admin office, with saggy pants, and no one does anything about it?"

They answer "We'll enforce it...some of us do"..and yet nothing changed and now none of us care about it anymore. (emphasis added)
--An APS instructor"

"In the last school I was in, teachers wouldn't even do duty anymore"

"All we teach kids by sweeping everything under the proverbial carpet, is that it is ok to ignore rules. They are running the schools right now."

"Discipline is a joke any more in APS."

The data that substantiates this allegation
is no longer collected by the leadership of the APS.

In past years, the APS and UNM collaborated on
a yearly survey that they administered to teachers.
It was a fairly comprehensive survey and included
many questions regarding discipline and the
negative affects of chronically disruptive students,
on the educational environment.

It solidly documented the fact that
an overwhelming majority of teachers reported the
loss of significant amounts of instructional time,
to discipline issues.

"We spend 80% of our time with 20% of the kids"

Then those questions were removed from the survey.

When I asked them why, they responded that they was no point in continuing to ask the question, because the answers never changed much.


Rather than address the problem,
the solution of the "leadership" of the APS
was to simply stop documenting their failure.

The time frame included the now famous explanation
offered by then APS Superintendent Peter Horoscak;
"You can't just tell the truth, you don't know how
someone might want to use it."

So now APS has their own in house data gathering.

They call it Research Accountability and Development.


And no one of all of the people that work there (link)
can tell you with any certainty,
the percentage of teachers who feel that they have
betrayed by the leadership of the APS. And who

... just don't care anymore.



It is important that this post be distributed to APS employees
who work at the educational interface,
in order that their voices on this important issue
might be heard as well.

The issue will not play in the selection of the next superintendent
except against the will of the leadership of the APS.