Monday, February 18, 2008

The Peter Principle and the Leadership of the APS

the Peter Principle "... is a colloquial principle
of hierarchy(ology), stated as:"

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise
to his level of incompetence ." (wiki link) derived
If the goal is to really understand the level of corruption and
incompetence in the leadership of the APS;
one must deal first with the concept of
"innocent" until proven guilty.

It is not an ethical or moral construct.
Innocence is only in the eyes of the law,
a technicality which unscrupulous lawyers like Modrall
can exploit in the interests of clients like the wife of the President of the firm, Paula Maes.

Any senior administrator who spends afternoons
in a hotel room with a subordinate;
paying her apparently with APS bicycles, cars,
alarm systems, and otherwise unearned overtime,

is a public servant who is guilty of betraying the public trust.

Never mind what Modrall might be able to get away with
in District Court Courtrooms like Judge Valarie
"It isn't my job to decide who is telling the truth." Huling's.

1. There is no reasonable assumption that
the leadership of the APS is free of incompetence
and corruption.

2. Please revisit premise 1; grasp its full impact.

It is not reasonable to assume that;

Paula Maes, Beth Everitt, Tom Savage, Michael Vigil,
Gil Lovato, Brad Allison, Bill Moffat, Darrel Harrell,

and every corrupt and incompetent APS administrator
and school board member,

are somehow excepted from the laws of human nature.

Absolute power; corrupts absolutely. Socrates

Nature abhors a vacuum. unk
Organizational hierarchies abhor (organizational) vacuums.

In the absence of any other organizational plan,
the quick and the powerful will form an organizational
structure of their own; a good ol' boys club.

APS' organizational structure was formed generations ago;
when ex football coaches formed the cadre of the original
APS good ol’ boys club;

indistinguishable in most aspects
from the current leadership of the APS.


Good ol’ boy organizational hierarchies enable
the Peter Principle.

The Council of the Great City Schools wrote that
administrative evaluations in the APS are
“…subjective and unrelated to promotion or step placement …”

In other words;
  • the individual most responsible for the current computer fiasco,
  • the individual willfully permitted, or negligently allowed, Peanut Butter Gate
  • the individual willfully permitted, or negligently allowed, Grade Gate
  • the individual most responsible for the chaos in the budget and financial departments;

never had to prove by any objective measure,
that they had the skill set to do their job.

Obviously they did not.


All they ever had to do or be, is a member in good standing
in "the club".


It is because the organizational hierarchy of the APS
is a good ol’ boys club,
  • that there are no standards of conduct or competence, and
  • nothing that represents honest accountability, even if there were.
They have been promoted to their level of incompetence
(and corruption).

If this allegation were not true,

all anyone in the leadership of the APS has to do

is to point to a single board policy or a single administrative
procedural directive
that makes the allegation "in"credible.

They cannot.


They defend their indefensible position by hiding it.

Which they are allowed to do with the aid and abet of;

Thomas Lang, Kent Walz, Phill Casaus,
Michelle Donaldson, Sue Stephens and Thomas Pearl.


In my mind, traitors and betrayers one and all,
of the good people of Albuquerque.

Shame on them.

Shame on the corrupt and the incompetent,
and on those with guilty knowledge of that corruption
in the leadership of the APS;

and shame on the "journalists" that are shielding them from
honest accountability for their corruption and
for their incompetence.

1 comment:

Joseph Lopez said...

You have become an expert at relating these things that are so reprehensible, you have written here hundreds of times about things that should have been remediated in a supposedly continuous improvement environment that values Character by now.

At first, when I started trying to whistleblow when I got old enough and smart enough to see the graft, I thought that my skills at communication, or a defecit in my evidence gathering capabilities was at fault for no action by those I took documented malfeasance to.

Then, I realized, with your help and the help of other wise men who can see beneath the false surface, the facade of things, that the status quo is being kept by the powerful and rich, and that if ethical or law violations occur while the Status Quo is being "enforced", then to the rich it is fine. To the elite, we are just resources to be exploited, like a tree to cut down for wood, or a whore to use and discard.

I get discouraged, I am just a man with no lawyer resources, and very little cash. But I am blessed, as you are, with a high IQ and some knowlege of how things work specifically at APS. If we put our knowledge to work, it becomes power, and we can use that power to change things.

Maybe we can't get thousands to march on APS, but we can sure get like minded people of ethics, even a few, to realize what we see, and to not have their own fleeces pulled over their eyes, over and over. Maybe we can help others see what we see.

You have been at this for a while, fighting the corruption that we both see and have meticulously documented.

Hector Balderas contacted me, thanks for the direction to go to him in the first place, he has emailed that he will have someone look into the allegations in my blog.

I have heard nothing from the broadcaster's association yet, even though I emailed them a "formal complaint" on Paula Maes.

So we see again, even if you have the proper evidence, you must also have strong and unafraid allies in the right places to defeat corruption. Maybe Mr. Balderas is that ally that all of the down trodden in New Mexico need.