Community questions for candidates for the District 7 seat on the APS school board.

According the APS board office

Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 6:30 p.m.;
Location: La Cueva’s Performing Arts Center, 7801 Wilshire NE Facilitated community forum. Process will include a professional facilitator. Community members may submit questions to candidates. The number and length of questions asked will be determined by the format of the meeting. The format of the meeting depends on the number of applicants and will be predetermined and communicated to candidates in the confirmation letter; however, each applicant will have a set time to make an opening statement and a closing statement. Input from the community will be tabulated and provided to the Board of Education for their consideration prior to Friday, September 26. (emphasis added)

This will be interesting.

The last time the leadership of the APS promised community members the opportunity to ask questions, during the superintendent hiring process, community members did not actually get to ask specific questions.

The questions that were submitted by attendees were filtered,
to weed out potentially difficult questions;

questions like;

As the senior most administrative role model of the student standard of conduct, do you intend to be held honestly accountable to that standard?

No candidate heard that question asked.
None were required to respond to it on the record.

Although they did read the question on a fairly large poster
less than 10 feet from their faces.

No candidate responded to the question.

Winston Brooks still has not responded to the question.
Nor has any member of the school board.
Nor has any other member of the administration of the APS.

It will be interesting to see what "professional facilitator" means.
The last time I saw an APS meeting facilitated,
it was by an APS administrator.

It is not the qualifications as a facilitator that play here,
it is their impartiality.


Update;I have heard from the school board office that;
their facilitator reserves the right to reword questions
to suit her needs. There is no guarantee, and apparently
very little likelihood, therefore, that the board's candidate will
have to answer any question specifically regarding their
willingness, or not, to be held honestly accountable as
a role model of the students standard of conduct; even
for the few hours a day that they are public servants and
enforcing that standard of conduct upon students.

In other words; same old, same old.