Winston Brooks promises to tell the truth.

At the public forum yesterday, I asked the board and superintendent if they ever intend to simply tell stakeholders the truth. I reminded them that the standard of conduct that they enforce upon students, requires students to respond to legitimate questions, candidly, forthrightly and honestly.

I further argued that as role models of the student standard of conduct, that the superintendent and the board had the same obligation.

Most of the board cannot even look up from their laptops while being reminded of their failed obligation to be honest with stakeholders.

Winston Brooks on the other hand, was looking up. And during the next agenda item, "Matters of Information", he made a commitment to answer questions (honestly).

All you have to do he said, is to track him down during one of the scheduled bus tours of the various school board districts. At some point during the tour the bus will stop long enough for stakeholders to ask questions.

Since Winston Brooks has indicated his intention to tell the truth anyway; it seems silly to make me find out when the next tour is, where it stops, and at which stops questions will be entertained. None of that information is on the million dollar APS website.

I will continue to try to find out where I might be able to catch up with him. In the mean time, I see no reason that he cannot prove his good will by answering at least one question based on a recent audit of the APS financial division.

The Meyners Audit of the APS Financial Division revealed;

1. inadequate written financially sound policies and procedures
2. inadequate accountability to such policies and procedures as there were, and
3. inadequate records kept on the spending of up to a billion dollars a year.

Implied but not specifically stated; that this is the way it has always been.
Likely, millions of tax dollars have gone missing; either wasted or stolen.

There is an obvious need for an administrative accountability audit of the entire leadership of the APS to determine if there are meaningful standards of conduct and competence in the entire leadership, and whether or not there is honest accountability to those standards.

The leadership of the APS has steadfastly refused not only to begin the audit, but even to talk about it.

All of which begs the question;

Why is there not an impartial full scale accountability audit of the entire APS already underway?

Winston Brooks does not have a published email address, so I will forward this question to Monica Armenta who can forward it to APS Superintendent Winston Brooks.

And then we shall see what we shall see.


cc Monica Armenta upon posting.

Update; I have been reminded by a senior APS administrator
(nothing sneaky, I forgot to ask for permission to attribute the information)
that there are 7 grassroots community meetings planned for the fall;
schedule to follow.