Wednesday, October 29, 2008

APS Board Member Jon Barela's disconnect on trustworthiness

In the Journal this morning, link

Newly appointed school board member Jon Barela said
the district's billion-dollar budget and high-dollar contracts
require accountability.

"Clearly we've become a very big business," Barela said.
"I think it's important for us to be as very transparent as
possible. I think we all have a public trust as board members."

Yet if you ask Jon Barela if he will sit and answer legitimate questions, candidly, forthrightly, and honestly, you get the same deer in the headlights look you get from everyone else in the leadership of the APS when they are asked the same question.

Assuming that they overcome their shame long enough to actually look you in the eye.


If you examine the leadership of the APS for any transparency at all, you will find none; they won't answer questions, and they won't surrender public records.

Ask them to tell you how much of the public trust and treasure they squandered at 6400 Uptown Blvd, and on a still unjustified new boardroom, at a time when they were saving money by eliminating fire safety inspections in schools to save money.

If you ask them to show you a record of honest accountability to any standard of conduct at all, they can surrender nothing. A record of honest accountability to any standard of conduct at all, simply does not exist.

Right now, the leadership of the APS is hiding evidence of felony criminal misconduct by senior administrators . link

Jon Barela is just like the people who disenfranchised an entire electorate to install him, their crony (Modrally and APS good ol' boy), on the school board weeks before a legitimate election for the seat.

They talk about trustworthiness, because it is a major component of the standards of conduct that they enforce upon students, and because it looks good in the newspaper. But there is not one of them with the character and the courage to actually discuss, in public and on the record, either trustworthiness, or their very real obligations as role models of the student standards of conduct.

The simple truth is that no one in the entire leadership of the APS can show anyone any proof at all that they are honestly accountable to any standard of conduct at all, even the law. The record of APS Modrall is one of litigating exception to the law for APS administrators and board members. There is no other reason for them to continue to hide that record. There is no other reason for them to refuse to comply with the law, the NMIPRA, and surrender that record to public inspection.

They have no choice but to hide the public record of past efforts to hold them accountable, even to the law.

Yet Jon Barela has the unmitigated gall to be quoted in the Journal, blowing about transparency, accountability, and trustworthiness.


Bottom line; there is not a single person in the entire leadership of the APS with the character and the courage to hold themselves honestly accountable as role models of the student standard of conduct. There is not one of them with the character and the courage to even talk about character and courage.


How can anyone of them be a role model of character and
courage, if there is not one of them who can even
speak the words without choking on them?

Shame on Jon Barela, and shame on them all.



cc Jon Barela at Barela_Jon(at)aps.edu

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