Why is APS School Board training a secret?

The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education has canceled all of its meetings this week. That fact is not announced, but can be gleaned from an examination of the board's calendar.

The board (and who knows what other APS personnel) is in Houston Texas attending (at least) the Council of the Great City Schools Annual Fall Conference. link

It is unclear whether the conference includes all of the training or whether some training is an adjunct to the conference.

It will cost taxpayers a great deal of money to send the board to Houston for a week. At least part of the training is called; “How to Lead in the Accountability Age.”

If accountability were actually an issue, a whole lot more accountability could have been bought with this same money, had the money been spent instead on a impartial administrative accountability audit.

As it stands, the million dollar a year APS Communications Department, has communicated exactly nothing about the whole project. Even if there is nothing going on in Houston worth bragging about, even if there in nothing that can be cited as justification for the outlay of so many tax dollars, Monica Armenta and the APS Communications is ignoring stakeholders' right to know what is going on with their servants and their resources.

We don't know who went, how much it cost, or what the supposed benefits for stakeholders include.

No one in the leadership of the APS will be held accountable for the choice to spend what could be tens of thousands of dollars on accountability training.

How ironic.



APS Director of Communications Rigo Chavez will be asked who, from the APS, went to Houston, and how much the expedition is costing taxpayers. In the unlikely event that he ponies up the whole truth, I will share it with stakeholders.