Winston Brooks secret evaluation

According to the Journal, Winston Brooks will receive his
first evaluation by the APS Board of Education. link

Based on this evaluation, Brooks' contract will be extended
for a year beyond the unusually long 3 year contract
which he has already.

When the board evaluates a superintendent, they are
in a very real sense, also evaluating themselves.
When they give Winston Brooks a clean bill of health,
they write one for themselves as well.

The results will be kept secret from stakeholders.
How are stakeholders to evaluate their superintendent or
their school board if all of the pertinent information is kept
secret?

This board has a history of problems with superintendent evaluations and telling the truth. link and link.


Keeping the results secret from stakeholders serves
self interests at the expense of public interests.

There are some glaring problems already, not the least of which is the fact that Winston Brooks will not answer legitimate questions about the public interests.

Among those questions;

1. Why are he and the rest of the administration refusing to be held honestly accountable as role models of the student standard of conduct, if only for the few hours each day that they enforce those standards upon students?
2. Why is the phrase;

   In no case shall the standard of conduct for adults be lower than the standard for students,

   no longer a part of the code of conduct that applies to administrators and board members?
   
3. Why has the leadership of the APS taken two years to investigate felony criminal misconduct in the APS Police Department, allowing statutes of limitation to expire and good ol' boys to except themselves from accountability for criminal and ethical misconduct?
4. Did Meyners auditors uncover criminal misconduct in their investigation of the APS Finance Division?
5. Why were employees of the APS Finance Division, who never blew the whistle on the blatant and egregious problems reported by the Meyners Audit, promoted to positions from which they could cover up their own incompetence and corruption?
6. How many tax dollars were lost because of inadequate policies, inadequate accountability, and inadequate record keeping on the spending of more than a billion tax dollars a year?
7. What was the effect on APS' bond rating, and cost to taxpayers, of the results of the fallout from the Meyners Audit?
   
8. How much money has the leadership of the APS spent on the Uptown Administrative Complex, including a completely unjustified new board room, while saving money by ending fire safety inspections in schools?
9. Why won't the APS tell the truth about the million dollar relationship between the APS and Paula Maes husband's law firm; Modrall?
10. Is the record of APS Modrall litigation, so expensive that the total cost is secret, one of excepting senior APS administrators and Board Members from accountability to the law?
    
11. Why is there no written Discipline Philosophy to support district discipline policies?
12. Why has the leadership of the APS never surveyed teachers about the problems they face everyday in schools?
13. Why has no data been collected that documents the negative effect of chronically disruptive students on the education of all students?
    
14. Why is the APS website unimproved after years of complaints? Why is it impossible to find relevant information? Why is there so little transparency?
    
15. Why is the record of the APS Custodian of Public Records, one of routinely obfuscating the surrender of public records to public knowledge?
16. Why is APS spending money on the SilentWhistle; fraud, waste, and abuse hotline, when it is demonstrably a scam designed to give stakeholders a false sense of protection?
    

Winston Brooks has repeatedly refused to meet with stakeholders and answer legitimate questions, candidly forthrightly and honestly. His meet and greets with stakeholders were a sham; he never allowed the asking of any questions except his own.

According to audits by the Council of the Great City Schools;

• Administrative evaluations are subjective and unrelated to promotions or step placement, and
• Anyone who tries to buck the system falls victim to "... a culture of fear of retribution and retaliation..."

Every independent audit of any division of the leadership of the APS has revealed widespread and deeply rooted incompetence and corruption. Audits have pointed out that the leadership of the APS routinely ignores audit results. Even a bonafide request for public records could not turn up any evidence that policy changes were made as a result of audit findings.

And when asked an inconvenient question on any issue at all,
the response is always the same; stonewalling.

APS is run by a good ol' boys club. It always has been, and
apparently it always will be.

The good ol' boys that the run the Journal steadfastly refuse to report on the Ethics and Accountability Crisis in the leadership of the APS. The Journal steadfastly refuses to report on the school board elections, the candidates, or any of the issues that have compelled them to run for election.


For what it is worth, the editors of the Journal have taken a stand on school lunches. link

A few days after the election, the editors will take another stand
on apathetic voters and their failure to involve themselves in issues or elections.