Robert Lucero loses fight to restrict public forum.

Robert Lucero tried to have the
rights of speakers at public forums
at APS School Board committee
meetings limited to the items on the
agenda for the meeting.

His real interest was in preventing
public comment on the subject of
executive and administrative role
modeling of the APS Student Standards of Conduct; a subject which will never be the subject on any agenda of any meeting of the School Board, if board members like Lucero and David Peercy have their way.

Peercy is the Policy Committee Chair,
and is personally responsible link, for
the fact that the restoration of the role
modeling clause to the standards of
conduct that apply to board members
and administrators, has not been
openly and honestly discussed,
despite the fact that it has been on
his committee's plate for nearly
four months. link

Public forums are the purest form of the exercise of the constitutionally protected human rights to free speech and to petition one's government. Any effort to limit or restrict them is utterly indefensible.

District Relations Committee
Chair Lorenzo Garcia, informed
Lucero, on the record, that speakers
at public forums are entitled to speak
on what ever issues that they choose.



Committee chairs like Lucero and
Peercy, unfortunately, still
have the opportunity to abuse
the power entrusted to them,
by disallowing altogether, public forums at the meetings they chair.

And to their enduring shame, they take full advantage of that opportunity.




photos Mark Bralley