Robbins' logic is specious and, dangerous to accept.

APS School Board Member David Robbins argues; if a quote is "too old", it is no longer appropriate to bring it up at the public forum at a board meeting.

I had just finished bringing up three "old" quotes, one from the
still sitting governor, one from the still sitting mayor, and
one from a now disgraced former APS chief of police.

Robbins argued that the quotes are so old, that neither he nor anyone else in the leadership of the APS needs to respond to them. Worth noting; not one of the three quotes have since been retracted, nor have controverting quotes been offered. They are as accurate now, as the were when they were first uttered.

Although a number of senior administrators have moved on to spend more time with their families since Gil Lovato's statement;

If the truth ever gets out, there won't be a single senior
APS administrator left standing

it is not yet entirely untrue. Some of these players in the APS Police Department scandal, are still playing. Some one of them is responsible for suppressing the evidence of felony criminal misconduct, even after the expiration of statutes of limitation. The quote is current and accurate enough to demand open and honest discussion.

This link will take you to the archived recording of the last regular meeting of the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education.

Fast forwarding does little good, although I have noticed that you can drag a little button straight to the part that you want to see and hear. You will have to wait until the buffering is complete, in order to be able to drag the button very far.

Good luck getting the thing to work; this in not their long suit.

If you drag to 7m30s and play it until 9m35s, you will witness my petition during the public forum. I wish it looked a little more polished, but what is, is.

If you drag to 21m58s and watch until 25m45s, you will witness Robbins response during Matters of Information; the board's show and tell. The significant part runs from 22m45s-23m58s.

You will also see and hear Robbins trying to get the audience to believe that the district had done and is doing the standards and accountability audit that I am demanding. The audits to which he refers are financial audits; an entirely different matter altogether. It was (deliberately) misleading.

And what about quoting school board heavy hitter, Paula Maes?
Has it been too long ago that she said;

"I will never agree to an audit that ... address(es) personnel.
I do not want an audit that would say; ... Tom Savage
is a horrible administrator." ... link

that I can no longer point to it, and demand an explanation? She has never retracted it. She has never contradicted it.

She still will never agree to any audit that names the names
of the corrupt and the incompetent in the leadership of the
APS.

At 23m50s, you will hear School Board President, and open government lawyer, Marty Esquivel threaten to have the APS Praetorian Guard "remove" me from the meeting. It would have been the 6th or 7th time that I had been illegally arrested by the board's publicly funded, private police force in the effort to prevent the exercise of my free speech rights, and my right to petition my government.

Had I been arrested again, this time would have been for cause. Assuming of course that speaking out of turn from the audience is an arrestable offense. Should anyone try to suggest that I was "screaming my head off", I would invite attention to the record, 23m50-23m56s. Marty Esquivel and I were speaking at the same time, and I cannot even be heard by any of the open mics on the dais.

With respect to the other illegal arrests, at the time of every one of those arrests, when I was arrested, I was behaving not only within the law, but according to Robert's Rules of Order, and in absolute accord with the APS Student Standards of Conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!.

If you ask any one of these people to point to a time, a day, and a place where they will sit still and respond to legitimate questions about the public interests and their public service, they will not.

If you ask them to begin an impartial standards and accountability audit in time for stakeholders to hold them accountable at the bond issue election, they will not.

If you ask the Albuquerque Journal to investigate and report upon any of this, according to their every obligation to voters, they will not.

If you ask stakeholders to carry their torches and pitchforks
to the public forum of a school board meeting, and then take
back control over public power and resources in the APS,
they will not.

In the same vein, if you ask stakeholders to carry their torches
and pitchforks to the steps of the Roundhouse, to take back
control over public power and resources in state government,
they will not.

And there we are; and there we will remain.




photos Mark Bralley