Brooks; we're lean, trust me.

APS has been taking input from the community related to solving the ongoing budget crises.

A significant amount of the input suggests cutting administrators before cutting teachers. There is a widespread belief that APS is top heavy, it is a central theme in every venue where the public has an opportunity to vent their concerns.

APS School Board President
Marty Esquivel says cutting
administration would have
nothing more than "symbolic
effect".

He says APS' top-heaviness
is a myth; the perception
is not the reality.

Not true.

In the eyes of the perceiver, the perception is the reality.

He ignores the widespread public perception out of arrogance.

It would be a simple matter indeed, to hire an independent investigator to go into the administration of the APS and look for waste and the practices that enable it. The investigator would find one of two things, the administration of the APS is as lean as Esquivel and Supt Winston Brooks would like us to believe it is or, s/he would find waste and the practices that enable it.

If Esquivel and Brooks actually believed what they say they do, they would have begun that investigation long ago. Esquivel, before he moved to the dark side, actually called for such a review.

There is no legitimate reason to not investigate. The cost of the investigation would be negligible even in a budget as tight as it is.

Examine the 1250 word process for implementing a board policy through creation of a procedural directive, link, and then tell me there aren't senior administrators squandering the public trust and treasure.

Esquivel claims, link,

"I'm very sensitive to the perception that we've got to cut administration."

If he really was, he would prove conclusively, that there is no administration to cut.

He won't. He won't even acknowledge that the question has been asked.

The Journal lets him get away with it.




photo Mark Bralley