Armenta "gives up" free ride

It is clear that Executive Director of Communications Monica
Armenta and Chief Information Officer
Tom Ryan no longer have take home cars, link.

Still unclear, why not?

Education reporter Hailey Heinz wrote;

Communications Director Monica Armenta and Chief Information Officer Tom Ryan have given up their (take home car)s. (emphasis added)

There is a difference between "giving up" their rides and having their rides "taken away". In one they are role models; in the other, victims.

By means of their choice of words, the Journal would have us believe that senior leadership stepped up, more or less on their own, and surrendered the keys to their unjustifiable perk; that they are role models rather than victims; that they are setting the example for the troops.

Is that the truth, or just another APS/Journal communications effort; spin for the purpose of manipulating reader interest holders?

If there were actual lines of communication between the district and the community, it would be easy to find the answer to the question by simply asking it; are they heroes of an austerity push or victims?

If there were actual lines of communication, it could be asked, why are there still, unjustifiable perks that haven't been taken away or surrendered already?

Why did the school board have to specifically request an audit to expose bloat which should have been eliminated long ago? Isn't that an administrative responsibility?

Leaders demanding sacrifice need to role model sacrifice.

If APS Supt Winston Brooks wants every school administrator to cut every ounce of fat and then some muscle, he has to show them that he has done what he expects them to do.

Clearly he has not. Clearly there is still administrative fat to be trimmed. There are more "perks" to be found, they just haven't been found yet.

If there were not, Brooks would be calling for an independent audit that would not only restore public confidence in one of their most important government institutions, but would personally exonerate him and vindicate and validate his leadership.

He couldn't do more to justify the $750K golden parachute he just got from Marty Esquivel and the crew. He couldn't buy better press.

It would seem that an independent audit of the entire leadership of the APS; an audit charged with ferreting out and exposing administrative corruption and incompetence, would find something else besides Brooks' vindication.


Kudos to School Board Member Kathy Korte, for exposing the unjustifiable remuneration of the senior leadership.

Korte said;

"... the cuts (though small) will be good for morale among teachers and parents."

Korte repeatedly voiced support of just such an audit of standards and accountability when she was running for the board.

Last night she said;

"... it’s even more imperative that we continue to scrutinize, scrutinize, scrutinize.”

But not apparently the scrutiny an independent audit would provide. Unfortunately, she seems to have forgotten her expressed commitment to an independent audit of the kind that would uncover every unjustifiable perk everywhere in the leadership of the APS.

That audit has not, and will not ever take place, because the leadership of the APS has so much incompetence and corruption to hide.

If they hadn't anything to hide, they wouldn't be stonewalling the petition for standing for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communications.

The CACoC is a threat to the corrupt and the incompetent in the leadership of the APS because their goal is transparency enough to make public corruption and incompetence impossibly difficult to hide.

The leadership of the APS is in a communications prevent defense with regard to the petition. Their million dollar a year communications effort can't find the words to acknowledge a valid petition.

It's hard to believe they could pull it off, except with the aid and abet of their cronies in the establishment.

There are the appearances of impropriety and conflicts of interests in the unwillingness of local members of the

NM Broadcasters Assoc, to

investigate and report upon credible allegations and evidence that their boss and friend, Paula Maes is up to her eyeballs in the effort to cover up the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS, including the cover up of the cover up of felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators and the leadership of their publicly funded private police force.

Why else would they not report that Maes admitted one night in a Policy Committee meeting that she

"... would never agree to any audit that individually
identified ..."

corrupt and incompetent administrators or board members?





photos Mark Bralley
Korte; APS website