APS preparing for giant step backwards in open government

The APS has been off to another training, which is usually bad news for public records and open meetings.

The last time they went somewhere for a training, Board Member Delores Griego came back with a great idea, link, to destroy public records

"... because they can cause problems later."

They pay lawyers to offer trainings with titles like, "Open Meetings Act - Your Greatest Threat", link.

They are advised by these lawyers that the Open Meetings Act and the Inspection of Public Records Act are "... frequently used by school district critics to challenge school board actions or to embarrass school officials. ..."

Now, having come back from a recent New Mexico School Boards Association law conference, they intend to discuss limiting the comments of public forum speakers to subjects on the agenda. They will discuss and act upon a plan to limit the subjects upon which citizens can speak freely and petition their government.

Their cowardice and corruption is mind numbing. They don't want to talk about;

• the corruption they are hiding in the APS Police Department, and the suppression of the Caswell Report, or about
  
• their abdication from the obligations of role models of the student standards of conduct, or about
• their denial of due process to hundreds of whistle blowers, or about
• their relentless refusal to agree to any audit that individually identifies corrupt or incompetent administrators or board members

so they are going to pass a rule that says no one can talk about anything that isn't on the agenda, and then all they have to do is keep their corruption off of their agenda.

They also intend to pass a board policy that will prohibit Board Members from answering any question that has been asked from the public forum, even it they want to!

I cannot go to this
meeting to protest
these outrages,
except under threat
of arrest by the APS
Police Department;
pursuant to an illegal
restraining order written
by Marty Esquivel and
signed by corrupt APS
Chief of Police Steve Tellez.

Though Esquivel is no longer the school board president, his illegal restraining order will be enforced nonetheless by the new School Board President Paula Maes. The order is utterly illegal because Esquivel and Maes don't have the statutory authority to write an order individually. The rest of the Board could not have agreed to the order except in an illegal meeting.

You simply must read the arguments they will use to shut down dissidence and dissidents at public forum, link, link, link, link.

And you simply must act on what you read. They intend to push the bill through the Policy Committee Meeting at 5pm Tuesday, and then vote to make it School Board Policy the next day.

They are creating layer upon layer upon layer of insulation from accountability to the truth.

I have asked the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government to weigh in on the offense. It is unlikely. Both Kent Walz and Marty Esquivel sit on its Board.

Journal Managing editor
Kent Walz and the Journal
will raise no objection as
the leadership of the APS dons
another layer of insulation
from the consequences
of their misconduct.

Journal readers will not read
about the betrayal of their trust.

You see, Walz has a problem.

He and Marty Esquivel cooked up a NM FOG Hero of Transparency award for their crony, APS Supt Winston Brooks, while at the same time Brooks and his Modrall lawyers were/are making a mockery of public records law in hiding the Caswell Report.

Neither Walz, nor Esquivel, is anxious, or willing, to defend the discrepancy between Brooks' manifest lack of character and courage and their gushing praise of them.

How does Walz report credibly on the suppression of the Caswell Report by Brooks, Esquivel, Maes, and the rest of the senior leadership of the APS, without first reporting credibly on his failure to report credibly upon the illegal suppression, heretofore?

end note; by the School Board's one deliberate choice;
the Policy Committee meeting will not be videotaped
and posted to the district website for viewing by those
who would attend the meetings and cannot; by those
who would hold their politicians and public servants
accountable and cannot.

"Someone" needs to make a record and post it on the internet.

Walz frame grab and photos Mark Bralley