APS senior administrators have been leading and facilitating public meetings in each of the seven school board member districts. The meetings are focused on the district's goals; current and future.
The leadership team begins the meetings by defending their progress in the last three years, toward the current eight goals. Then they solicit input on the next set of goals.
One of the goals will be community involvement, and is doomed from its inception. It is impossible to involve a community without communicating with the community.
The history of the leadership of the APS and their communications with their community, is one of a one-way stream of information. Extracting information other that what they stream, has always been difficult. Consider for example, the years long and completely unsuccessful effort to get APS COO Brad Winter to tell the truth about how much money they spent on the new board room.
Are board members really sitting in chairs that cost $800 dollars each?
The leadership of the APS will try earnestly to involve the community. In the next set of goals setting meetings, a couple of years from now, they will be able to point to a lot of things they did in their effort to involve the community.
What they won't be able to point to, is any assistance they provided to the people who want to establish real open and honest communications; the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication.
As hard as they work to involve the community, they will work harder to obstruct the creation of a forum that diminishes their control over the dissemination of the truth. They will obfuscate any effort to begin open and honest, two-way communication between the leadership of the APS and the community they serve. They will be fighting against the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication.
They need to control the communication. While their interest, I suppose, in "communicating" openly and honestly about the education of the 89,000 of this community's sons and daughters in the APS, is genuine, there are things they don't want to talk about; things the people have a right to know about. They don't want to admit to any inconvenient truth.
They don't want to communicate openly and honestly about the corruption in the leadership of their police department, or about the evidence they are holding, of APS senior administrators committing felonies. They don't want to talk about denying due process to hundreds of whistleblowers. And they don't want to communicate about the standards ad accountability problems in the leadership of the APS, or about the need for a standards and accountability audit.
Unfortunately for them, they can't have one without the other. They can't tell the whole truth part of the time. They can't accustom people to candid, forthright and honest communications in one meeting but not in the next; in response to one question but not the next. People would notice.
Since the goals setting meetings began, last night's meeting was the fifth of seven, they have made a big deal of "we're here to listen" and "we're not allowed to respond to questions".
Last night they were taking questions. Usually it is only Supt Winston Brooks' who's willing to play "stump the chump". He really needs to stop calling it that. There's nothing wrong with standing there and taking questions.
Except for School Board President Paula Maes who did not stand for questions in any way, shape or form.
It would take both character and courage for her to stand in front of the hundred people or so people who signed the petition. And then to explain to them, candidly, forthrightly and honestly, why she has denied due process for their petition. And, why their petition warrants neither open and honest discussion, nor a roll call vote when they decide whether to grant the petitioner's requests of the leadership of the APS;
- the benefit of APS administrative expertise and experience with CACs, and
- access to their records of the previous and current CACs, and
- a decent place to hold meetings, and
- professional, competent and impartial facilitation for meetings.
There is no good and ethical reason to obstruct the commencement of real, open and honest, two-way communications between the leadership of the APS and the community members they serve.
They are covering up something.
Paula Maes' and they, are covering up an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.
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