Boston "junket" irks editors

The editors of the journal reasonably question the decision of the leadership of the APS to take a working vacation in Boston, link.

The editors reiterate the concerns I expressed a week ago, link, and asked the same legitimate question; is this really the best thing we can do with slightly more than $26K?

The editors would use it to hire EAs and buy supplies for teachers. I would use it to fund an independent audit of administrative and executive standards and accountability; the audit that Board President Paula Maes said she would never agree to, if; it individually identified corrupt or incompetent administrators or board members.

The people's interests will be addressed and served when it irks editors more that the leadership of the APS is covering up an ethics and accountability scandal than that, they're going on junkets.

If Supt Winston Brooks' job is to "to increase the district’s national profile", how could he spend $26K better than to commission an audit whose findings read;

The leadership of the APS is honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, under a system over which they have no undue influence, and powerful enough to hold them accountable, even against their will.

Brooks would pay a hell of a lot more than $26K for some really good news to communicate.

If he and the board really do have high standards of conduct and competence, and if he and the board are actually and honestly accountable to them, why won't they show them? Why won't they prove it? Why won't they spend the best $25K they could ever spend?

Except that, that is not what the auditor will find?

More damaging in the long run; editors won't ask to see their standards and accountability.

Why won't they tell a reporter to investigate and report upon credible allegations and evidence of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS?

They will not, for the same reason they won't push the leadership of the APS to surrender the truth about the corruption in the APS Police Dept; corruption the Journal exposed, link.

Why does it not irk Managing Editor Kent Walz that Brooks will not surrender an ethically redacted report on felony criminal misconduct by senior APS administrators in their publicly funded private police force?

I long for the day when the editors wonder aloud, if hiding the Caswell Report until after statutes of limitation on felony criminal misconduct expire, is the way they want Winston Brooks to improve APS' national "profile"?




Walz frame grab and photo Mark Bralley

submitted as a letter to the editors upon posting.