Last "Goal Setting" meeting, tomorrow night

APS has conducted a series of meetings with the public, ostensibly for the purpose of blending public input into the creation of a new set of goals for the District. The District currently has eight goals, link, some of which have been reached and at least one of which (open and honest communications with interest holders) has seen no real progress at all.

The meeting tomorrow evening will be the seventh and last meeting. Each school board member hosted a meeting in their District.

School Board Member David Robbins will "host" the meeting. He will give a short introductory speech in which will reiterate the importance of board members "listening" to constituents.

He will not respond to questions about;

• the board's decision to deny due process to whistleblower complaints, or
  
• why the board is hiding the Caswell Report on an investigation of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators, or
  
• why he will not tell the truth about the board's refusal to publicly discuss their decision to not have a role modeling clause in their code of conduct, or
  
• why he will not tell the truth about administrative and executive standards and accountability, and
• why he will not defend their refusal to conduct an independent and impartial audit of their standards and accountability.

Most importantly, he will not defend his denial of due process for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication Petition; a petition with more than a hundred signatures on it.

Robbins was challenged on the denial of due process a month ago. He promised the group he addressed, that he would "get back to us". A commitment upon which he has reneged.

Robbins claimed he had never seen the petition, and that the board had never discussed it. He did maintain that School Board President Paula Maes was authorized to write a thank you note in response to the petition, in place of due process. That authorization if it truly exists, could have come only from deliberations that included the entire school board, in a public meeting with a published agenda.

No such meeting took place.

Just like no such meeting took place when school board enforcer Marty Esquivel decided to create an unlawful "banning letter" authorizing their publicly funded private police force to arrest me if I attempt even to attend a school board meeting. The snap here is of Esquivel ordering me to stop the recording of their unlawful act.

After we had been ejected, Robbins admitted on the record that he had no authority to eject us, but did so never the less. He slandered me, on the record, repeating groundless allegations as justification.

If you ask Robbins why he won't stand and deliver candid, forthright, and honest responses to legitimate questions, he will recite some mumbo jumbo about board members not being able to answer questions about anything that isn't on a published agenda. He will not take any follow questions on his misrepresentation of the requirements of the law.

There is no law that prevents him from standing up and answering legitimate questions about the public interests and about his public service.

The only thing that prevents him, or any other member of the leadership of the APS, from telling the truth is his own lack of character and courage.

The truth is that he simply lacks the character and the courage to answer legitimate questions candidly, forthrightly and honestly. It is as simple as that.

I took this shot of Robbins unlawfully ordering their Praetorian Guard to arrest me for being "part of a group" of people, one of whom had ignored a previous unlawful order that people/press turn off recorders.

He and the board made the decision to eject us during an executive session, though it was not on the agenda and could not even have been discussed legally, much less acted upon.




Esquivel photo Mark Bralley