APS' ad campaign

"Journal staff", link, think Monica Armenta's ads are "inspiring"

They cite as evidence; the number of phone calls Armenta has been getting from delighted parents of APS success stories.

Let's assume that Armenta can hold these calls down to a minute each, and is getting one every minute all day long, no food, no potty breaks, no nothin'. 8x60 minutes later, 480 happy parents have chatted with an even happier APS senior administrator. Too bad Winston Brooks wasn't on line; he could have chalked up another 480 points on his "community outreach" efforts.

For which we would pay them about 1/250th of their annual salary, plus benefits.
$276,000 give or take golden parachutes and other financial accoutrements, plus
$106,000 we know about, gives us;
$382,000, divided by 250 workdays, gives us
$1,528 a day paying them to improve APS public perception.

If you divide that number by the daily minimum salary of a
semi-skilled but conceivably highly effective additional adult
in the classroom; $13,001, link, you get $52.

You find you can hire about 29 educational assistants, an entire classroom full, for same public investment.

Our $1,528 investment in the education of our sons and daughters, would have been spent instead polishing poo; putting "lipstick on a pig", wikilink;

"a rhetorical expression, used to convey the message that making superficial or cosmetic changes is a futile attempt to disguise the true nature of a product."

According the Journal,

"Armenta said the advertisements were shot in-house by the communications department, and had no production costs."

Let's say the leadership of the APS is spending a million dollars a year on "communications" and anti-communications by means of their "communications department".

Dividing by 250, to keep the math simple, shows us we're spending $4,000 a day telling interest holders the listing of the ship is only an electrical problem.

For the same $4,000, we could hire another 80 educational assistants.

"The APS Education Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes private support for APS, paid a total of $50,000 for a year of airtime on various television and radio stations.

to School Board President Paula Maes' friends in New Mexico Broadcasters Association.

“... we’re using new marketing funds for the foundation to pay for the ads,” Armenta said"

begging a question; why are there "new marketing funds" available in a school system with many more pressing needs for scarce resources?

Why does the only public school system in town need more "marketing" than it needs educational assistance in classrooms?

“I have been wanting to do something like this since I got here.”

photo Mark Bralley