School Board bullies bullying protestors

According to the Journal, link, "... several dozen protestors gathered outside Albuquerque Public Schools district offices on Wednesday, saying the district is not doing enough to prevent bullying.

Apparently, they went inside and spoke at the public forum at the School Board meeting. One it is reported, ran afoul of the board's rules of decorum; including (time) limits on free speech.

The board routinely bullies community members during public forums.

The bullying runs the gamut from imposing completely arbitrary limits on the free speech of citizens who stand up at their forum, to using a private police force to enforce the more arbitrary and indefensible rules of decorum; rules that prohibit asking questions about the public interests and their public service.

John Kennedy wrote;

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible,
make violent revolution inevitable.

School boards who make two-way communication with stakeholders impossible, make the civil disobedience of their rules inevitable.

You can hardly blame people who take affront at limits being placed on their right to peacefully assemble and petition their government, face to face.

The board wants to engage with community by "listening" to them for two minutes every two weeks. They steadfastly refuse to provide a venue where they will respond to questions about the public interests and about their public service. They spend a million dollars a year on a carefully crafted public relations campaign in order hide scandals like the corruption in the APS police force; an effort that could not survive the first open public discussion of important issues.

There is no good and ethical reason to oppose a venue where parents who are concerned about bullying can carry on a conversation about the district's efforts to mitigate it. There is only one reason to oppose a public discussion with the leadership of the APS on the subject of the administrative handling of bullies and other chronically disruptive students; to hide the truth.

Board Member Kathy Korte's has only one reason to obstruct the success of the Citizen's Advisory Council on Communication, a group whose goal is to create venues for community members and the leadership of the APS, to engage in two way communication about important issues; like bullying,

... to hide the truth.




photo Mark Bralley