APS Community Relations Committee still owes due process to CACoC

The APS District and Community Relations Committee meeting agenda is posted, link. It lacks follow through on a problem that came up during a previous meeting of the committee.

On March 27 of this year, representatives from the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication were given an opportunity to speak on behalf of a petition they delivered to the board in early August last year.

With exception of a "thank you" note from School Board President Paula Maes, the Board ignored a legitimate petition signed by more than a hundred people, for more than six months.

The petition is yet to see due process.





During the board's discussion of the petition, District and Community Relations Committee Chair Lorenzo Garcia spoke to the need for the board to "learn how to have the harder conversations"; the very kind of two-way communication the CACoC is trying to enable.

It is now four months later, and you have seen what the Board is actually willing to do to learn to have the harder conversations; nothing.

Their manifest intention, is to avoid having them altogether.

... if they can.

There are at least two reasons why the Board isn't willing to actually have the harder conversations;

1. they lack the courage, and/or,
2. they lack the character
   
   that they need to begin them.

If there is a third reason, I cannot imagine it, and no one in the leadership of the APS has ever articulated it.

Now would be a good time.

If there is a reason beside the lack of character and courage;
if there is a good and ethical reason to not create a venue
where the harder conversations can take place, what is it?


What good and ethical reason is there to not create a venue where we can have the harder conversations about;

• administrative and executive standards and accountability,


• student standards of conduct,


• the responsibilities and obligations of the senior-most role models of the student standards of conduct,


• the whereabouts of evidence of felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators and the APS Police Force,


• the denial of due process to hundreds of whistleblower complaints,


• the lack of due process for complaints filed against administrators and board members, and of course,


• the board's denial of a petition for standing for a committee of volunteers ready, willing, and able to put together, open and honest two-way communication between the leadership of the APS and the community members they serve.

One would think that Kent Walz
and the Journal would investigate
and report upon the efforts of the
Citizens Advisory Council on
Communication to create real
communication between APS
and the community.

One would think Walz would
report upon the board's
response to the CACoC efforts.

One would think Walz would report upon the board's efforts to avoid having the harder conversations that will expose the corruption and incompetence they are trying to hide.

One would be wrong.




photos Mark Bralley