Wednesday, July 11, 2012

How long will this building last?

APS has built a new high school. It replaces a concrete, block, and steel building that has been standing for fewer than fifty years.

The construction of an entirely new building was made necessary by APS' legendary inability to maintain roofs. According to APS Supt Winston Brooks;

"..., worst of all, roof leaks in the past few years had damaged not only the structure, but also the equipment. The district’s Facilities Design and Construction Department had looked at just replacing the old roof, but when they considered the cost of remodeling and repair, it made more financial sense to replace the whole building."
"In the past few years", APS allowed the building to deteriorate to the point it needs to be replaced. In the past few years, they spent money on building on fancy new schools that improve public perception of their leadership. In the past few years, they build a brand new and utterly unjustified board room; a candid, honest and forthright accounting of which, they still will not provide.

They are touting the new building as some monumental success, and will have the adjacent monument of their failure razed to the ground as fast as their little bulldozers can push.

Will APS be able to figure out how to keep the new building from leaking? Their track record suggests that they won't, and that taxpayers will be building yet another building in another fifty years.

The old one leaked due to administrative incompetence and corruption; both of which continue to be enabled by the district's profound lack of honest and transparent administrative and executive accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence; ethical standards of conduct and competence, as provided in the standards of conduct they establish and enforce upon students; the Pillars of Character Counts!.

That lack of standards and accountability is the substance of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS. Their unwillingness to engage in open and honest two-way communication about administrative and executive standards and accountability suggests they have plenty to hide.

Interest holders, the folks who will pay for the replacement, don't know their investment is in jeopardy. They don't know because Kent Walz, the Journal, and the rest of the establishment media are covering it up.

The extent to which they are willing to go, to help APS Supt Winston Brooks and the School Board look good, includes their current participation in the cover up of the cover up of felony criminal misconduct, link, in the leadership of APS' publicly funded, private police force.

Why aren't the establishment media asking the leadership of the APS to surrender the public records of findings of investigations of public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS Police Force; beginning with, but not limited to, the Caswell Report?

Why aren't they looking at the public record of the evidence that APS did send to the DA, and comparing it to the evidence Brooks and the board are still holding, even as statutes of limitation expire?

If the establishment media aren't part of the cover up, why aren't they investigating and reporting upon credible allegations and evidence of the cover up of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's good that you're pointing this out about Del Norte. However, it's naive to expect government to do anything well but spend money (and take it). We need to stop pretending we don't have a choice...