Thursday, January 24, 2013

Brooks gets another year

A series of in-secret meetings by the APS School Board has resulted in another contract extension for APS Supt Winston Brooks.  His contract expires more than a year after Marty Esquivel's, Kathy Korte's and Analee Maestas' terms on the board expire. All three end their current terms on the board in  February 2015; more than a year before the contract they gave Brooks ends.

The entire process was conducted in secret.  No public input was gathered at anytime during the process.  Teacher input was not gathered.  Employee input was not gathered.

No record was created.

At their re-election Esquivel, Korte and Maestas are to be held accountable by voters, for their selection and retention of APS' superintendent.  How are voters to evaluate their work, if it all gets done in secret?

Who says board members are competent to evaluate superintendents in the first place?  Their election to the board gives them that authority; it does not give them the skill set they need to do it.  Are the people not entitled to oversee the spending of their own resources and the wielding of their own power?

What was his final score?  What were his individual scores?

  • Did he have to account for the hiding the findings of investigations into felony criminal misconduct by senior APS administrators?
  • Did he have to explain, defend, deny or even acknowledge his abdication from his obligations as the senior most administrative role model of student standards of conduct?
  • Did he have to explain why a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd is not available to the people who foot the bill?
  • Did he have to justify denying due process rights to hundreds of whistleblower complaints, many naming him individually?
  • Did he have to justify his use of their publicly funded private police force to protect him and them from inconvenient questioning?
Was he asked about the many lawsuits in which he is a named respondent?
Was he asked about his reputation as a misogynist and bully?

I doubt that he was.

The Journal served up the establishment perspective this morning, link.  They report;
In the future, the board will consider Brooks’ contract in November, to avoid the politics of having Brooks’ evaluation done during an election.

They are oblivious apparently, of the ongoing legislative effort to move the elections to November, which would immediately reestablish the problem.

No comments: