Defendent Esquivel, senior-most role model in the APS?

Everyone is a role model; 

a person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by young people.

The Josephson Institute offers access, link, to their library of aphorisms related to character education, including a section on role models.

A handful of them on point and on,

the need for role models;

• Example has more followers than reason. Bovee 


• Example is not the main thing in influencing others.  It is the only thing. Schweitzer


• You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.  Goldsmith


• Don't worry that children never listen to you. Worry that they are always watching you. Fulghum


• The question for the child is not Do I want to be good? but Whom do I want to be like? Bettelheim

the timing;

• The right time, to do the right thing, is always right now. unk


• The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he’s born. — William R. Inge,

the importance;

• If we want our children to possess the traits of character we most admire, we need to teach them what those traits are and why they deserve both admiration and allegiance. Children must learn to identify the forms and content of those traits.  Bennett


• The formation of character in young people is educationally a different task from and a prior task to, the discussion of the great, difficult ethical controversies of the day.  Bennett

the qualifications of role models;

• If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.  Jung


• You must be the change you want to see in the world. Gandhi

Whatever else they thought they were doing when the APS School Board elected Marty Esquivel to be their President, they elected him to the position of senior-most role model of the standards of conduct that the school board establishes and then has the administration enforce upon students.

Enforcer/new President Marty Esquivel

Esquivel, by any reasonable moral and ethical argument, is a role model for students.  He has inescapable obligations as the senior-most role model of personal accountability to the Pillars of Character Counts!, a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct, link.

Anyone who would like to weigh in on the propriety of the Pillars as the standards for students missed the boat - it sailed nearly twenty years ago when the School Board voted unanimously to adopt the Pillars as the APS student standards of conduct.

Their resolution, as old as it is, is still binding.  They have to honor the promise they made, or formally rescind it. As much as they would like to pretend it has, it doesn't just fade away.

If one could get Esquivel to speak candidly, forthrightly and honestly about his impression of his obligation as a board member and role model, he will deny that he is a role model for students.  He once told me, he's a school board member, "not an educator".

There are two reasons that someone like Esquivel does not step up to accountability to ethical standards of conduct; corruption and cowardice.

If one makes a conscious decision to reject certain standards of conduct, one is corrupt with respect to those standards.  Commonly, people who reject the law as their standard of conduct are considered corrupt.  Those who reject ethical standards of conduct are ethically corrupt.

If one acknowledges that certain standards of conduct apply to them; such as the School Board adopting the Pillars of Character Counts!, and then cannot summon the courage to hold them self accountable to them, one is a coward.

It is the whole point in telling the fable about George Washington owning up to chopping down the cherry tree.  We have to rely on the telling of the tale because we don't have enough living role models to point to.

Reciting fables isn't enough.  If we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what it looks like.  Character is taught by personal example; not by storytelling.

There is no other explanation for the failure of the leadership of the APS to step up as role models of accountability to  the Pillars of Character Counts! except cowardice and corruption.

Proof of these allegations lies in front of your eyes and in the absence of any evidence at all, to the contrary.

APS Board VP Korte

If either Esquivel or the new Board Vice President Kathy Korte. can be held honestly accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law, the lowest standard of conduct, they would be able to point to place where that accountability can be found.

They can't.

There is no place where an allegation of their failure to live up to standards, will see due process.  There is no venue in the APS, beyond their undue influence, impartial, principled, and powerful enough to hold them accountable even against their will.  It doesn't exist.

Maybe the legislature could hold us accountable to our own code of ethics! former School Board Member Robert Lucero once offered.

So far they haven't.  Not that any APS lobbyists have actually asked them to.

All of this will go unnoticed by the community that entrusts nearly 90,000 of their sons and daughters to the care and guidance of the APS.  It will go unnoticed because the establishment media is the establishment's media, and the establishment does not want to talk about duel standards of conduct in the APS; one for students and a far lower one for them.

Duel standards were made "legal" when the board removed from their own code of conduct, the words;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult
be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

Without so much as a by your leave, the leadership of the APS abdicated from their obligations and responsibilities as role models.

Journal Editor Kent Walz

An abomination that to this day, has gone unreported by Esquivel's crony Kent Walz and the Journal.




photos Mark Bralley
Walz - ched macquigg