Brooks' SuperSAC; super successful?

APS Supt Winston Brooks and the crème de la crème of high school students have folded up their tent for the 2012-13 school year.  According to the award winning APS website, link, before they packed it in;

"The Superintendent's Student Advisory Council played an important role in providing feedback to APS administrators on a variety of issues form bullying and violence in school to cafeteria food to budget."

In an end of the year celebration at the Hinkle Family Fun Center, a SuperSAC sponsor, Brooks said,

“We had another fantastic year with these very bright and focused students; I cannot overstate their impact on policies and the budget in this district.”

Brooks gave credit where credit was due,

"Their (the teenagers, albeit the crème de la crème of teenagers) guidance and true advice to me and the APS Board of Education is invaluable.”

When pressed for what he, other senior administrators and their staffs, and board members and their staffs, actually learn through advisories, public "forums" on bullying and setting district goals, and bus tours of the district, they are want for a response.

One cannot point to something they just learned, without simultaneously pointing to something they should have known already.  The only thing an expert in any discipline can learn from talking to other people, is how those people feel and the specific details of their personal story.

When we pay senior administrator millions of dollars a year to spend our power and resources in our stead, we expect that they already know everything worth knowing about

• bullying and violence in schools,
• what expanded course offerings in high schools should be,
• concerns about food quality and service, and 
• (what are) their (the teenagers, albeit the crème de la crème of teenagers) priorities in the FY14 budget.

The Student Advisory Council and probably every senior administrator in the APS,

"... spent a day at the New Mexico Legislature and were recognized for their impact on education programs in Albuquerque".

What impact?

Why are the anecdotal examples of these young people so much more valuable to senior administrators and board members, than the anecdotal examples of teachers, teachers who between them share around a hundred thousand years of current experience in classrooms?

Why is there not a Superintendent's Teachers Advisory Council?

Why is there not a Superintendent's Citizens, Taxpayers, Parents and other Interest Holders Advisory Council?

Why are endless anecdotal examples of every other interest holder, worth less than the endless anecdotal examples of students (albeit the crème de la crème of teenagers)?

In terms of giving a bunch of good kids a place to vent, the exercise was apparent successful; super successful.

In terms of real impact, the whole exercise was worth diddly.
Anybody who has ever served on an APS advisory council,
thinking they were going to have impact, will tell you the same.

From a public relations standpoint; a huge success.

I wonder, did Winston Brooks discuss with the SuperSAC, the abandonment of character education in their curriculum?

Did he explain to them, in words they could understand, why they are expected to model and promote honest accountability to higher standards of conduct than the law, and he, the senior-most administrative role model of the standards of conduct he enforces upon students, is not.

Can't wait to see how the Journal spins the SuperSAC.

We are witness to what they're willing to do to spin the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.




photo Mark Bralley