Friday, May 31, 2013

Imagine an audit of the APS

You will have to "imagine" the audit of executive and administrative standards and accountability in the Albuquerque Public Schools; it will not take place for as long the same group of good ol' boys and girls run the APS and the media.

The audit would cost at most, a few thousand dollars.

APS could even do the audit on itself; as long as the findings were made public.

The auditors would ask;

  1. what standards of conduct and competence apply individually and collectively, to the members of the leadership of the APS, and
  2. by what means are complaints and allegations of failure to meet those standards decided?
The standards of conduct and competence must be written down somewhere.

They can't just pull a Peercy, link, and say, we hold ourselves accountable to the "highest standards" and then not point them.

Anyone in the APS making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, should be able to jot them down in a dozen lines, from memory.

If they cannot be pointed to, if you can't look them up somewhere on APS' award winning website; they don't exist.

Accountability is simple; all they have to do is show us the process in the APS where the least powerful can file a complaint against the most powerful, and the complaint is guaranteed due process.

Where in the APS can the most powerful be held accountable by a mechanism where the powerful can exert no undue influence?

Where is the mechanism, powerful enough to hold the most powerful accountable, even against their will?  Where can a complaint be filed, that APS Supt Winston Brooks is hiding evidence of felony criminal misconduct by senior APS administrators, the Caswell Report, and where that complaint will see due process?

APS Supt Winston Brooks could conduct a PowerPoint presentation on "administrative standards and accountability", but he won't.

He won't tell the truth about his own standards and accountability, anymore than he'll conduct a PowerPoint presentations on student discipline, link.




APS School Board President Marty Esquivel could conduct a PowerPoint presentation on "executive standards and accountability", but he won't.

Their presentations, if they were candid, forthright and honest, would reveal incontrovertible evidence of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

There is only one reason to not tell the truth,
and that is to escape the consequences of so doing.

Imagine the opposite. Imagine that their presentations prove that they have real, written down standards of conduct and competence.  Further imagine that all of those standards are high enough to protect the public interests.

Imagine that their presentations prove that complaints filed against them see due process; the powerless really can hold the powerful accountable for their conduct and competence, even against their will.

Can you imagine the establishment media, the Journal, KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV, not reporting on their presentations?

By what standards of conduct higher than the law, would positive presentations of standards and accountability be "newsworthy" and the relentless refusal of the leadership of the APS to report candidly, forthrightly and honestly on the lack of standards and accountability, be "not newsworthy"?

The lack of standards and accountability is not one whit harder to investigate and report upon than an investigation and report upon a wealth of standards and accountability.  All they have to do is, ask Brooks and Esquivel to produce the simple truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Why won't they ask?  Why won't they investigate and report upon credible evidence and testimony of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS,

... except that they are complicit in its coverup?

If there is another reason, I cannot imagine it, and as yet,
neither they, nor anyone else will articulate it.




photos Mark Bralley

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