The media, it would appear, are good to go (to the corner)

Not a peep from the media about the restrictions the leadership of the APS intends to place on the free exercise of their Constitutionally protected human right to be "the press", and with their co-equal rights as "any person desiring" to exercise any of their civil rights during a public meeting run by the APS.

Their silence gives consent - Plato derived

Perhaps one day, you will be moved to attend a public meeting hosted by the board and or senior administration.  The following rules will apply to you.  They will be enforced at the whim of whichever school board member happens to be in charge, and enforced by their Praetorian Guard; their publicly funded private police force; accountable only to, and directly to, link, school board members and senior administrators.

You will not be allowed to protest for one second, what you may regard and an arbitrary and capricious ruling.  They will provide no due process for any complaint that they have overstepped their authority.  You can if you want, sue them.  If you expect justice, as opposed to falling victim to an unlimited budget for legal weaselry, bring lots of money and or lower your expectations.

Audience Etiquette
Audience members shall conduct themselves in the same manner as outlined above for individual speakers.  Audience members shall not disrupt an open public meeting of the Board of Education and shall not incite others to do so either.
Therefore, raucous or disrespectful expressions of agreement or disagreement by audience members shall be considered inappropriate and subject to regulation by the board president or presiding officer.
All members of the audience shall remain seated unless recognized by the board president or presiding officer.

You will be deprived of your liberty by police authority, if in the sole discretion of some board member or senior administrator you have become "raucous"  or "disrespectful" in your agreement or disagreement with something a speaker has said, and won't follow their order to stop.  Expect that they will be considerably more tolerant of your standing and clapping, if you are stand or clapping for one of them.

They resolutely insist; as an audience member, if you want simply to stand up quietly at your seat, in support of some person or point that some speaker has made, and will not sit down if the tell you to, they can and will arrest you.

The problem; they are considerably more likely to tell you to sit down if you are standing in support of something they don't like than something they do.

They will be for example, considerably more tolerant of your standing and clapping for something they're proud of, than they will be if you are standing and clapping because a speaker just suggested that they hold themselves honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, within their public service; that they hold themselves actually and honestly accountable to the same higher standards of conduct they establish and enforce on students.

Armenta giving the leadership of
APS' Praetorian Guard, orders to
bounce me.  I won't stand in the
corner for her.

If silence gives consent, the Journal, KRQE, KOAT and KOB TV are willing to stay in the corner because APS Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta and the police officers who back her play no matter what or how stupid it is, tells them to.

I have to wonder if you will by your tacit approval, allow these people to think they can order you to your seat; not because you are actually disrupting their meeting, but for any reason at all.

What do they think you are, elementary school students?

The terms of public in-servitude are the prerogative of the people, not of the servants.  It's ironic; that they never once asked the public what they thought about public participation in public meetings.  Ironic isn't the right word.  Self absorbed and arrogant I think, are the words.

They and their meetings are already protected by the law.  If someone slanders them individually or collectively, the law will punish the slanderer.  If someone actually disrupts a meeting, a police officer whose sworn duty is to intervene, will.  Not because some school board member or senior administrators wants them to, but because they have witnessed a violation of the law and are fully authorized and expected to end it.

What the leadership of the APS wants is;
for the public to be held accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law.  They require for example, your manifest respect.  The law doesn't get that for them; they hope their procedural directive will.

Interesting; that the people's oversight over the spending of their trust and treasure is so feckless, the "leadership" of the APS can use operational dollars (dollars supposed to be spent on students) to pay lawyers to argue that

• they are not accountable as role models and or, to any higher standards of conduct than the law; the standards of conduct that higher standards are higher than.

while at the same time they are paying Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta to convince the people that despite abject lack of any empirical evidence to support the claim;

• the leadership of the APS is honestly accountable as roles models of the standards of conduct they establish and enforce upon students; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethics.

We have not yet gotten to the worst part of APS' new procedural directive on public participation in public meetings; Marty Esquivel's legal team's rules for speaker etiquette.

I'm guessing he thought he could push this abomination through the school board process without anyone noticing.  He relies on his friends in "the media" to continue to ignore what's going on, despite their own interests in the issue.

Perhaps they've been told that no matter where they have to stand for show, they'll still get the inside access they need to do real investigations and reports.

Should they ever change their minds about
wanting to do either of those.




other photos Mark Bralley