APS School Board in hiding

We read in the Journal this morning, link;

Tony Ortiz, a Santa Fe attorney hired by APS ... said, ... neither the court nor PED would be given the investigation report done by an attorney who was retained by APS Board President Analee Maestas.

Neither a Second Judicial District Court Judge nor NM PED Secretary Hanna Skandera will read the report the APS School Board is secreting from interest and stakeholders.  No one besides manifestly conflicted* school board members will ever know the ethically redacted truth about the "serious personnel matter" that justified firing Winston Brooks and saddling taxpayers with a $350K buy out of his contract - a contract that the school board had recently extended even beyond the terms on the board of a majority of the board.

*The manifest conflicts of interests; the board is expected to evaluate the superintendent impartially.  They are expected to tell the people they represent, the ethically redacted truth about the evaluation; the process and the product, and the results of that evaluation reflect on their performance as board members.  They have an interest in manipulating the truth.

One of the most important responsibilities of the school board is to hire and annually evaluate the superintendent.  Hiding the truth about how and how well they are handling that obligation prevents voters from holding them accountable at election, for how and how well school board members are serving the people they represent.

The people have a right and need to know how their representative on the school board has performed in office,  The people have a moral and ethical right to the ethically redacted truth about the superintendent's performance and evaluation.  School board members, by and through their multitude of lawyers, have refused to produce it.

School Board President Analee Maestas, when asked a legitimate question about the public interests and or her public service by a TV reporter, responded;

"no comment"

"No comment" is a categorically unacceptable response from a politician or public servant in response to a legitimate question about the public interests including their public service.

How can there be government of, by and for the people if the government's response to a legitimate question from the people whose power and resources they spend, is no comment?

Are the terms of public servitude, including the limits on truth telling, the prerogative of the people, or of their servants?  Ask them, they will tell you the prerogative is theirs.  That's what "no comment"
means.

Every reason Marty Esquivel and the APS School Board cite as reasons they "can't" tell the ethically redacted truth are only circumstances that "allow" them to not tell the ethically redacted truth.  Their citations are deliberately misleading, untrue, and dishonest.

As but the latest example; Marty Esquivel and his Modrall lawyers procedural directive on public participation in school board meetings, link, here quoted in significant part;

The New Mexico Open Meetings Act prohibits open discussion amongst board members for any item not listed on the ... agenda. Therefore, Board of Education members ... shall not answer questions posed to them from a speaker or comment on a speaker’s concerns. emphasis added

That statement is manifestly dishonest.

APS students, in their highest standards of conduct, link, are expected to communicate honestly;

"Honesty in communications is expressing the truth as best we know it and not conveying it in a way likely to mislead or deceive.  It precludes all acts, including half-truths, out-of-context statements, and even silence, that are intended to create beliefs or leave impressions that are untrue or misleading."

The APS School Board, in their lowest standards of conduct; can be expected to create as many untrue and misleading beliefs, as a million dollar a year public relations effort and unlimited budgets for litigation and legal weaselry will allow.

As another example; the APS School Board has under its control, the findings of several investigations into felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators in their publicly funded private police force.  They refuse to produce ethically redacted versions of any of those several investigations, even in response to inordinately and unjustifiably expensive litigation.

There is a world of difference between can't do the right thing and won't do the right thing.  The APS School Board refuses to produce findings because "the law" allows them to secret them, not because the law requires them to.

There is only one reason to hide the truth and that is to escape the consequences of the truth being known.

The APS school board is in hiding because they haven't the character and the courage to tell the ethically redacted truth about the public interests and about their public service. 

They get away with it because neither Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz nor his counterparts at KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV will assign reporters to investigate and report upon a standards, ethics, and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Are we really going to enter a whole new superintendency in secret?

Is there really going to be just another good ol' boy oligarchy?

Are we going to reinstate the old one?

Tellez whispers in Brad Winters ear.

Last night, the board placed recently retired senior APS administrator, key to the cover up of corruption in the leadership of the APS Police, and perjurer Brad Winter on their short list of candidates for interim and perhaps ongoing superintendent of the APS.

It was Winter's keen oversight that allowed former APS Chief of Police Steve Tellez to believe he could get away with walking off with hundreds of dollars worth of ammo.




photo Mark Bralley