APS Board considers Brooks settlements

The APS school board met in secret last night to take "action" in "settling" several complaints against former APS Supt Winston Brooks, the board, the district and of course, taxpayers.

According to the agenda, link, here pasted in significant part;

Michael Bachicha, an individual and Susan Stanojevic, an individual, Plaintiffs, vs. Board of Education of the Albuquerque Public Schools, Defendant, Case No. 10-CV-00710 MCA/LAM

Ruby Ethridge, Plaintiff, vs. Albuquerque Public Schools, Winston Brooks,, in his individual capacity, John or Jane Doe, in his or her individual capacity, Defendants, Cause No. 1:12-CV-00897-KG/SCY;

it would appear the complaints are close to "settlement".

The settlements will be secret; as secret as the meeting where they were made.

All we know for sure is;

• large numbers of operational dollars are going to be given to victims of Brooks and APS' misconduct, and to
• the victim's lawyers, and to
• APS' lawyers.

The exact number of dollars will remain secret from the people whose dollars they used to be. They will remain secret until the information is so old, it is no longer "newsworthy". They will never be published in a way that they would get noticed. They never show up on APS' award winning website.

The settlement agreements will include admissions of no guilt by the guilty.

This always pisses off victims, thereby multiplying the number of operational dollars required to make victims whole, compensate their lawyers, and further enrich the APS stable of lawyers including at least a few lawyers willing to do just about anything, for a few hundred thousand dollars worth of billable hours.

The settlement agreements will prohibit victims and their lawyers from telling the people what happened to the power and resources they entrusted to the leadership of the APS for the purpose of educating children.

It gets worse.

School Board enforcer Marty Esquivel and the board, are prepared to spend another million dollars on non-viable litigation in an effort to escape the consequences of their individual and collective corruption and incompetence.

They will spend those dollars in secret and without real oversight*.

*school board oversight amounts to self-oversight and subordinate oversight in meetings in secret.

The APS image is of a smiling Marty Esquivel.

"Smiley" and six other school board members offered an assurance to stakeholders, that the million dollars they intend to spend in search of admissions of no guilt, is not being spent in their own self interests, but in the interests of the nearly 90,000 of this community's sons and daughters in APS classrooms.

The only protection taxpayers have,
the ONLY protection taxpayers have,
is the personal trustworthiness of people who deliberately do not record their meetings in secret.

Normally, the democracy could look to the press to cowboy up, ride in and save the day. The press is supposed to investigate and report upon credible allegations and evidence of public corruption and incompetence.

In this case, you couldn't separate the press from the players
with both hands and a crowbar.

Marty Esquivel, Journal Managing Editor and former APS Supt Winston Brooks managed to bamboozle the NM FOG into giving Winston Brooks a hero of transparency award.

At the very same time, Esquivel, Brooks and Walz were all playing parts in hiding public records; the findings of investigations into allegations of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators and the leadership of APS' police force.

The ethically redacted findings are still being hidden and the leadership of the APS is still spending operational dollars to keep them hidden. They have never, not once, offered a good and ethical justification for needing to keep the record secret in anyone's interests but their own.

The establishments' press has not once asked them for that justification and reported on their response.