APS copy crisis; who's fault is it? Marty Esquivel owns a good bit of it personally.

The Journal reports, link; APS teachers will be strictly limited in the number of copies they can make even for the most justifiable of reasons.  From the report we glean;

• "Somebody" in the leadership of the APS decided that the shortage in APS operational dollars was going to be addressed by 'limiting printer and copy machine usage in an effort to “keep down costs'”

• (The leadership of the APS) did not have figures on how much the district expects to save.

Operational dollars are the dollars spent educating students as opposed to the dollars spent on capital improvements like building outrageously expense school buildings.

The need to keep down costs is indisputable.  The need to do it by limiting the number of copies teachers can make is most disputable.  It is the product of a poor decision making process.  It is such bad solution; it is going to be rescinded. 

update; the policy was rescinded the following day.

I have often pointed to the accumulation of teaching experience in the APS; nearly 100,000 years.  I have pointed out just as often that despite their experience, expertise, training and education, they have no seat at the table where decisions are made.

Had teachers participated in the process that created the copy crisis, they would have nipped the idea in the bud; for the very same reasons that it is going to be repealed.

APS' decision making process is to blame.  The process is flawed because the people with the most expertise and experience are not part of it. 

So how is Marty Esquivel to blame for the copy crisis?  

Assume for the sake of argument; all the reasonable cuts have been made; all the administrative dead wood has been trimmed and copies really do need to be limited.  If not for Esquivel et al, there would still be a bunch of money in the pot.

If it were not for the cost is no object legal defense of APS School Board Member Marty Esquivel's ego, there would still be more than enough money left to cover the costs of whatever number of copies teachers need to do their jobs.  I write "more than enough"; that is my impression.  As usual, the relevant data is missing.  The APS spokesperson said she didn't have figures.  Why not?

Did she not wonder and ask, how much money would be saved by making teachers lives more difficult and less effective?  Why didn't Journal reporter Jon Swedien ask her to find the figures and email them to him before deadline?

Maybe they don't even have a figure.  Maybe someone just to decided to limit copies and see what shook out when teachers, students or parents started paying the tab.  The deliberate absence of truth, invites speculation.

Speaking of figures you won't find; the number of dollars being spent in litigation in defense of Marty Esquivel's ego.  Those are of course operational dollars as well; the same dollars that there aren't enough of, to make the copies teachers need to teach.

Esquivel and the school board members who enable him have already encumbered nearly $750K.  Because he and Winston Brooks, Monica Armenta, Rigo Chavez, current and past board members and even the recently fired APS chief of police Steve Tellez have an unlimited budget for litigation, and because they can spend it with no real oversight, they will spend 1.25M operational dollars  before they finally loose in a federal court of appeals.

How many copies would one and quarter million dollars buy?

And that's just the litigation around my complaints.  It's a pittance compared to the rest of the litigation that is going on and has gone on, in efforts to except superintendents and school board members from accountability to the law.

The Journal could investigate and report upon the dollars spend on unjustifiable legal defenses for APS big wigs, but they won't.