Journal Winter stroking continues unabated

In the Journal this morning, link, another testimonial in support of Interim APS Supt Brad Winter.  Journal coverage of Winter's ascendency is manifestly one sided.  It amounts to journalistic malpractice.

In normal circumstances, one might ask, who cares if the people who run the Journal take care of the people who run the APS?

These are not normal circumstances;

• there are three school board members to elect, and shortly thereafter;

• there is a new superintendent to be hired

How can administrative and executive ethics, standards and accountability not be on the table for open and honest public discussion?  How can the Journal wantonly deny the democracy the truth upon which it absolutely relies?

Except that the people who run the Journal and the people who run the APS, would rather that their ethics, standards and accountability not be on the table for open and honest public discussion; except that they would rather no one know,

1. how inadequate are their standards and 
2. how inadequate is their accountability to those standards?

The people who run the Journal and the people who run the APS would rather have stake and interest holders believe;

the findings of such an examination and review would be positive.  

Think about that for a moment.

If the findings would be positive; why don't they pay to have them found?  If for a few tens of thousands of dollars, it could be demonstrated that

the leadership of the APS has protected the public interests in the public schools by means of actual, honest senior administrative and executive accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, 

they would be the best tens of thousands of dollars they ever spent.

What better way to get voters to support a bond issue or mill levy than proof that power and resources will be spend by politicians and public servants who are actually and honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct within their public service?

Clearly, those would not be the findings. 

The findings would be that senior administrators and school board members are not really accountable even to the law, for a variety of reasons.  They routinely engage in expensive litigation and legal weaselry, against the public interests in their effort to except themselves from the law and the consequences of breaking it.

The findings would be that senior APS administrators and school board members as a matter of practice, trade operational dollars for their personal immunity, scrubbing their names from settlements of complaints of even felony criminal misconduct.

Will he model and promote the
Pillars of Character Counts!
or not?  Any answer except yes,
means no.

All Brad Winter has to do to refute the allegation that he is only barely accountable, maybe, even to the law, is to point to the place and the process in which and by which, he is.

He is at this very moment, spending operational dollars in non-viable litigation to keep ethically redacted public records of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators and the leadership of their publicly funded private police force under his oversight, hidden from public knowledge.

An independent examination and review of APS senior administrative and executive ethics, standards and accountability would settle the question at once and for all.

It is time to pick a side; for or against an immediate standards and accountability examination and review; immediate as in; in time for the school board election and before the next superintendent is given another golden parachute.

"Against" the examination and review we will have;

the people who run the credentialed media and
the people who run the APS.

In favor of an examination and review count;

likely every interest and stakeholder who hears or reads about it.

Therein lies the rub; ... stake and interest holders who hear or read about it.

There is an abject lack of establishment's media investigation and reporting upon credible allegations and evidence of an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS and an immediate solution to that crisis.

Abject; and utterly indefensible.




photo Mark Bralley