Another APS Brooks settlement in the works?

According to their agenda, link, the APS school board intends to meet in secret this morning to discuss

"... Pending Litigation: Michael Bachicha, an individual, Plaintiff, vs. Board of Education of the Albuquerque Public Schools ...

They have already settled with the other complainant in the case, link.  The settlement in that case, and the settlement in this case, are likely to remain secret for as long as open government expert and APS School Board Member Marty Esquivel and the rest of board are allowed to keep them secret.

They are allowed, not required, by the law to keep the settlements secret.  The distinction is important.

What they need to keep secret, is the amount of money they spend on litigation and settlements.

You have to figure the costs of litigation are at least two or three times the amount of the settlement; a $250K settlement actually costs taxpayers $750K.  The money comes from operational funds; tax dollars appropriated for the education of children.  It is money that literally, could be spent in classrooms instead.

APS' record cannot bear scrutiny without repercussion.

It is a record of spending inordinate amounts of money on litigation; litigation in the interests of board members and superintendents, not in the interests of students; litigation against the public interests.

APS' record will not bear scrutiny.

For reasons they have yet to acknowledge, much less defend, the Journal and the rest of the establishment credentialed press have decided to not investigate and report upon the squandering of the people's trust and treasure in cost is no object litigation in efforts to allow school board members and superintendents to escape the consequences of their corruption and or incompetence.

Their record is there to be examined; all the embarrassing, shaming and indicting record. The public record of the involvement of senior APS administrators in felony criminal misconduct is there.  All you have to do is pry it loose.

The findings of as many as three separate investigations of allegations of public corruption and in competence in the leadership of the APS Police force (and by logical extension, the leadership of the APS in general) name the names of the corrupt and the incompetent.

The findings name the names of people whom misappropriated cash from an evidence locker (a state felony) and criminally abused the NCIC criminal database, (a federal felony).  Names which were never turned over to the District Attorney for criminal prosecution.

Ethically redacted copies of those findings are being hidden from public knowledge by the school board, the superintendent, and their unlimited budgets for litigation even in their own self interests and without any real oversight*.

*the meetings where the board decides how to spend operational funds on their own legal defenses, are held in secret.  By their own deliberate decision, they do not record their meetings in secret.

Even if the NM IPRA allowed secreting the findings, the school board and superintendent owe interest and stakeholders an explanation about why they need to secret them.

Why are they spending so much money to keep ethically redacted copies of the findings secret?

The law does not require this level of secrecy; it only allows it by means of legal weaselry; using weakness in the law to thwart justice.

The amount of money spent defending school board members and senior administrators is newsworthy.  How operational dollars are being spent is newsworthy.  Why dollars that could be spend in classrooms are being spent in courtrooms instead, is newsworthy.

There is a school board election coming up.
A new superintendent is going to be hired.

I am witness personally, to the Journal's steadfast refusal to investigate and report upon APS' litigation record.

The proof that I have insisted that they do, lies in the pages of Diogenes' six.  The proof that they have turned a deaf ear, even through many school board elections, mill levies and bond issues, lies in the pages of the Journal these many years.

It lies as well, in the records of NM Broadcasters Association affiliate stations KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV.

How much money does the APS spend every year,
obfuscating the production of public records?

Why won't  Journal Editor-in-Chief Kent Walz and the news directors assign reporters to investigate and report upon the truth about what the school board and superintendent are spending on litigation?

... except that they are complacent or complicit in a
cover up of the ethics, standards, and accountability crisis and scandal in the leadership of the APS?