APS settles another Brooks lawsuit in secret

It has taken half a decade, but one of former APS Supt Winston Brooks' earliest victims has finally found some amount of justice in the legal system; ignoring for the purpose of this post that;
Justice delayed is justice denied wikilink

The size of the settlement, and the amount of money the leadership of the APS spent in a effort to postpone it, will easily triple the amount of Brooks' golden parachute.  It does not include whatever it is going to cost to settle with the other plaintiff in the same case.  All amounts are secret from interest and stakeholders.

“The terms of the settlement are confidential,” according to APS Director of Communications Rigo Chavez

Interestingly, in a moment of candor,
APS school board member and
Defendant Marty Esquivel went on
record saying he doesn’t believe the
school district can have a confidential
settlement; and yet they did it anyway.

Some part of the money will come from insurers who will raise their premiums and cost to taxpayers, again. The rest will come directly from taxpayers. It will come from decision making power and resources the people entrusted to the leadership of the APS for the purpose of providing a first class education for their sons and daughters.

All APS settlements cost taxpayers more than they should because they all include admissions of no guilt.  Public money is used routinely and as a matter of course, to scrub board members and superintendents' records clean of their guilt; their incompetence and their misconduct.

Here are a few hundred thousand tax dollars and
I admit no guilt.

The true cost of the squandering of the people's trust and treasure can be found in public records of the settlement.  Except that the leadership of the APS does not want the people to see those records.

They will spend even more money keeping those records until nobody cares about them anymore.

As an illustrative example; there are records of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators during a scandal exposed in the Journal in 2007, link.  The records and evidence have been secreted for so long that statutes of limitation have expired on felonies.  If you ask the Journal to investigate; their excuse is that it's old news.

The APS school board is still in litigation to keep the ethically redacted truth from stake and interest holders.

Journal reporter Jon Swedien tried to mislead readers into thinking there is only one other pending lawsuit against the departed superintendent;

There also is the ongoing case involving Ruby Ethridge, a former APS associate superintendent. Ethridge filed a civil rights suit against APS and Brooks arguing she was demoted after complaining that Brooks “treated woman with disdain.” (emphasis added)

There are in fact, many pending lawsuits.

There are so many and they are costing taxpayers so much, that the leadership of the APS needs to keeps the number and overall expense secret from those whose trust and treasure they squander.  Especially they need to keep it secret through the school board elections and the hiring of the next superintendent.

That the Journal is complicit in the effort to keep APS' litigation and settlement record secret from the people whose taxes underwrite it, is manifest in their relentless refusal to publish even a bare minimum of the facts.

APS' longtime family
lawyer Art Melendres.

When are Journal readers going to find out that the Modrall law firm is making so much money off taxpayers and APS,  that APS Modrall lawyer Art Melendres couldn't remember (under oath) how much money they're actually taking in every year, even to the nearest quarter million dollars?




photos Mark Bralley