Ethics, standards and accountability in the APS

Second in a collection of position papers related to my election campaign.

2.  Ethics, standards and accountability in the APS

I chose those words to describe the issue deliberately, I could simply have said standards and accountability but I think it is vitally important to start using the word ethics for something beside decoration on codes of conduct.

Nobody seems to want to talk about ethics.  Nobody seems to want to talk about student, adult, administrative and, executive standards of conduct.

Students are expected to behave ethically.

Every year, the School Board reminds them in their Student Behavior Handbook, that they are expected to model and promote (accountability to) the Pillars of Character Counts! link; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.

Every year, the School Board reminds us that they are not accountable even to the law; the standards of conduct that higher standards are higher than.  They spend millions of dollars litigating exception for themselves, from the law.  Operational dollars are traded for admissions of "no guilt" in expensive settlements; does $300K ring a bell?

How can we possibly expect to teach students about ethics if we can't bring ourselves to use the word except in the abstract?

Do we even want to teach students about ethics?

Is character education going to be part of the curriculum or are we going to abandon students to their own devices?

It is time we had that open and honest public discussion.

Even an elephant in the room at two
school board meetings and an unlawful
ejection upon the second instance, 
could attract the attention of the Journal
They refuse to this day to investigate and
report upon the ethics, standards and 
accountability scandal in the so-called
"leadership" of the APS.

It is time to stop ignoring the elephant in the room; the leadership of the APS expects students to model and promote honest accountability to higher standards of conduct than those that school board members and senior administrators are willing to be held accountable.  It is an outrage.

It is a scandal.

There isn't any difference between the highest standards and the lowest, if higher standards of conduct than the law are unenforceable.

The APS School Board freely admits that their own code of ethics is absolutely unenforceable.

If it were, the board could explain in words any student could understand, how it is, that their code can be enforced upon them.  Hell, they can't even explain it in legalese.