Korte Armenta brouhaha - tip of an iceberg

The now public spat between School Board Member and candidate Kathy Korte and the $110K a year Executive Director Monica Armenta, link, is quite literally the tip of an iceberg;

Below the surface; yet to see the light of day in any Journal investigation and report;

• Winter and the good ol' boys and girls' oligarchical structure doesn't include a venue where an Executive Director can question the performance of a subordinate without incurring the personal wrath of a school board member.  Or they could point to it.

• Winter and the good ol' boys oligarchy doesn't provide a venue where an Executive Director can question the performance of a subordinate without incurring the personal wrath of a school board member. Or they could point to it.

  This though School Board members are often reminded specifically and explicitly; they are not to be throwing their weight around any where any time except during legitimate meetings of the school board.

• There is no place in the entire APS where an employee can file a complaint, and where that complaint is guaranteed due process.  Or they could point to it.

• The leadership of the APS spends millions of operational dollars every year, litigating their way out of accountability even to the law by means of expensive admissions of no guilt settlement with complaints who trade cash for personal vindication.   Or they would deny it.

• There is no place where an employee can file a complaint against an administrator or school board member and where that is free of the appearances of conflicts of interests and impropriety.  Or they could point to it.

• That there is a culture of fear of retaliation against complainants and whistleblowers.  Or they would deny it.

• That there is an ongoing and deeply rooted culture that enables public corruption and incompetence by failing to provide actual honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence in politics and public service in the APS. Or they could point to those standards and to their actual and honest accountability to them.

• That Korte and the school board to this day relentlessly refuse to talk openly and honestly about the standards of conduct that bind them and their actual honest accountability to them, points to their lack of courage and or competence.  Or they would discuss openly and honestly; their standards and their accountability to them.

• It ended up in the newspaper; ergo Interim Superintendent Brad Winter and the good ol' boys aren't doing as wonderful a job as the Journal editors would have you believe, link.

If school board member Kathy Korte or any other school board member thought employees needed protection from administrators, she and they should have provided it for all employees long ago, and not just now and not just for her and their political allies.




photos Mark Bralley