60 seconds isn't very long when you are trying to explain why the leadership of the APS must be candid, forthright and honest in describing to incoming supt. Dr. Luis Valentino, "the truth" about the many issues awaiting his attention.
The school board counts on the fact that 60 seconds are not nearly enough to build a case contrary to something they do or don't want to do. They don't want to tell the truth about student discipline in the APS.
I challenged the board and interim Supt Brad Winter to own the creation of a PowerPoint presentation on discipline in Albuquerque Public Schools. Such a presentation would provide for Dr. Valentino, everything he needs to know. A PowerPoint presentation would show stake and interest holders everything they need to know.
Why do we never talk about discipline?
Why is there nothing ever in the newspaper about the way children behave at school? Sure, if some kid or handful of kids are misbehaving in ways that will sell newspapers, the Journal will step in. Look at the papers they sold with students ''misbehaving'' around PARCC testing.
But where is the Journal's comprehensive coverage of the fundamental issue; students are out of control. Students no longer respond (adequately) to the authority of adults. When someone tells them to stop doing something (disruptive); their response increasingly more often, is no.
What is the state of student discipline in public school classrooms and hallways? I haven't worked in a school in over a decade. I am presuming that since I retired, discipline has continued its decline.
I base the presumption in no small part, on the fact that there is no data to indicate otherwise. If the fact was that things are getting better, we would be hearing about it from APS' million dollar a year public relations department.
So what is the truth?
- What is the current state of affairs? What part of the average teachers day is consumed by chronically disruptive students? What do teachers have to say about the way kids behave and the help they get, or not, from the administration?
- Are things getting better or worse?
- What have we tried before, and why didn't it work?
- What are we doing now, and why isn't it working?
- What are we going to try next?
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| Brad Winter was asked for a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending over- budget at 6400 Uptown Blvd. He is yet to produce it |
Brad Winter was asked to tell the truth about the involvement of APS senior administrators in felony criminal misconduct that was never reported to law enforcement*. He is yet to produce it.
*This points coincidentally to the issue of giving administrators the authority to decide what is and isn't criminal misconduct in their schools.
If you give them an inch, they will take a mile. The leadership of the APS took it upon themselves to decide that state and federal felony criminal misconduct wasn't ''bad enough'' that it needed to be reported.Winter and the board are paying lawyers to this day, to hide public records that name the names of APS senior administrators who committed or covered up felony criminal misconduct.
Winter and the board are paying lawyers to this day, to cover up their cover up of felony criminal misconduct.
Winter and the board represent the senior-most role models of student standards of conduct, and there is not one of them who will accept actual, honest to God accountability even to the law. They spend operational dollars without limit and without oversight, on non-viable litigation and legal weaselry in order to gain settlements where in they can write; and we admit no guilt.
Why in the world would anyone expect Winter or the board to put together a PowerPoint telling the truth about the most hushed up issue in APS?
Which brings us to ''the press''; the Journal, KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV. Everyone one of them knows about all of these issues. The have known for years about corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.
Journal Editor in Chief Kent Walz relentlessly refuses to investigate and report upon an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.
Why not?
To be fair, the allegation; there is an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS is unproven. It is difficult to substantiate in the face of the power and resources they bring to bear in covering it up.
The records they're hiding; the findings of investigations into the criminal misconduct going on in the leadership of their publicly funded private police force, would substantiate the allegation beyond doubt.
That is precisely why APS is litigating to this day to skirt the NM Inspection of Public Records Act and keep hidden, the records of their corruption and incompetence.
Why won't Walz investigate?
Would it be too expensive, too cumbersome, too time consuming? Hardly. All he has to do is ask APS to produce copies of every set of standards to which the leadership of the APS claim to be accountable, and of, the due process by which they can be held accountable to those standards. A handful of documents at most.
The lack of (high enough) standards and (certain enough) accountability will be self evident.
The problem is the problems truth telling will create. There in only one reason to hide the truth and that is to escape the consequences of the truth being known.
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| APS Police Chief Steve Tellez and APS COO Brad Winter shared oversight over corruption in the leadership of APS' publicly funded private police force. |
We can't have that.
Let's say, for the sake of discussion, the allegation is nonsense; I'm just another disgruntled former employee and in Walz' expressed opinion, a gadfly and bomb thrower.
Let's say APS does have standards of conduct and competence that are high enough to protect the public interests in the public schools. Let's say they are actually, honestly accountable to those standards by a due process powerful enough to hold them accountable, even against their will.
Why wouldn't Walz report that?
Why wouldn't Walz inform and reassure the democracy that all is well with standards and accountability in the leadership of the largest school districts in the country?
Is it because he doesn't want to attach his name and reputation to a lie?
Is it because he is actually part of a conspiracy to cover people's asses, because that's the way good ol' boys and the privileged roll?
The real problem is that there can be no "grandfathering in".
The possibility of future corruption and incompetence cannot be eliminated without first exposing the ongoing one. You can't eliminate corruption and incompetence without exposing the corrupt and the incompetent.
Names will be named. Heads will roll.
People will embarrassed, shamed, fired, possibly prosecuted.
Kent Walz and the news directors at the NMBA affiliate stations can't report credibly on the ethics, standards and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS without first reporting credibly on their failure to report on the scandal heretofore.
There will be no grandfathering in.
photos Mark Bralley
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