Within your public service ...

to what standards of conduct and competence, will you hold yourself actually and honestly accountable?

That is a question to which, the leadership of the APS; school board members, superintendents and senior administrators, relentlessly refuse to respond candidly, forthrightly and honestly.

• They will not point to their standards of conduct and competence; clear, unequivocal and written down.

• They will not point to the process or procedure for holding them accountable, even, and especially against their will.

The reasons that they will not respond truthfully are because;

• Their standards are really no higher than run of the mill despite what they would like you to believe; nothing to be proud of.  There are no real "higher" standards to which they can be held accountable.  If there were, they would be posted on APS' award winning website. Go ahead, look them up, see what you can find.

• There is no due process* for holding them accountable to such standards as they do have.  The school board freely admits for example; they are utterly unaccountable to their own Code of Ethics.

*The closest complainants and whistleblowers can get to due process, is to file their complaints in court.  All other adjudications come from administrators with manifest appearances of conflicts of interests and impropriety - subordinate adjudication of complaints against senior administrators and officials, for example.

This really shouldn't and doesn't count as "due process" because the relationship is always one of David suing Goliath and his lawyers and their large bore pipeline to operational dollars.

In the last three years for example, they've spent three quarters of a million dollars in a non-viable defense of a school board member's ego.  They continue to spend to this day, to hide public records revealing their cover up of a cover up of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators.

Complainants have to spend their own money to litigate, while the school board and senior administrators' legal defenses are covered with operational dollars which they can spend without limit and without oversight.

They spend dollars that could, should and would be otherwise spent in classrooms, without shame.  They spend them on legal weaselry; bending the law to their own interests and contrary to its spirit, to escape the consequences of their own incompetence and or corruption.

Walz' balls - AWOL or
cradled in APS palms?

You probably think that's bullshit.

It isn't.  If the Kent Walz and the
Journal had the balls and or the
inclination, their investigation and
report would echo the allegations.

Why else, do you think,
they will neither investigate nor report?

Wouldn't it be at least or even more
newsworthy if they could investigate
and report that school board members and senior administrators are actually, honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence; if only for the few hours a day they serve students and the community?

Stake and interest holders deserve an open and honest examination and review of the standards and accountability that secure the public interests in the public schools.

Assurances by the school board and superintendent; they are honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct, are simply not true.  They are unsupported by their record.  They are unsupported by facts or evidence.

Why else would they not welcome,
before Supt Valentino accepts responsibility,
an;

Independent examination and review of;
ethics, standards and accountability in the APS.

photo Mark Bralley