APS; "... (the defendants) have hired an army of lawyers."

A development like that might come as a surprise to some.
It will not come as any surprise at all to anyone who has filed a complaint against a senior APS administrator or school board member.

The Journal comes this morning, link, with a report including perhaps the most telling eight words the Journal has ever printed about the leadership of the APS;

"... (the defendants) have hired an army of lawyers."

I'm sure it must have been an accident.  I posted this comment;

There is an expression about keeping one's eye on the ball. The Journal has (unwittingly) dropped "the ball" into a front page story;

"(APS) ... (the defendants) have hired an army of lawyers".

Full disclosure; those are not the Journal's words and I had to take them out of context to cut and paste them. Nevertheless, the Journal has mentioned APS "legal" defense tactics; one of which is to hire "armies of lawyers" to provide "cost is no object" legal defenses underwritten by "operational" funds. Operational dollars are dollars that would actually be spent in classrooms, were they not being squandered in courtrooms.

The ball; the underlying issue; the fundamental failure is that politicians and public servants, in this case school board members and superintendents without any real oversight. "Subordinate oversight" is not oversight; it is an oxymoron.

They and the law "allow" (as opposed to "require") them to spend unlimited amounts of operational dollars on their own defenses. They discuss and approve it all in meetings they hold in secret and relentlessly refuse to record.

They spend, if they want, on litigation and legal weaselry against the public interests. They spend in violation of the first ethic in their code of ethics;to spend ... in the best interests of students" Their code of ethics is of course, utterly unenforceable, by their own deliberate choice.

They spend until they have spent enough to make their problem go away, or at least until they have spent enough to but "admissions of no guilt"; the opportunity to take their name and guilt out of the settlement. Even for those who are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. All it takes is power. Power and or unlimited access to money that can be spent in secret from the people whose money it was.

This will be the last time the Journal drops the ball.

Not only will they never again mention the "army of lawyers" serving not justice, but rather and instead, the personal interests of school board members and superintendents, they will never investigate and report upon the millions of operational dollars the "leadership" of the APS spends every year to escape the legal consequences of their individual and collective incompetence and corruption.

It isn't newsworthy, apparently, not even in the face of a bond issue election worth millions more dollars.

Somewhere in the Journal, if you go looking for it, you will find them wondering why people don't vote in school board elections. You will not find "the ball" mentioned anywhere, nor will you find any investigation and report on ethics, standards and accountability in the leadership of the APS - good or bad.

Do APS students get manhandled?

There is in the news, a story about a student being manhandled by a police officer.

It would be a shame if the outrage felt when watching the video of the arrest, ends the interest in a case in point and more importantly; the circumstances that routinely create levels of frustration that manifest themselves in "out of control behavior".

Whether it is by self control or other control,
behavior is either under control or out of control.

One person's out of control does not justify out of control behavior in another person.  Just because the student was out of control, the police officer's out of control remains unjustified.  Understandable maybe, but unjustified.

A student's out of control behavior is causal.
A student's out of control behavior determines, at least in part, the outcome of the inevitable confrontation with whomever is trying to exercise the authority they have been given to maintain order in their classrooms and schools.

The police officer's out of control is not the issue.
The issue is the circumstances that led to the confrontation.
The student's behavior was out of the control of those (adults) with the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.  The situation spun out of control because the people in authority hadn't the power to influence or direct the students behavior or the course of events.
 
The circumstances are; teachers have "authority" over students,
but not the power to enforce that authority.

Having authority and being in charge are not the same.
Teachers have the authority to ban cell phone use during class; they haven't the power to make students obey the rule.  Students are out of control.

Not all of them and not all of the time, but most of them
some of the time and, some of them most of the time.

In every school, in every class room, there are students who deliberately break rules. For whatever reasons within or beyond their own control, there are out of control students in classrooms and schools and breaking rules.

Inevitably then, there will come a confrontation;
the teacher tells an out of control student to put their phone away and
the out of control student's response means "no".

1.   "Put your phone away." the teacher says.

2.  "No." the student responds.

At moment, class is disrupted.

Other students will stop doing what they're supposed to be doing and start attending to their friend's confrontation with the fun spoiler.  A few will climb on desks or tables to get a better cell phone camera shot to post on Facebook or maybe, national news. Up to that point only the teacher's and student's time was being wasted; now the entire class has stopped doing what they were supposed to be doing and are instead, attending to the confrontation.  Learning has ground to a halt.

Whatever else, it is a shame that teachers and police officers find themselves in circumstances where, despite their legitimate and manifest authority, they have no power to influence behavior (apparently) except by roughly dragging or pushing out of control students.

Out of control students are not a teacher's responsibility.
They are an administrative responsibility.

Teachers should be busy teaching and not with dealing with (chronically) disruptive students.

Sure, children disrupt spontaneously on occasion as a manifestation of their human nature.  Those disruptions should be handled by the adult in the room.  But when the response means no; when the disobedience is deliberate, when the authority has been rejected, the responsibility moves out of the classroom and into the principal's office.  There to receive appropriate interventions including, at least in my opinion, punishment.

Such is not the situation in the APS.  The administrative and executive response to chronically disobedient students is to put them right back in the classroom*.

*This is a story the Journal could investigate and report upon.  They won't of course, because the handling of chronically disruptive students is an example of administrative and executive incompetence, and the Journal, as matter of course, stays away from senior administrative and executive incompetence and corruption investigations

How does APS deal with chronically disruptive students?


You have to pay some attention to the fact that nobody, and I mean nobody, is even suggesting that student discipline and behavior is APS classrooms and schools is improving.  They will continue to let the assumption remain that things are under control and to the extent things are out of control, it is the failure of the adults in the classroom. The onus to create and maintain discipline is upon teachers from whom, they have stripped the power necessary to enforce what little authority they have.

It makes a difference, from an educational standpoint,
who is "in charge" in the classroom.  The person "in charge" in any situation, is not the person who establishes the expectation; it is the person who decides to not meet that expectation.

To the extent that students are in charge in classrooms and schools, the educational effectiveness and efficiency of those classrooms and school ill be diminished.

Test results correlate (logically) with the out of control in students individually and collectively, (however it is you want to collect them).


There are students whose record is of chronic disruption of classes by and because of their out of control behavior.  The record is of the failure of the leadership of the APS to prevent even chronic disruptions.

It follows then that there will be confrontations between teachers and students and that some of those confrontations will escalate to the point where the weaker of the two gets manhandled.

So do APS students (and adults) get manhandled?

My money is on yes; there are students in the APS who get manhandled by adults.  And there will continue to be for as long as adults have authority over students, but not power and control.

APS' cover up of the Moya accident; whose bright idea was it?

If KOB TV reporter Caleb James' report, link, is accurate, a senior APS administrator was involved in a chargeable traffic accident in a company car.  Unclear at this point; whether the accident happened on company time because James/KOB did not post the police report they flashed on.  At this point, if you want to see the report yourself, you'll have to go down town and buy your own copy.

James/KOB did not report the time of day of the accident, so it's still unclear whether the administrator was on company time, at the time.

In the days and years following the accident, someone somewhere in the leadership of the APS made a decision regarding the accident and all of the subsequent legal machinations; whether to inform stake and interest holders.

The last fist that pounded the table belonged to someone who decided to keep it all secret.

If James were to try to find out who decided how to handle the incident from a public relations standpoint; who decided that the word would be "mum", he, or any other reporter, would find no one willing to defend, deny or even acknowledge that the decision had been made.  After enough time for a phone call or two from the top of the twins to the news director/station owner, the reporter would receive would be a a memo from the news director; "find something else to report on".

The person who made that decision casts a big shadow in the public relations world.

I would suppose that the decision was made at the most senior level of APS' million dollar a year PR effort.

The senior-most administrator, although she would rather be called "an APS spokeswoman", gets paid (a lot) to be the APS Executive Director of Communications.  She is Monica Armenta.

Armenta, after noticing that
her photo was being taken by
by photo/journ Mark Bralley,
put on a show with Maes.

Armenta, and former APS School Board heavy hitter, current NM Broadcasters Assoc President Paula Maes, have enough influence over the NMBA affiliates, that they don't let their reporters dig around in APS administrative and executive incompetence and corruption.

Everyone of them knows that the leadership of the APS is covering up a cover up of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of their publicly funded private police force.  The Journal exposed it, link, and then let them get away with covering it up.  To this day, none of them will report that the board is spending operational dollars on litigation and legal weaselry to keep public records of investigative findings secret from public knowledge.




photo Mark Bralley

Did APS cover up Moya's auto accident?

KOB TV comes tonight, link, with a report on an automobile accident involving former APS CFO Don Moya.

I would argue that APS covered up the accident.  They were none of; candid, forthright nor honest with stake and interest holders in reporting the loss to them.

They might have an alternate take.  Likely it will be based on the fact that hiding the truth was "legal".

The APS board will meet in secret Friday morning next, link, to decide what they are going to do about the whistle blower complaint, link, Moya has filed against them.

Donald Moya, Plaintiff, v. the Board of Education of the Albuquerque Public Schools, Luis Valentino, in his official capacity as Superintendent of the Albuquerque Public Schools, and Hanna Skandera, in her individual capacity, Defendants - Number D-101-CV-2015-1940 (Discussion Action)

photo Mark Bralley

Valentino, and the board, are ready to "move on".

"Time to move on" is APS speak for "never mind the corruption and or incompetence you just witnessed, we're going to do better".

Except that they won't. There will be future incompetence and corruption because when they "move on", it is always before anyone is held actually, honestly accountable for what they just did or didn't do; the quality of their public service.

Even when they break the law, they are not accountable. They spend millions of dollars on litigation and legal weaselry in exchange for "admissions of no guilt" even when they are guilty beyond any reasonable doubt.

Nothing will change because nothing has changed. The Journal is still printing drivel, link;

"“In the end I wish APS well,” (Valentino) wrote in conclusion."

and refusing to investigate and report upon (the) ethics, standards and accountability (crisis) in the leadership of the APS.

Why are the ethics and standards that govern public service in the public schools, and the actual, honest to God accountability to them not newsworthy in anticipation of a bond issue election worth millions of dollars?

The APS Board of Education has a Code of Ethics, to which they are utterly unaccountable.

The Journal could ask them to explain, why not?
They won't.

They could ask them to explain why nearly three quarters of a millions dollars have been squandered in federal court defense of a board member and public relations hacks' egos.

They won't.
Why not?

Squeaky clean Arnold-Jones perfect for Secretary of State.

Blogger Monahan came this morning with news that former NM State Representative Janice Arnold-Jones' name is in the mix to replace former NM SOS Dianna Duran.

When  Janice Arnold-Jones was running for governor, I wrote of her character, courage, competence, and grace, link; none of which has diminished in the interim, in the least.

There is no one more able to restore voters' confidence in the Secretary of State's Office than the highly qualified and squeaky clean Janice Arnold-Jones.


photo Mark Bralley

Abq Journal; having no defense, stays in hiding over APS crisis

Undisputed facts;

1. The APS Board of Education has a Code of Ethics, and 

2. that code is completely unenforceable.

These facts have been known to the Journal for some time.

The “Journal” made a deliberate decision nearly a decade ago, to not investigate and report upon those facts; to not inform the democracy.

In the face of a bond issue worth who knows how many millions dollars, let us not pretend that those facts are not "newsworthy" by any reasonable definition.

Why will they go unreported  in, and un-examined by the Journal?

Yet to be disputed allegation;

The “Journal” has not and will not investigate and report upon self-evident proof of an historical and ongoing ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS because

1. The “Journal” lacks the courage to report on the crisis, and or, 

2. The “Journal” lacks the character to investigate and report upon the crisis.

No third reason has been suggested; no denial, no defense, not even acknowledgement of their refusal.  I can think of a number of reasons why I, if I were them, might want to respond to allegations that their refusal to investigate and report upon the ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS stems from their own lack of character and or courage.

If the “Journal” can think of even one reason of their own to mount any defense of their character and courage, a ready and complete defense could not be easier to provide; all they have to do is point to just one alternate explanation for their refusal.

Because that alternate explanation does not exist, they will resort instead to the only defense of indefensible positions; it must be hidden. They will continue to hide their position; their cowardice and their corruption.

Why does the APS School Board have a code of ethics?

At some point, the APS board of education invested a lot of their time and our money in the creation of a code of ethics.

Considering the public resources they invested in writing it, and considering the implications of codes of ethics in general, it is fair to ask, why?  Why do they have have a code of ethics?

Codes of ethics in general serve one of two purposes;

1. they provide higher standards of conduct to which adopters are then held accountable, or
2. they are written and published to create the appearance of accountability to higher standards of conduct.

The APS School Board is, by their own free admission, utterly unaccountable to their own code of ethics.  There is no venue anywhere, where a complaint can filed and where that complaint is guaranteed due process.

The ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS remains secret from stake and interest holders because Journal Editor in Chief Kent Walz*  too, is utterly unaccountable to any code of ethics.  To the contrary, he is actually being celebrated for his lifetime achievements; incredibly including his part in covering up the ethics, standards and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

*He and his counterparts at former school board heavy hitter Paula Maes' NM Broadcasters Assoc affiliate stations KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV,

Mum's the word, again.

A forensic audit is underway, of APS' handling of some of the more than a billion tax dollars over which they are stewards.

Forensic;

applying scientific methods and techniques
to the investigation of crime

The audit is of self-evident interest to APS' stake and interest holders as "the crime(s)" in question, would involve dollars they have entrusted to the leadership of the APS in order to help educate their children.

It isn't so much that the word is mum for now; there are good and ethical reasons for at least temporary secrecy.  The findings will not be temporarily secret; they will remain secret forever*.

*The audit and its findings are being done under conditions that will enable the school board to keep the findings secret for as long as it suits their interests.  They have unlimited resources which they can spend without any real oversight*, on litigation and legal weaselry to effect that outcome.  *Subordinate oversight is not oversight; it is an oxymoron.

Anyone who doesn't believe that, simply needs to examine the circumstances that have allowed former APS school board enforcer Marty Esquivel to continue to spend nearly $750K in an ongoing and non-viable defense of his ego; even though he is no longer on the board.

He is still good enough friends with Journal Editor in Chief Kent Walz, that the Journal won't investigate and report upon his squandering of public trust and treasure.  

Nor will Walz and the Journal investigate and report upon the ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS that is the basis for all of these problems, and which Esquivel and the board need so desperately to hide. 




photos Mark Bralley

APS needs complete physical; Journal editors will settle for a proctoscopy

In the Journal this morning, the editors point to a need to audit APS' financial division.  While there are more than enough reasons for such an audit, there are as many reasons to examine and review standards and accountability in every department.

The district wide lack of ethics, standards and accountability is a fundamental problem in APS and auditing one department is a woefully inadequate response that will only enable more incompetence and more corruption.

As but one example; the manifestly necessary audit is of APS' abuse of the operational fund to underwrite "cost is no object" legal defenses of school board members and senior administrators and the subsequent purchase of "admissions of no guilt" despite their guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.

Journal editors; "And that is something taxpayers should be blowing the whistle on."

In the Journal this morning, link, the editors come with decades late umbrage over the fact that APS administrators are kept in positions of responsibility and authority despite their irresponsibility; that the district wrongly protects them from the consequences of their incompetence and or corruption.

The editors feign outrage upon learning that though there is a legitimate need to not comment on incidents until the facts are known,
"As is often the case at APS, mum’s the word."
for far beyond what can be ethically justified.  They hide the truth for as long as they can, even by means of expensive legal weaselry and litigation against the public interests.

The wheat buried in the editorial chaff is this; because the leadership of the APS

• "... retaliates against employees who try to report unacceptable conduct ..." 

• "... students and staff at multiple schools can now deal with drama that simply should not have been allowed to drag on."

The editors wonder in print;

• if  the allegations are true and 

• if APS considers a principal showing up drunk to be inappropriate.

Instead of sending reporters to investigate and report on an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS, the editors have decided;

"... that is something taxpayers should be blowing the whistle on." 

on their own.

Thanks editors; for doing your part in informing the democracy.

APS battling new retaliation claim but that's only the tip of the ice berg.

The NM Political Report's Joey Peters comes with a report, link, on a complaint filed in State District Court against APS.

Nothing new; allegations of retaliation against someone who filed complaints against a principal.  Although it is astonishing that the problem got as bad as it did without being addressed until the union started making waves.

Peters' investigation and report on the "fear of retaliation" aspect of his report was limited to Hoover Middle School. 

Had he, or if he, broadened his investigation, he would find that the fear of retaliation is district wide.. The board and senior administration have known or should have known about it for years and they have done nothing substantive to allay the fear.  They established a waste, fraud and abuse whistleblower hot line, but it has from it's inception been waste, fraud and abuse of its own, link.

APS' next Superintendent; one like RRPS' Supt. Sue Cleveland?

RRPS photo

KOB TV has run an interview with
Rio Rancho Public Schools Supt.
Sue Cleveland, link.

Cleveland, link, has been the Supt.
since the district was formed in 1994.

APS could do worse.

In fact they have done worse; a whole
lot worse, and over and over and over.

Perhaps, now that they're back from their California junket,  they could spend some time getting know Sue Cleveland and what a really good superintendent looks like.

Journal editors shake APS' (money) tree

In the Journal this morning, an editorial, link, decrying spending by the APS school board.  The Journal editors asked on behalf of stake and interest holders;

what they are paying for and why?

concluding that it looks like they're paying for a lot of nothing, or a lot of nothing more.

Real "news" found it's way into the editorial.

Reported no where else in the Journal;

"... acting Superintendent Raquel Reedy has no public comment on the something-for-nothing Moya controversy, board president Don Duran (who as an elected official supposedly represents the public) no longer answers requests for comment but occasionally reads a prepared statement.

They complain about APS spokesman Rigo Chavez, "... who has mastered the art of answering questions while saying absolutely nothing ..." and fail to point out that Chavez is only following orders.

The interest in answering questions while saying nothing belongs to school board members and senior administrators.

APS photo

The editors complain that Supt. Rachel Reedy is being less than candid, forthright and honest with stake and interest holders, why is no one of them assigning a reporter to investigate and report on why?

The editors have the power and resources to follow their feeling and insist on good faith responses to legitimate questions about the public interests in the public schools, but do not. 

As brave as they are able;

... it would be interesting to hear what anyone in a leadership position has to say about the district’s largesse ...

I blame the Journal's Editor in Chief Kent Walz.

He and they write;
To deserve that vote of fiscal confidence, district leaders need to first be accountable for their personnel expenses.

To deserve reader confidence,
Walz et al need to establish their own accountability by investigating and reporting on the real problems in the leadership of the APS.

They need to stop covering for their friends.

He and they have allowed their personal allegiances to board members to trump their obligations to stake and interest holders and informing the democracy.




photos Mark Bralley

The cure for voter indifference is transparent accountability.

For whatever individual and collective reasons voters did not vote Tuesday and may never again, the net result is that decision making is now in the hands of fewer proportionally more powerful politicians and public servants.

It is too late I'm afraid, to expect to fix the system by means of the system.  We can't elect anybody and reasonably expect that they will be able to change anything. 

People cannot be elected who will restore control to the people, over the spending of their power and their resources.  It's just not the way that usurpation of power works; usurped power is never simply just "given" back.

In the struggle over the truth Politicians and public servants have as their champions,

an eloquence of lawyers happy to litigate in the interests of politicians and public servants even against the public interests.

The people have as their champions

a relatively small handful of people who vote, attend meetings, ask questions, and in general dig for the truth and accompanied by an even smaller handful of real "press".

The champions face to face are grossly unmatched;

Entire law firms underwritten by nearly limitless spending against the public interests, often in secret and without real oversight, on litigation and legal weaselry in order to escape the consequences of their incompetence and corruption,

v.

a few dozen people, most of whom have neither the resources not the inclination to engage in years long legal battles over public records and access to meetings.

... David versus Goliath if ever there were.

Goliath has to support him, current law based on a fundamental misassumption;

the truth belongs to the politicians and public servants who possess it; 

and because possession is 9/10ths of the law, it will remain in their possession unless and until it is pried loose court.

The truth is; the assumption should be;

the truth belongs to the people 

and will be made available to them in a timely manner. 
The onus rightly should fall on politicians and public servants to prove that they have a legitimate need to secret it.

Public records and meeting access should never be in the sole possession of powerful people who might have selfish reasons to hide or deny them.  There is the appearance of conflicting interests. 

It would be mindbogglingly naive to think that the legislators are going to go to Santa Fe in January to write and pass legislation that will see them as actually, honestly and transparently accountable to the people, as the law will allow.

Perhaps it is equally naive to believe that a bill could be written, that would make state government as transparently accountable to the people as it will ever be,  And further that that bill could be carried to Santa Fe in person by enough people to see it passed as the second order of business.

But, unless anyone has a better idea,
what have we got to lose?

The Journal got around to this, this morning;

APS CFO Don Moya

a re-hash, link, of a story you might have read nearly two months ago, link, about the operational dollars being wasted while another APS senior administrator remains on administrative leave under suspicious circumstances; (Michael Vigil, Gil Lovato, Steve Tellez, and who know how many others.)

I posted a comment on their report for their and their readers consideration.

The one thing you can count on is that we will never know the truth about the squandering of our trust and treasure. There will never be a candid, forthright and honest accounting of the misspending of our power and resources.

There's only one reason to hide the truth; to escape the consequences of the truth being known. The "leadership" of the APS will continue to hide the truth in their own self interests.

The Journal will continue to refuse to investigate and report upon the underlying and causal ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS, for reasons yet to be articulated.

The Journal's immediate problem, in the face of APS trying to float a bond issue in a couple of months, it's newsworthy as hell either way.

Either there are in place, ethics and standards high enough, and accountability inescapable enough to protect the public interests in the public schools, or there are not.

Stake and interest holders deserve the truth; the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the spending of power and resources belonging fundamentally to the people.

The Journal is yet to honor its obligation to inform the democracy in anticipation of that election.




photo Mark Bralley

Despite panning; APS board sailing off to Long Beach

If nothing else the Albuquerque Public School Board of Education is resilient.

Days after a major ass-handing in a Journal survey, link, and a month after their superintendent's debacle, the board has decided to cancel their next regular board meeting and public forum.  Instead, link, they will be attending a Council of the Great City Schools Conference, link, in Long Beach California.



They are somewhat obliged to attend.  Because they sponsored a similar conference, link, and expected other bigwigs to attend their gala; they now are obliged to be the bigwigs in attendance at theirs.

The way it apparently works is;

if a superintendent and school board somewhere can put on a conference for the CoGCS, the supt. gets to be the CoGCS "Chair" for a year.  Former APS Supt. Winston Brooks was "elected" the same year he and APS public relations staged their fall conference.

It looks great on everybody's resumes, but is otherwise just another junket, link.

You know it's a junket because when they get back,

1. they can never tell you what they learned there, and that
2. they should not have known already.

When it comes to public school education,
there is no magic and there are no magicians.

If there were, we would know about them and instead of the board traipsing off to Long Beach in search of their illumination, they could simply be brought here to teach everybody.

The Journal survey on the APS BOE

The survey, link, that the Journal conducted and reported upon this morning was not a scientific survey.

Nevertheless, if you will concede that

the 532 of 1,016 uncompensated reader volunteers providing feedback for the Journal and the Albuquerque Publishing Co. on content ranging from advertising to editorial questions

are representative of the community on this issue, then the results are valid enough that attention should be paid.

There is no reason to suppose those who participated in the survey are too unusual.  The fact that only half of those who could, did complete the survey, tends to indicate that they're not that much different from the rest of us.

The unscientific survey begs a question;

Why won't the people with the resources to conduct scientifically valid surveys, conduct scientifically valid surveys?

The answer is that scientific data can be used to hold people actually accountable for their conduct and competence.  They avoid real data like the plague - the results of scientifically unsound surveys can be spun more easily.

If anyone were to conduct a scientifically valid survey of stake and interest holders regarding their confidence in the board, the findings would reveal slightly less outrage, disappointment and disillusion with the leadership of the APS than the Journal survey; but still a number large enough to consider.

It is a shame that stake and interest holders have no other way to express their outrage, disappointment and disillusion than maybe being surveyed, unscientifically, someday.

..............................................................

There is no legitimate agenda for the APS that does not move forward on the day;

an independent examination and review of the ethics, standards and accountability that apply to school board members and superintendents, begins.

There is a cause around which concerned stake and interest holders can rally.

an ethics, standards and accountability audit of the entire leadership of the APS.

There is a time and day;

the next regular school board meeting, link, 5pm, October 21st.

There is a place where they can gather;

the John Milne Community Board Room, 
Alice and Bruce King Educational Complex,
6400 Uptown Blvd. NE

Those who wait endlessly for the perfect time to act,
find only an excuse to not act, ever.

The right time to do the right thing is always right now. unk 

If not you, then who?  If not now, then when? unk 

Those who represent support for a government  
of the people, by the people and for the people,  
can ask for no more for their righteous demands, 
than a time, a day and a place to express and defend them.  

But now they've got to do actually do something.