Journal editors; Oh, wow! There's an elephant in the room!

Journal editors have as close as they will likely ever come, to acknowledging the elephant in the APS board room;

• the leadership of the APS expects voters to trust them with another half a billion dollars, and

• voters don't really trust them at all.

There are two questions voters must ask themselves before voting for or against in the February 2nd Bond Issue and Mill Levy elections.

1. Is the spending justifiable? - are the right amounts being spent on the right things, and
2. Do they trust the board and their superintendent's stewardship over their trust and their treasure?

Stewardship; the careful and responsible management
of something entrusted to one's care.

The answer to the first question is subject to debate; though there will never be that debate.

The answer to the second question is a resounding no.

This isn't the first time that voters have had to balance their distrust of the leadership of the APS against their desire to provide state of the art facilities for the nearly 90,000 of this community's sons and daughters who are students in the APS.

With rare exceptions, voters have held their noses and entrusted their power and resources to people who never seem to get any better at what they do.  They have hoped that if they just give the drunk one more drink, s/he might stop drinking.

If you research APS bond issues, you find the same thing over and over and over;

• the need to appropriate money in support of education and

• the to the bone lack of trust in the competence and character of the people though whose hands, their money will pass.

Here is an example, a post by Mario Burgos entitled; Dilemma Facing APS Voters, link.  Please accept my assurance that it is representative.

The editors have finally acknowledged the elephant in the room, link.  At last, an inkling of candor, forthrightness and honesty with voter stake and interest holders.

Talk about betwixt a rock and hard place;

• on the one hand denying our children resources they can use, and 

• on the other, entrusting our money to people we really don't trust at all.

There is a third option;

Voters (and other stake and interest holders) can demand an immediate examination and review of the ethics, standards and accountability in place for the leadership of the APS; school board members and senior administrators.  They can demand that the findings be surrendered to public knowledge.

With the truth made public, we can demand the reforms that will justify re-instilling trust in their stewardship over our power and our resources.

If you agree; if you think an examination and review of
the standards and accountability that protect your interests
in the public schools, is long over due, make some noise.

Make some noise.

In thirty days, it will be a day too late to do anything at all.