APS has no plan to address stewardship failure except to try harder

I participated in the press conference at Albuquerque High School yesterday morning.

APS' Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta was there to orchestrate the event.

My first impression of the relationship between Armenta, the leadership of the APS, and the various media outlets who were invited, was exceedingly cordial.

One might argue excessively cordial.

At some point all the fawning over each other appears tawdry and unprofessional; blurring boundaries and creating appearances of conflicts of interest and impropriety.

The softball questions the "media" (were allowed to) ask,
are in the record and cement the perception.

All of them were paying attention when I asked (acting) Supt. Raquel Reedy;

Is there a plan to specifically address the issue of their 

"stewardship" during their spending of the $575M?

It's fair to say; the import of her answer was, no.

No, there is no specific plan* to address their stewardship challenges.  *Proof to the contrary is as simple as the articulation and presentation of their plan.

Her answer is less than satisfying.

Their plan apparently, is to be good stewards from now on and hope to have a record of better stewardship to carry into the next elections.

Nothing wrong with being better stewards from now on,
but that really doesn't get to the "stewardship" issue.

Stewardship in this context means, actual accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence within their public service.  Great stewardship means, honest to God accountability to the highest standards of conduct and competence.

Ayn Rand expressed it as well as any;

To fear to face an issue is to believe the worst is true.

The leadership of the APS expects to skirt the issue of the ethics, standards and accountability crisis, without ever admitting there is one.  It is their tried and true modus operandi;

• hide the problem, while they figure out how to
• fix it without being held accountable for creating or enabling it.

There will never be a time, a day and a place were they will hold up their (written) ethics and standards, and then report candidly, forthrightly and honestly on their (lack of) actual accountability to them*.

*For example; the APS school board has a code of ethics.
By their own By their own free admission, and by their
deliberate decision, the code is utterly unenforceable.

As for accountability to the law; the standards of conduct
that all "higher standards" are higher than, anyone who
thinks that the leadership of the APS are actually 
accountable to the law has only to look at the amount of 
money they have squandered on cost-is-no-object legal 
defenses in pursuit of admissions of "no guilt" in heinously expensive settlement agreements.

Kent Walz/Journal,

Iain Munro/KRQE,

Michelle Donaldson/KOB,

Mary Lynn Roper/KOAT,

and Pat Frisch/KKOB



all know, or remain willfully ignorant of the findings of independent auditors who have found the trifecta of public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS;

1. inadequate standards, and
2. inadequate accountability, and
3. inadequate record keeping

They all know, or remain willfully ignorant of the ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

They are at best, complacent about the crisis.
They are at worst; complicit in its cover up.

Anyone of them could remove their names from my list anytime.  They have several means;

• supply for my use instead, the name of any person more responsible than they, for the refusal to investigate and report upon credible testimony and evidence of the ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

• suggest any good and ethical reason whatsoever, to not investigate and report upon the crisis, candidly, forthrightly and honestly.

• provide any evidence or testimony that would create even one iota of doubt about the validity of the allegation of an ethics, standards and accountability crisis. 

To date, not one of them has.  They are all still in the pretending "I can't hear you" phase of the our process.  They are hoping that their cabal will succeed in keeping truth from stake and interest holders forever.

"Hoping" is the wrong word; they are depending upon keeping the cover up and their part in it, secret, else their reputations be destroyed.

They could just throw their APS friends under the bus.
They could just investigate and report upon the ethics,
standards and accountability that characterizes the
leadership of the board and their superintendents.

They won't.  They won't because they can't expose the scandal without someone asking;

• why didn't you expose it when first you learned about it a decade ago?

• why didn't you report on the cover up of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of their publicly funded private private police force?

• why didn't you report on the squandering of operational funds on litigation and legal weaselry in an ongoing effort to keep the public records of findings in investigations of the felony criminal misconduct, hidden from public knowledge.  The findings that name the names of APS senior administrators who were involved in felony criminal misconduct and whose names were never turned over to the District Attorney's Office for prosecution.

• why didn't you report on the denial of due process to hundreds of whistleblower complaints against administrators and school board members?

• why didn't you report on the squandering of millions and millions of operational dollars on cost-is-no-object legal defenses in search of admissions of no guilt?

Walz, Munro, Donaldson, Roper and Frisch are betwixt a rock and a hard place.

Know that they are in that position as the proximate result of their own deliberate decisions.

They deserve no sympathy and certainly no pardon for their individual and combined failure to inform the democracy in critical times.




photos Mark Bralley
save Munro and Donaldson /their website