Saturday, April 16, 2016

Are APS school board members accountable as role models?

As a school board member, Analee Maestas is one of the senior-most role models in the entire APS.

As a role model, she must follow one or the other of only two paths;
1. show students what it looks like to do the right thing; or
2. show students what it looks like to accept responsibility for having failed to do the right thing.

If we really want students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what they look like.

Teachers have to show students what character and courage and honor look like; principals have to show teachers, senior administrators have to show principals, the superintendent has to show the senior administrators and,
the school board has to show the superintendent.

If Maestas will not hold herself accountable as a role model,
how can she be expected to participate in the hiring of a superintendent who will?

Are superintendents accountable as role models?
Should they be; should any of them be?

Nobody in the leadership of the APS will admit to honest to God accountability as a role model of student standards of conduct. If that isn’t proof that they aren’t, what is? There is no such thing as inconspicuous role modeling; the concept is oxymoronic.

Are they accountable to the same standards of conduct that they establish and enforce upon students or are they not?  Are the leadership of the APS actually, honestly accountable to any standards of conduct at all?

They are not.

There is an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

The simple proof of the allegation is their inability to prove that there isn't that crisis. If they are honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, they could show you their ethics and standards, and they could show you the mechanism by which they can be held accountable to those standards, even against their will.

They truth is, they aren't really accountable even to the law.
They spend hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on whatever litigation and legal weaselry they need, in order to "admit no guilt" in settlements of complaints made against them.

If Kent Walz and the Albuquerque Journal weren’t in cahoots in the cover up of the scandal, they would investigate and report upon executive and administrative ethics, standards and accountability in the APS.  The would prove that there isn’t that crisis and that they are not covering it up.

That they won't, is prima facie proof that they are.

That the leadership of the APS actually were accountable to meaningful ethics and standards would be newsworthy;
as newsworthy as the fact that they are not.




photos Mark Bralley

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