Saturday, March 31, 2018

APS School Board; if not cowardice, if not corruption, then what is it, exactly?

A couple of decades ago, the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education passed a unanimous resolution adopting "higher standards" of conduct for students and for their adult role models.

Since, they have changed their collective mind;

  • students are still expected to "model and promote" honest accountability to a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.  
  • while
  • school board members and senior administrators are now expected only to "... maintain the highest standards of conduct and act in a mature and responsible manner at all times."
Peercy has kept the
resolution off the table
for more than a decade;
cowardice, corruption, or
what, exactly?
Though School Board President David Peercy claims accountability to the "highest standards" of conduct, he is not; not by a long shot.

Never mind that he cannot point to any honest to God due processes by which he can be held accountable to any higher standards of conduct; he cannot even point with any specificity to these supposed "highest standards" themselves.  Where are they codified, where are they even written down?

Peercy is demonstrably unaccountable even to the law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings.  Honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence are no match for APS' eloquence of lawyers, law firms, litigation and legal weaselry underwritten by their unlimited access to the operational fund; millions of dollars a year.

The Operational Fund is money that should, could and would be spent in classrooms were they not being squandered in courtrooms securing admissions of no guilt in exorbitantly expense legal settlements.

There are those who believe that trying to enforce a decades old school board resolution, is fool's errand.  Perhaps, perhaps not. But that's not the point.

The point is that board members will not reconsider their motion.  They will not put it on the table for open and honest public discussion.  Though their clear "ethical" obligation is to reconsider their resolution; either reaffirm, amend or rescind it; in public and on the record, that is clearly not their intention.

Instead, the school board will pretend it doesn't exist.
David Peercy has ordered them to pretend it doesn't exist.


No debt is too old for an honest man to pay. unk

A question is begged; for how long then, is  the school board's promise "good"? for a month? a year? ten years? Or do this school board's promises expire the moment they are made?

If the reason to not revisit the resolution does not flow from their cowardice; they are afraid to accept the consequences that a re-visitation would provoke; if the reason does not flow from their corruption; they don't want to be held honestly accountable as the senior most role models of the same standards of conduct they establish and enforce upon students; then from where does their resistance flow?

The question isn't rhetorical.

Cowardice, corruption or what, exactly?




photo Mark Bralley

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