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

If Ayn Rand is right, the worst is true about the leadership of the APS; they are not actually accountable to any "higher standards"* of conduct at all.

*It turns out, if you search for consensus on the meaning of "higher standards" of conduct, you will find none.  The meaning of higher standards depends on who is claiming to have them.

It is my belief that "higher standards" means higher standards than the law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable among civilized human beings.  In this context, higher standards of conduct means standards of conduct that require candid, forthright and honest answers to legitimate questions about the public interests in the public schools.

The accountability of the leadership of the APS, even to the law, is debatable.

In meetings they hold in secret and of which no recording is made; they spend the operational fund without limit, on litigation and legal weaselry whose purpose is not to serve students or the public interests, but to ensure that corrupt and incompetent senior administrators and school board members can "admit no guilt" in inordinately expensive settlement agreements.

The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education is afraid to face the issue of administrative and executive ethics, standards and accountability because they are inadequate and unenforceable.

Their defense against that allegation is simple.  All they have to do is to identify the clear and unequivocal ethics and standards to which they claim accountability and then prove they are accountable by identifying the due process to which they are subject.

For example; the board could point to their own code of ethics, link, which would lead one to believe that they can be held accountable to ethical standards of conduct.  Except that the truth is, by their own free admission, their code of ethical conduct is utterly unenforceable.

Were their code enforceable, the very first ethic in their code;

Make the education and well-being of students the basis for all decision making, 

would prevent them from spending the operational fund, money that could, should and would be spent in classrooms, on cost-is-no-object legal defenses instead.

If the board and senior administrators actually had higher standards of conduct, and if they were actually accountable to those standards by due process; beyond their undue influence and powerful enough to hold them accountable even against their will, they would point to them.

Why wouldn't they?

Instead, they stonewall; the only defense of an indefensible position.

They fear to face the issue because the worst is true;
the leadership of the Albuquerque Public Schools
is unaccountable to any higher standards of conduct at all,
and they are arguably unaccountable
even to the law.

cc upon posting, with an invitation to respond, 
refute or rebut by means of leaving a comment;
individual board members and the superintendent.