Tuesday, October 01, 2019

APS leaders are not accountable any “higher standards” of conduct.


Is that acceptable?

What are “higher standards” of conduct?

A higher standard means higher than “the law”. “The law” represents the lowest standards of conduct that are acceptable to civilized human beings; once high notions whittled down by centuries of legal weaselry in the interests of the powerful.

Whatever else “higher standards of conduct than the law” include; they include truth telling; candor, forthrightness and honesty.

Should school board members and senior administrators be accountable to standards of conduct that include truth telling?

They are not now.

APS leaders cannot be compelled to tell the truth under the law because they cannot be held accountable to higher standards of conduct in a court of lower standards; the law.

Consequent to their unbridled spending on cost-is-no-object legal defenses; all the lawyers, litigation, and legal weaselry money can buy; APS school board members and senior administrators are arguably unaccountable even to the law.

The leadership of the APS does claim accountability to higher standards of conduct. The school board for example, has their own code of ethics.

It is, by their own free admission; utterly unenforceable. The NM School Boards Assoc. also has a code of ethics to which they claim accountability; likewise; utterly unenforceable.

Voters are at a fork in the road. They will be encouraged to disregard the lack of accountability in the leadership of the APS and to consider instead; (only) the interests of students.

Or, voters can finally insist upon honest to God accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence in the leadership of the APS.

The leadership of the APS must come to understand that they have no choice but to;
Point to their high enough standards of conduct and competence, and then prove their accountability to those standards by due process,
or be denied the passage of a single bond issue or mill levy until they do.

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