APS Superintendent Search Community Meeting number one

After opening remarks, participants were asked a number of questions about what they thought was important in the next superintendent.  Careful notes were taken and the characteristics were listed on flip charts.  The same for problems facing the next superintendent.

Participants were given sticky dots to stick next to the problems that they thought were most important.

Dots were counted and a handful of problems emerged as crowd favorites.  Likely they will vary from meeting to meeting.  There will be 11 more meetings including one each for employees and business and government officials.

That the board will then connect the dots and hire a superintendent accordingly seems unlikely.

Frankly, they have bigger fish to fry.

They need a superintendent who will help them keep the lid on the ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

They need a superintendent who can slip in without having to comment on his or her service as a role model and their honest to God accountability to the same standards of conduct as they will enforce upon students.

It tried to gather some support for role modeling and honest to God accountability to meaningful standards of conduct, but the only dots I gathered were my own.

I managed at least to get them written down and that much harder to complete this whole process without the issue coming up.

School Board President David Peercy was there.  The meeting was being held in his school board district.   Every time I noticed him, he was on his phone.  School Board Members Barbara Peterson and Elizabeth Armijo attended as well.

I pointed out to the crowd and on the record, that Peercy is alone responsible for keeping the role modeling clause and the 1994 School Board Resolution on Character Counts! off the table and out of open and honest public discussion, for as long as he has been on the board.

Can't guarantee that he was paying any attention.
Like I said, he was getting a lot done on his phone.