The leadership of the APS is not transparent.

It follows then that, they are accountable for neither their conduct nor their competence within their public service.

The leadership of the APS claims to be transparent.

If contradicted, they will point to their “award winning” website and their communications dept.

The truth about transparency is that it isn’t about the information politicians and public servants are willing to share. It isn’t about the number of public records that they willing to produce.

Transparency has everything to do with the records they produce, and are records that they would really rather hide.

For example; the leadership of the APS, their lawyers, and the private investigators the lawyers hired in order that evidence of criminal misconduct can they gather can remain hidden from public knowledge, are in possession of public records that prove that there was felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators.

And that that criminal activity was covered up by the leadership of the APS, their publicly funded private police force, their lawyers and an unlimited budget to underwrite cost-is-no-object “legal” defenses; all the litigation and legal weaselry they needed to avoid accountability.

Needless to say, those are among public records that the board would really rather hide.

And have hidden. And have spent perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars beating back public records requests for their production.

One more example; an easily tested allegation.

Imagine you are a parent wanting to buy a house in a neighborhood feeding “safe” schools. You don’t want to send your child to a school where there are a lot of bullies, a lot of larceny, a lot of chronically disruptive students, a lot of fist fights and other violence.

The data on those signs of trouble represent information that the leadership of the APS wants to hide.

Now the transparency test.  Have they resisted their interest in hiding the data?  Have they published it anyway?

Go to APS’ award winning website; try to find that data at any APS school. Even at APS’ least safe school; no matter how dangerous that school might be. Try to find any data that reflects badly on the leadership of the APS. It’s not there. (I haven’t read their entire website word for word. I will bow of course, to controverting fact.)

Try to get that information from APS’ $121K a year Executive Director of Communications.

If you have a lot of time and money to burn, try to get it from their lawyers.

The leadership of the APS is not transparent.

Ergo, there cannot be transparent accountability and,
consequently; there is no real honest to God accountability at all.

There is not accountability to any higher standards of conduct and arguably, there is not even accountability to the law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings.