Public corruption in the APS; the media cover up

The public corruption;

the leadership of the APS is spending the Operational Fund without restraint, to subsidize cost-is-no-object legal defenses for school board members and senior administrators.

The operational fund dollars are taxpayer dollars that should, could and would be spent in classrooms were it and the public trust not being squandered on litigation and legal weaselry.

The spending decisions are made in meetings in secret, of which no recordings are permitted, and without oversight*. *Subordinate oversight is not oversight; it is an oxymoron.

It is all part of an ethics, standards, accountability and role modeling scandal in the leadership of the APS.

A scandal the Journal is covering up.

Were the leadership of the APS honestly accountable to the law, much less to higher standards of conduct than the law, the Journal would report it. Why would they not?

In the face of so many school board, bond issue, mill levy elections and superintendent searches, they would be remiss to not report that to stake and interest holders, to taxpayers and to voters.

Were the leadership of the APS honestly accountable to any standards of conduct at all, they could point to those standards and then point to the due processes by which they can be held accountable to them.

Ayn Rand argued that refusing to face an issue suggests that the worst is true.

The worst is true.

And that is why neither the leadership of the APS nor of the Journal will engage in an open and honest defense of their conduct or the relentless refusal to investigate and report upon it.

Paula Maes a former APS school board heavy hitter, whose family made a ton of money off APS litigation and legal weaselry, is also the President and CEO of the New Mexico Broadcasters Association.

The local affiliates, KRQE, KOAT, KOB TV coincidentally find themselves aligned with the Journal; unable or unwilling to face the issue of public corruption in the leadership of the APS.

The media cannot be relied upon to tell the truth; the whole truth and nothing but the ethically redacted truth. It is as sad as it is shameful.

APS teaching experience a big secret; why?

On Tuesday November 12, 2019, an effort in earnest was begun to find the answers to two questions;

1. How many teachers does APS employ? And
2. How many years of teaching experience have they accumulated between them all?

As of this morning, the data has not been made available still; 19 working days later.

The request has been bouncing around the leadership of the APS.
For some reason, no one will simply answer the questions.
No one will identify anyone who will.

The request ended up on the desk of APS Custodian of Public Records. The request was denied on the basis that a request for information is not a request for records and is therefore lies in some other bailiwick.

The request for information could have been forwarded to an APS Communications Specialist who could at least help move the request along. It was not.

It wasn’t necessary because, the Custodian and Communications Specialist are one and the same person.  Yet nearly a month after asking, the data remains secret. Why?

The information bolsters a compelling argument for empowering educators in the decision making process.

It is hard to argue that people who have accumulated among them, literally tens of thousands of years of teaching experience, much of it in APS schools, have no place at the table where decisions are made.

It would be at least a little bit harder to argue that, educators, having between them 67,554 years of teaching experience, have no seat at the table where decisions are made; the one sounding less like an opinion than the other.

Perhaps there is a disturbing experience drain among APS teachers that needs to be covered up.

Who knows?

More importantly perhaps, why don't they know?

Why must the superintendent search continue in indefensible secret?

The APS School Board is planning a number of meetings during which they will separate the wheat from the chaff among candidates for the next superintendency.

Far too many of them will be held in secret from stake and interest holders.

The Open Meetings Act provides for the need for some part of some negotiations to be held in secret.

There are at least two ways that the leadership of the APS can comply with the law.

One way would be to role model the standard of conduct to which they hold students accountable; trustworthiness. The standard compels candor, forthrightness and honesty. It requires doing “more than the law requires and less than the law allows”.

The leadership of the APS interprets open government differently. If they have a public record that they would rather not produce, if they have a meeting that they would rather not open to public scrutiny, they will produce or open only those that they have been compelled to do by a court of competent jurisdiction.

School board members have basically two responsibilities; writing school board policy and hiring the right superintendent to enforce them.

When voters hold school board members accountable at election, is based on the policies they created and the superintendents they hired.

If the most important part of selection process takes place in secret from voters, how are they to hold school board members accountable for their performance in those meetings?

This coincidentally, is just what they have in mind.

If the very worst thing a politician or public servant can do, is anything they do in unjustifiable secret from the people whose power they wield and whose resources they spend, they must have a powerful need to continue to try to get away with it.

APS Superintendent Search; Phase Two

There will be two phases in the APS board’s search for their next superintendent that involve “public input”.

The first phase ends with the last of several public fora around the district, the purpose of which is to gather community input on hiring criteria in order to create a “superintendent profile". The profile will then be used to select the new superintendent.

Rather than to suggest that the data gathered is meaningless; that it will not move the needle one iota in the board’s selection of the next superintendent, it will be left up to those whose should be able to defend the utility of the data, and to point its actual effect on decision making.

By way of illustration, consider the number of expensive bus tours around the district that the leadership of the APS has taken and their abject inability upon their return, to point to a single thing they learned on the ride, that they should not have already known.

The final opportunities for stake and interest holders to participate in person in the selection of their next superintendent will be in March or April of next year. The board promises; that (after a number of meetings in secret during which the finalists will be actually selected) there will be several community forums during which people will meet and listen to the individual APS superintendent candidates.

They further promise; “You will be able to submit questions …”
Do not suppose that you will be able to ask any candidate a specific question.

If, for example, you want to ask;

Are you willing and able to stand up as a role model of honest accountability to the same standards of conduct that you will enforce upon students?

your question will not survive the filtering process. It will not be asked in an open and honest public meeting.

The board further promises; you will able “to provide your input on the candidates. Written input from audiences will be provided to members of the Board of Education for its consideration".

If you think that the board’s “consideration” of a legitimate question will include a candid, forthright and honest response, you would be wrong.

If, for example, your written input includes the question;

Why will you not be held honestly accountable to the same standards of conduct that you establish and then enforce upon students?

they will not respond.

Try as you may, the selection process for the next superintendent will not contain an open and honest public discussion of ethics, standards, accountability and role modeling in the leadership of the APS.

It is the elephant in the room.

It is the third rail APS’ effort to mislead stake and interest holders.
If they touch it, they’ll vanish in a puff of smoke.

APS Superintendent Search; the need for secret candidates

The leadership of the APS is trying to add more secrecy to their search for a new superintendent. They want to keep secret, the names of people who want to be considered in their selection of APS’ new superintendent. They argue; a better field of candidates will emerge if they are allowed to apply without telling the people around them what they are doing.

It is fair to ask, better for whom exactly?

Consider for a moment, the field of candidates who will apply, but only if they can do so in secret from people who trust them.

Their only defining characteristic; the only thing that makes them different from otherwise willing candidates, is their manifest willingness to betray the trust of stake and interest holders in order to advance their own interests.

The fundamental question of course; why would the leadership of the APS be looking for a superintendent with a proven record of their willingness to betray the trust of stake and interest holders; except to help them cover up their own betrayal of trust of stake and interest holders?

The leadership of the APS does not want the truth to be known about executive and administrative ethics, standards and accountability. Are they looking for a superintendent willing to keep secrets?
They refuse to discuss in an open and honest public meeting;

• double standards of conduct in the APS resulting from the board’s unanimous abdication of their obligations as the senior-most role models in the district, of honest accountability to the same standards of conduct that they establish and then have enforced upon students, 

• their wanton spending of the operational fund on cost-is-no-object legal defenses for school board members and senior administrators, in order to buy for them in unjustifiably expensive settlements, admissions of “no guilt”, regardless of guilt. The effect of which is, they arguably unaccountable even to the law.

And finally one is compelled to ask about this editorial, if the editors are really so honestly outraged about the APS school board’s effort to keep more secrets, why are they so unwilling to investigate and report upon why the board’s very existence depends on increasingly more secrecy?

Can they really not connect the dots?

Or are there other interests at play?

Character counts in politics and public service

Lest the object lesson go unnoticed;

the law as it applies to (powerful) politicians and public servants is inadequate to protect the people’s power and resources from abuse.

The term “higher standards” means higher standards than the law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings.

People of character, by definition, expect more from themselves than the law requires and less than the law allows. They accept honest accountability to higher standards of conduct.

Most people believe that politicians and public servants are actually accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law. The rest believe that they should be.

The simple truth is; powerful people with unlimited tax dollars to spend are not accountable to higher standards of conduct. They are arguably unaccountable even to the law. If they can use tax dollars to buy admissions of “no guilt” regardless of their guilt, are they really accountable to the law?

The problem with enforcing higher standards of conduct than the law is that they cannot be enforced in courts of law. That’s why the county sheriff has not produced public records according to the spirit of the law.

Is a county sheriff spending tax dollars on litigation and legal weaselry actually accountable to the law? Is he doing something “illegal”?

Similarly, the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education cannot be held accountable to higher standards of conduct. They cannot be held accountable for their character.

The superintendent they are about to hire? S/he will be also; unaccountable to higher standards of conduct than the law. S/he will not be held accountable for their character.

So who the bad guys here; the politicians and public servants who exploit weak laws to their advantage, legislators who won’t write laws with teeth, or the people who place no import on character when voting for people in whose hands they will place their power, their resources, and their trust that neither will be abused?