Esquivel wrong about sledgehammer

School Board Candidate Marty Esquivel admits there are
still problems in the APS but argues in his free Journal ad
this morning;

"I ...don't believe you need to take a sledgehammer
to APS to improve it."

When the flaws in an institution run to the foundation,
a sledgehammer wikilink, is a reasonable tool choice.

It one of only a few tools powerful enough to break through
the layers and layers of plaster hiding the flaw in the foundation.

Far from the indiscriminate smashing Esquivel would have you imagine; the tool can be used to deliver overwhelming force, exactly where it is needed.

Sometimes, that's what it takes.

Walz is arrogant

Journal Editor Kent Walz has a personal interest in making sure that Marty Esquivel gets re-elected.

Journal coverage of the election is heavily biased in favor of Esquivel, link.

Egregiously. Blatantly.



What words describe Walz and the Journal's reporting on felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators, link, except covering up Marty Esquivel's cover up?

What words describe the Journal's failure to investigate and report upon Marty Esquivel's abdicated his obligations as the senior most role model of the APS Student Standards of Conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!, if not the words "cover up"?

Where except some third world country could a school board president order a publicly funded private police force to ban a bonafide candidate from the free exercise of constitutionally protected human rights during an election, and not have the local newspaper report upon the infringement of civil rights, as part of their election coverage?

If the Journal's refusal to investigate and report upon the
fact that Marty Esquivel is denying due process to more than
300 whistle blower complaints against administrators and
board members, is not a cover up of that scandal, what is?

The Journal is supposed to be a "newspaper of record".
That's supposed to mean something.




frame grab Mark Bralley

Honesty is fundamental.

I promise to tell you the truth
about the public interests and
about my public service.

Or I will resign.

Honesty in government
could not possibly be more
fundamental.

How can you have government
of the people, by the people and
for the people, if the government is not honest with the people? The truth about how our power and resources are spent belongs to us.

If there is any confusion at all about where the line is, between the truth we should be told and the truth that we should not be told, that confusion must end now.

However transparent government will ever be,
is how transparent government should be right now.

However accountable to the people, politicians and public
servants will ever be, is how accountable they should be
right now.

However high the standards of conduct and competence
will ever be, is how high they should be right now.

Why make one more decision, why spend one more dime,
before government is made as open and accountable as
it will ever be?

However meaningful the participation of teachers and parents
in the decision making process, is how meaningful their
participation should be right now.

There is no one of us more qualified to fix our schools
than all of us. In particular, the 100,000 years of teaching
experience in the APS have a right to a seat at the table
where decisions are made.

The people have a seat at that table as well.

Voters in APS District 4, have a rather unique opportunity to
regain control over power and resources that are fundamentally their own.

All they have to do is demand the truth.

When the question is will you tell the truth?
any answer except yes means no.

Demand that candidates look you in the eye, raise their right arm and promise to tell the truth about the public interests and about their public service.

I offer my public service, every thing that I can do,
to carry these issues the table. There will be open and
honest public discussions of standards and accountability,
transparency and role modeling.

We will decide as a community whether or not
character counts.

... if you can manage to elect me to your seat on the APS
Board of Education in District 4.

"The right time
to do the right thing,
is always right now."

unk

photo Mark Bralley

Every administrator in the APS not corrupt or incompetent

I was trying to explain to the Democratic Women of Bernalillo County and their guests, that unsolved problems with the education of students in the APS, has to do with corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.

I could see on one woman's face, what I felt was insult;
as if ; she either was, or respected, an APS administrator
and I had said, all APS administrators are corrupt

I did not say that, I have never said that.

There are good and decent men and women who work in
the administration of the APS. They are perhaps some of
the greatest victims of all; their good reputations are tarnished
by the administrators who really are incompetent or corrupt.

Good and decent administrators do not fear a district wide
impartial standards and accountability audit. They have
nothing to fear. They should welcome the audit that
cleanses their ranks.

There is no ethical reason to oppose an impartial audit,
with the possible exception of cost, which is inconsequential.

There are only unethical reasons to oppose an impartial audit.

a compilation from the Josephson Institute

on the subject of character, link.

Two that seemed particularly apropos;

The proper time to influence the character of a child
is about a hundred years before he’s born.
— William R. Inge, American playwright (1913-1973)

The formation of character in young people is
educationally a different task from and a prior task to,
the discussion of the great, difficult ethical controversies
of the day.
— William J. Bennett, author and former U.S. Secretary of Education (b. 1943)

If I could ask Sen Pete Domenici a question

in the expectation of a candid, forthright and honest response.

I would ask him;

Are the Pillars of Character Counts! suitable standards
of conduct for students in Albuquerque public schools?
And by logical extension, are they suitable standards of
conduct of every single adult role model?

Sen Pete Domenici is a Founding Father of Character Counts!
He helped write it. He has defended it before, link.

If I could, I would ask the same question of fellow
Founding Father Michael Josephson.

If they believe that the Pillars of Character Counts! are
good for students, if they still stand by their product,
I expect them to stand up and defend it.

If I could, I would like to ask the same question of the
former President of the APS Character Counts! Leadership
Council (while there was federal grant money) Paula Maes!

What does Paula Maes think about holding herself honestly
accountable as a role model of the Pillars of Character Counts!?

What does senior most administrative role model of
accountability to the Pillars of Character Counts!
Winston Brooks have to say about his own honest
accountability to them.

What does the senior most executive role model of
accountability to the Pillars, Marty Esquivel have
to say about his own honest accountability to them?

How can they be role models of accountability to the
Pillars of Character Counts!, if they are in hiding from
accountability to them?





So many questions, so few real press left to press them.




photo Mark Bralley

School Board Candidate Forum

The Democratic Women of Bernalillo County, link, are sponsoring a forum tomorrow morning from 9 until 10:30, link.

For voters, it just doesn't get any better than a forum;
it's the closest voters will get, to getting to ask a politician
or public servant a question about the public interests and/
or, about their public service.

If I am elected, I will continue to fight for standards of conduct which require politicians and public servants to, in a timely manner, stand and deliver candid, forthright and honest answers to any legitimate questions about the public interests and about their public service.

A question I would like to be asked tomorrow;

Will you point to a time, a day and a place,
where you will stand and deliver candid, forthright,
and honest responses to any legitimate questions?

My answer will be;

yes, any time, any day, and any place.

If I try to ask Marty Esquivel that question again,
I have asked it of him before, on many many occasions,
during a public forum of a board meeting; he intends to
have me arrested. The Chief of the APS Police Department
Steve Tellez signed Esquivel's illegal restraining order,
Tellez says he will arrest me rather than allow me to
exercise my rights to free speech and to petition my
government. Unless I get permission from Marty Esquivel
(now, Paula Maes) specifically expressing their permission
of my free exercise of constitutionally protected human rights APS Praetorian Guard Commander Steve Tellez will arrest me.

It isn't a right if I have to Marty Esquivel and Paula Maes' permission to use it.

I will if I can, ask the question tomorrow when and where
Esquivel's Praetorian Guard has no authority to stop me.

Journal coverage begins in earnest

There is a story in the Journal about the upcoming school board election. link.

The Journal cronies in the election, Esquivel, Griego, (Lucero) had their names mentioned; acknowledgment of their
competitors was limited to counting them.

Esquivel and Griego's names came up twice is as many column inches; it constitutes and endorsement through a "news" story.

Name recognition being important at election,
Esquivel and Griego were given a bump, undeniably,
their opponents were not.

Perhaps not all that important if that were the extent of Journal bias, but it isn't. The Journal's sins of omission are calculated to change the outcome of an election.

Explain why they won't investigate and report upon the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS;

• the abdication of the senior most role models of the student standards of conduct,
• the cover up of corruption in the APS Police Department,
• the ongoing denial of due process to hundreds of whistle blowers

If Kent Walz could report that the nutty allegation, that Marty Esquivel and Winston Brooks and the Journal are covering up an ongoing suppression of evidence of felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators, link, was false, why won't he?

Esquivel and Brooks are foursquare against an independent audit of administrative and executive standards and accountability. Walz won't report on their opposition. He won't report that Board Member Paula Maes' opposition is on record; "I will never agree to any audit that individually identifies ..." corrupt or incompetent administrators or board members.

If Walz can write,

an independent audit would reveal unequivocal standards of conduct and competence, high enough to protect the public interests

and if he can write,

an independent audit will reveal that APS administrators and board members are honestly accountable to those standards

why won't he?

On another related issue; candidates have received the Journal questionnaire.

By my estimation is that half of the questions; (1), 6, 7, 8, aren't comparatively relevant to the discourse. Do voters really need to know if I what university I attended? Do they need to know that more than anything else?

A question like;

are you currently doing everything you can to deny due process to hundreds of APS employees and their whistle blower complaints against administrators and board members?

would give voters some information they could use.

The Journal's coverage of candidates consists in its entirety (even after voting has begun) of asking candidates a total of four meaningful questions (not the most important four) and then "allowing" candidates 35 words to answer a question like;

what school-based cuts would you make and
what other measures would you take to balance the budget?

Is the Journal really that hard up for ink?

Haily Heinz knows, by the way, about the Audit Committee's failure to review and approve even one complaint though Board Police requires it to review and approve every one.

Which is not to say I hold Heinz responsible for the Journal's cover up of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

The responsibility falls in
my opinion, on the
shoulders of Journal Editor
Kent Walz.

I hold him responsible.

Hailey Heinz will catch the flak this year over
Kent Walz' lack of candid, forthright and honest coverage
in yet another election.

She has sent me a list questions and the "rules" for answering them.

Dear Mr. MacQuigg:

Below is the Albuquerque Journal’s candidate questionnaire. Your responses will be published in print editions of the Journal later this month and also will be published on the Journal website at ABQjournal.com.

Please respond to the request for biographical information and the issues questionnaire by Wednesday, Jan. 12. Note that the word length of responses to each issue question cannot exceed 35 words.

If your responses go beyond the 35-word length per question, we may have to cut some of your answers for length. In that event, we will try to keep your answers as close to the original wording and context as possible. We will edit for grammar.
The Journal also requests that you include a head-shot photo when returning the questionnaire that you would like us to use for the remainder of your campaign. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to call staff writers Hailey Heinz and Andrea Schoellkopf or Education Editor Ellen Marks.

Finally, please respond to this e-mail so we can ensure you received it.


1. Please briefly tell us your date of birth, education history, occupation, family, community activities and political/government experience.

2. New Mexico schools face a budget crisis that could result in a reduction of more than $60 million in APS' budget next year. Given that less than 1 percent of the APS budget is central administration, what school-based cuts would you make and what other measures would you take to balance the budget?

3. Please give APS Superintendent Winston Brooks a letter grade, and explain.

4. Do you support tying teacher evaluations and compensation to student performance or academic growth? Please explain.

5. Do you support the idea of splitting the West Side off into its own school district, as some community activists have suggested? Please explain.

6. Have you or your business, if you are a business owner, ever been the subject of any state or federal tax liens?

7. Have you ever been involved in a personal or business bankruptcy proceeding?

8. Have you ever been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of drunken driving, or any misdemeanor or felony?




frame grab Mark Bralley

Character Counts! referendum

It is time to stand up and restore APS student standards of conduct.

Voters in Albuquerque New Mexico have the opportunity
to vote to hold students and their role models,
honestly accountable to the same standards of conduct,
or continue to have two standards of conduct;
one for adults and another, much higher one, for students.

In this case, the standards of conduct happen to be the Pillars of Character Counts!, link. They have been the APS student standards of conduct since their unanimous approval by the Board of Education in 1994.

There are fundamental questions on the table;

• will we have role modeling; will we hold role models accountable to student standards of conduct?
• Will that standard be the Pillars of Character Counts! or a lower one? Perhaps as low as low as legal weaselry; the lowest standard accepted by civilized human beings.
  

If we want the 90,000 of our sons and daughters who are students in the APS, to grow up to embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what it looks like.

Someone has to show them what it looks like to create inescapable accountability to unequivocal standards.


APS used to give kids tee shirts that on their front and back read;

Stand up for what
you believe in ...

... even if you are
standing alone.

Yeah, we could let them stand alone.

Or, we could

• stand behind them offering our support,
• stand beside them, helping to carry their load, and
• stand in front of them, leading by our personal example.

Let's have a referendum on Character Counts! as the standard of conduct for students. Implicit in that, understanding that role models must be honestly accountable to those same standards.

Should we restore to the standards of conduct that apply to administrator and board members, the phrase they removed, unanimously, the one which read;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

Marty Esquivel votes no, over and over and over.

A clear choice; Marty Esquivel who will hold himself accountable to the law and all manner of legal weaselry
or
either of two candidates; Cheryl Harris or me.
Either of whom will hold ourselves accountable to one of the highest standards of conduct;
the Pillars of Character Counts!.

All that is necessary for Character Counts! to die in the APS,
is for good wo/men to do nothing. Burke - derived

You pick a side when you don't pick a side.

APS' Board Candidate Orientation

The school board candidate orientation meeting was held deep in the keep at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

Public access to the keep is limited to one door and an
examination by, in my experience, a very pleasant and
professional member of the APSPD and another apparently
random member working the same shift, chatting across a counter.

Tonight, the second man on the front door was none
other than Steve Tellez; the current Chief of the APSPD.

I made my way down the hall to the DeLayo Martin Room.
The meeting was held with the doors closed and the blinds half shut.

There was an armed officer who sat 10 feet behind and to my right in a completely non-threatening manner.

The Chief, also armed, sat in the diagonally opposite corner.

At least one more armed guard prowled the hallway outside the meeting.

No, I am not making it up.

I guess the market glut on stolen APS property has cut
down crime in the APS to the point where putting enough
firepower in the room to repel a terrorist attack, seems like
a prudent use of the resource.

Most of the orientation found us being read to.
You guessed it, a Power Point presentation.

Sidebar;

If elected, I promise to write policy that prohibits
meetings in which bright busy people sit and get
read to like elementary school students.

Part of the presentation centered on the need for accountability as a board member and public servant.

It was followed by a presentation of the New Mexico School Boards Association Code of Ethics.

I asked a question about it. It was the same question I asked four years ago; how does the NMSBA enforce its code of ethics?

The answer was also the same; the NMSBA does not enforce, at all, its code of ethical conduct.

We we also handed a copy of the APS School Board's own Code of Ethics.

Had I asked APS School Board President Marty Esquivel if he was actually accountable to that code of ethics, his candid forthright and honest answer would have to have been, no.

He admitted as much when they passed the code unanimously.

There is not a wit of difference between the highest and
the lowest standards of conduct, if neither can be enforced.

Accountable means; inescapably accountable to clear and unequivocal standards of conduct and competence. It means accountable by means of an impartial system, powerful enough to hold even the most powerful politician or public servant, accountable to those standards, even against their will.

You can't claim to be accountable and not be able to prove it.

If Marty Esquivel was honestly accountable to any standard of conduct at all, he would point to it.

When the question is, will you tell the truth?
any answer except yes, means no.

The Board Staff support meeting is always top knotch. Kudos to Board Manager Brenda Yager and all of those who serve with her.

I did chat briefly with Cheryl Harris and introduced myself to Candido Archuleta Jr, the other candidates in District 4.

I visited Cheryl's website, link, and was most pleased to see she has stepped up on the issue of role modeling of the Pillars of Character Counts! She writes

APS leadership must set the example of "Character Counts!".

Cheryl Harris is willing to make Character Counts! a bonafide campaign issue.

Kudos to Cheryl Harris on her manifest character and courage.

Some people call me a nut, some people don't

"Scottishman" has left a comment on my post about the
leadership of the Teachers Federation endorsing Marty Esquivel, link.

Our hero wrote;

"You do not have to worry about all this. You will never be elected. Even uneducated people know when somebody is a nut. You my friend, are a nut."

I concede both; there are uneducated people who think I'm a nut, and Scottishman speaks for them.

All of my conduct which people think is "nuts", is matter of a comprehensive electronic public record. I would suggest that you cannot find any "nutty" thing I have done. Being resolute is not nuts. Fighting for what you believe in, is not nuts.

It would be happy to sit and listen to those tapes and defend my conduct. I haven't done anything I would not have done in front of my students, and would not do again, in front of them.

I would invite Scottishman to ask Rigo Chavez to produce all the public records of me being a nut. Review the tape, and get back to me.

This is about the message, not about the messenger,
it is too late to stop him from speaking the truth.

The message has been read; transparent accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, transparency limited only by the law, due process for any legitimate complaint, and a seat for stakeholders at the table where decisions are made.

Those who would not have that, people like Marty Esquivel,
need to discredit the messenger, because they can't discredit
the allegations; he can't even talk about them.

Ask him to point to his position on executive and administrative role modeling of the APS student standards of conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.

People who speak truth to power are subject to typecasting;
which of them has not been called a "disgruntled former employee" or "a nut".

Marty Esquivel has told me that he thinks I'm a nut job;
me and the lady from Wichita who thought someone
should be paying attention to allegations that
Winston Brooks is a bully.

What ever happened, by the way, to those allegations?

Have they been given due process? How were they adjudicated, and by whom? Will the "investigation" continue until after statutes of limitation have expired like the investigation of the corruption in the APS Police Department?

If people can be made to believe they are listening to the truth from a nut, they will conclude that the truth is nuts as well.

Concede if you must; that I am a nut, but fight as hard
as you can, the impulse to believe that government that
is honestly accountable to the people, is nuts,
simply because I am the only one talking about it.

Which of those who aren't "nuts", are willing to raise their
right hand, look you in the eye, and promise to tell you
the truth?

Maybe someone nutty enough to make that pledge
is just what APS needs.

APS Billboards an attractive nuisance?

The leadership of the APS has decided to allow massive electronic billboards on APS property. The justification is the $40K a year the signs will generate.

The $40K will go the APS Foundation. If past practice predicts future performance, at least some of the money will be used to underwrite an administrative soiree at the Inn of the Mountain Gods.

How many rear end collisions will there be, while drivers move their attention from the car in front of them, to what amounts to a distraction by deliberate design.

To how many of those hapless drivers, will it occur that
they can sue taxpayers, by way of the APS?
Especially if they can claim that, at the time, they were
watching the one in eight ads, the APS gets to put up.

Does the agreement with the APS Foundation protect taxpayers from liability?

I cut right to the chase, I asked the Magic Eight Ball;

Will this end up costing taxpayers much more
than the $40K a year it will "generate"?

(shake, shake, shake)

"... signs point to yes

The perfect round table is not perfectly round.

Or, perhaps the table is round, but there must be one chair
that stands a wee bit higher.

It occurs to me that in any deliberative meeting, if the decision making is to move in timely fashion; there needs to be one person whose ultimate responsibility it is, to refocus the particpation.

You just cannot just do nothing,
you can't just allow deliberation to grind to a halt
while a member indulges their "right" to give yet another
personal anecdotal example in support of the most long
settled premise. And then another and another and another ...

The responsibility for facilitation by custom, falls more or less
randomly upon capable and less capable shoulders.
It could be argued that, chairmanship is afforded, at least
in part, according to skill as a facilitator, but there isn't a
preponderance of evidence to support that conjecture.

It is at least statistically possible that the person given the gavel, may also be the least capable of any of them, to pound it in the community best interests.

Why not hire facilitators who only agenda is to allow every stakeholder interest to participate meaningfully in a fair decision making process?

Politicians and public servants could facilitate their own meetings. On its face, it would provide considerable savings. The caveat of course, the self evident conflict of interest.

Why not allow public servants to ask for facilitation at any meeting where it is warranted? Why not let facilitation be declined by the unanimous consent of those present?

Facilitators must be impartially efficient and effective.
If facilitation does not improve deliberative decision making;
surely it is the facilitator and not facilitation, at fault.

Seems like a no-brainer.

Some bad news I'm afraid.

"Lady Sunlight" Rep Janice Arnold-Jones just announced that Friday will be the last day for her radio show, New Mexico Now.

The show has been on KIVA, 1550 AM, from 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM Monday through Friday since Summer 2010.

You are invited to call the show on Friday to let her know you have appreciated the show and seize the opportunity to express your views.

On Thursday she will have Alan Woodruff, Daniel Ivey-Soto and Rep. Tom Anderson. They will discuss proposed Election Code Legislation.

The numbers to call are;505-265-1550
Toll-free at 1-877-437-6119
Email them at talk@1550KIVA.com
Listen live on the internet at www.KIVA.com

A public servant in the truest sense;
she will find another way to serve.




photo Mark Bralley

School Board Candiate Questionnaires

I have been asked to fill out questionnaires by the leadership of the APS, link, and by the Albuquerque Teachers Federation, link. The links are to the questionnaires and my responses to them.

Teachers, offered a seat at the table, choose to sit in Esquivel's audience instead.

The Albuquerque Teachers Federation has endorsed candidates in the School Board Election.

Candidates met with a handful of union members who then made a recommendation to the Fed Reps. Fed Reps are the liaison between the union leadership and the classroom.

I offered them everything they could reasonably ask for;

• a seat at the table,
• real, timely and powerful due process for their complaints
• and unfettered access to the ethically redacted truth.

Currently, well over 300 complaints have been filed under APS' whistleblower, fraud, waste and abuse program. I would guess that around half of those complaints were filed by union members and against administrators. Every one of those complaints is being denied due process by Marty Esquivel. The APS Audit Committee, though required to do so by School Board Policy, has not reviewed the administration of a single complaint.

The union leadership has endorsed the candidacy a man who is denying due process to their membership.

In stark contrast, I offer teachers and other stakeholders due process of their complaints.

Oddly; this represents my greatest threat to union leadership.
A significant part of what a union offers is grievance processing. I offer a grievance process that guarantees transparent and impartial adjudication of every complaint. I offer a grievance process under which the least powerful stakeholder in the APS, can file a complaint against the most powerful person in the APS, and be guaranteed due process.

The union stands to loose a little "business".

Another area where is sensed some distance, was the subject of collective bargaining. I offer every stakeholder a seat at the table, and the union, I suspect, would like more.

My sense is that they want to be deal makers rather that taking a seat at the table just like everyone else.

There is not a legitimate agenda for teachers or education, that does not move forward on the day that stakeholders become privy to the truth and take their rightful seat at the table.

There is no legitimate agenda that does not move forward on the day that politicians and public servants in the APS are held honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence.

The union leadership abandoned Character Counts!.
Though the union was instrumental in bringing the
nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of
ethical conduct to the APS; I was told more recently
by Union President Ellen Bernstein that,
Character Counts was Don's (Whatley) thing.

Whatley, the former Union President, was a Founding Father of the Character Counts! movement and instrumental in the school board's unanimous adoption of the Pillars of Character Counts! as the APS Student Standards of Conduct.

If the union has something against Character Counts! as the student standards of conduct, then they should move to replace it with something more to their liking; a standard perhaps that doesn't place quite so much emphasis on truthtelling and accountability.

Even they would have to admit, no matter what the student standards of conduct are, they are at once the adult standards of conduct as well.

Teachers are arguably the most important role models in education. And by "teachers", I don't mean just teachers, I mean; all public servants who teach; who spend their working day with students at the educational interface; where the student and the system make contact.

Teachers are not the only ones who need to be held accountable as role models of accountability to the standards they enforce upon students. Leadership starts at the top.

Character is taught by role modeling;
character is taught only by role modeling.
The proof of accountability is accountability;
it is not proven by simply claiming to be accountable.

Marty Esquivel will not hold himself honestly accountable as a role model of the Pillars of Character Counts!; though he will hold students accountable, and though he will hold teachers accountable as role models.

Marty Esquivel cannot point to a single legitimate standard of conduct to which he can be held honestly accountable even against his will. Even in the court system, he is shielded from accountability to the lowest standard of conduct at all, the law. He is shielded by the most powerful law firm in the state, and an unlimited budget for litigation.

The hero of transparency, right now, is allowing the results of an independent investigation into felony criminal misconduct involving APS senior administrators, link, to be hidden from public knowledge by legal weaselry and Modrall Law.

There is no legitimate meaning of the word accountable that applies to Marty Esquivel's public service, not one.

If I am elected, there will be a public meeting, at which any legitimate questions will asked and answered. We will decide what the student standards of conduct really are. And we will decide what obligations attach to people who are being paid to step up as role models for at least the few hours each day, they hold students accountable to "higher" standards of conduct.

As part of that discussion, I would advocate as strongly as I have a right, restoring the role modeling clause to the adult standards of conduct; the one they took out, the one that used to read;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards of conduct for a student.

Marty Esquivel is opposed to restoring the role modeling clause. He just won't admit it on the record.

Mr "Accountability" does not want to be held accountable at election, for the lack of character and courage he has shown, in abdicating from his obligations as the senior most role model in the entire APS, of APS' student standards of conduct.

He once told me that he is not accountable as a role model because he is not really "an educator".

Clearly, I am disappointed in the action taken by the leadership of the Alb Teachers Federation; an action against the interests of all teachers, members or no.

Board of Education Meeting tommorrow, agenda not yet posted.

It will be, usually. But only at the very last minute.

Check his record, see how many agendas went up at the last minute, and how many didn't get posted at all.

According to the letter of the law, agendas need to be posted 24 hrs in advance. Though there is no good and ethical reason to not post the agenda as soon as it is written.


School Board President,
Open Government Lawyer,
and school board candidate,
Marty Esquivel has had every
opportunity to make APS a
model of open government.

He knows what open
government looks like,
he has made a really
good living suing people
over the real meaning of open government;
its just not what he chooses for himself;
not when it is he who is wielding our power and spending our resources.

Instead, he is still posting his agenda according to technicalities, loopholes and legal weaselry.

The standard of conduct to which he will not hold himself accountable, the APS student standards of conduct, reads differently. It reads; men and women of character are often called upon to do more than the law requires and less than the law allows.

The student standard of conduct is that you publish your agenda as early and as widely as you are able.

My commitment is to giving stakeholders a seat at the table where their interests are being decided. His is to keep the meeting details secret for as long as he can without being sued.

The choice is yours.




photo Mark Bralley

APS frozen pipes excuse doesn't hold water

Every time the weather turns bad, APS taxpayers are on the hook for a few hundred thousand dollars in repairs.

No one else in Albuquerque seems to have nearly as much trouble. Sandia Labs doesn't have to re-roof every time it rains. UNM didn't have a have million dollars worth of frozen pipes to begin the new year.

Pipes don't freeze spontaneously; they have to be allowed to freeze.

In the Journal this morning, link, we find that one in four schools suffered damage from the cold. Albuquerque Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Brad Winter said Monday, ...,

"When you get a cold snap that lasts for three or four days, you get a little bit of wind and that's what causes some of these pipes that are in these ceilings to burst."

No, Mr. Winter, that is not what causes pipes to burst. Allowing them to fall below freezing is what causes pipes to burst.

I suspect that if we ever were to learn the truth, it was someone's responsibility to look in the ceiling to see if there were any pipes there that were likely to freeze. And it was some else's responsibility to make sure that the inspections were made and remediation completed. That chain of command runs to Brad Winter's desk. Only by the time it got there, it had morphed into "shit happens" and taxpayers have another half million to cough up.

In a particularly disingenuous moment, Winter offered,

"... the estimated cost of the damage, which includes overtime labor and materials, should be mitigated by insurance payouts."

Yeah, except that they way insurance works, if you are careless in protecting the assets the insurance company is insuring, if you're letting your pipes freeze and expecting the insurance company to pick up the slack, your premiums go up. Tax payers will pay for these repairs in the end, it is as certain as it is inevitable.

As an ongoing indicator of Winter's candor, forthrightness, and honesty, he still refuses to release the total cost of the million dollar board room he built, despite lack of any real justification for the extravagance.

There are oversight issues in the leadership of the APS.

Until those issues are resolved, APS roofs will continue dissolve in the rain, pipes will continue to freeze, and nearly half of students who enroll in the APS will not graduate.

4 days and a wake up til voting begins in the school board election

The Journal is certainly placed to contribute effectively to voter education in anticipation of the School Board Election. There is no good and ethical reason that the Journal not begin investigating and reporting upon issues in the election.

So why has it not?

With 4 days to go, the Journal has not even contacted candidates with a list of basic questions to answer and then have published for voter perusal.

It is fair to wonder what the Journal's intentions are. Are they going to cover the election at all, or will their coverage be limited to the day after election whining of editors over the failure of voters to even show up?

There is a direct correlation between Journal coverage and voter turnout. Surely Journal editors know that. So why no coverage?

A simple answer is that coverage will not work to the advantage of the Journal's favorite candidate Marty Esquivel. If the Journal offered the coverage it should, on the denial of due process to APS whistle blower complaints, the corruption and cover up in the APS Police Department, and/or the abdication of Marty Esquivel as a role model of the student standards of conduct, Esquivel's public support would drop like a rock.

In the absence of Journal coverage, voters have only the spin from APS' million dollar Communications Department, and it's all good for Esquivel.

There seems to be a split in the evaluation of the Journal; some see it as a right wing rag, others as left wing; the result of reading between the lines. But if there are no lines to read between, how is that not simple abject failure of a newspaper of record to live up to the trust that has been placed in it by its readers.

No matter how you slice it, the Journal's failure to cover the school board election in support of voters, is journalistic nonfeasance on its face.

Esquivel and "accountability"

There is a document entitled School Board Member Code of Ethics.

Someone ask School Board President Candidate Marty Esquivel;

If someone believed and had evidence that he,
Marty Esquivel, had violated that code of conduct,
by what avenue, would they file their complaint?

He will have to answer as he has answered before;
there is no actual accountability.

I would ask him the question again at the candidate forum
except that he intends to have me arrested.

It's nine days and a wake up
until voting begins.

And still not a word of truth from the Journal
or from any of School Board Member Paula Maes'
NM Broadcasters Association cohorts,

about the ethics and accountability scandal
in the leadership of the APS.