Open letter to the editors of the Albuquerque Journal

Nearly twenty years ago today, I was selected to be among the first teachers in the APS to be trained on Character Counts! by its founder Michael Josephson.  As a "trainer of trainers" I trained three dozen community groups, school faculties and thousands and thousands of students on Character Counts!.

Simultaneous with acquiring my belief in Character Counts! a struggle began.

Somehow, I ended up holding the flag for the side that believes that the leadership of the APS has an inescapable obligation to role model honest accountability the Pillars of Character Counts! for as long as those are the standards that the leadership of the APS establish and enforce upon students.

Sometime in 2005 or 6, the APS School Board voted unanimously to remove the role modeling clause from their own standards of conduct.  I was suing them at the time, and arguing that the role modeling clause was evidence of their obligation to litigate "ethically".  Their response was to remove it.  It used to read;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,
be lower than the standards of conduct for students
(the Pillars of Character Counts! a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethics, link.)

Since the night of their abdication, I have been doing everything I could think of to hold them accountable for that abdication.  Since the night of their abdication, I have been trying to get the Albuquerque Journal to investigate and report upon credible testimony and incontrovertible evidence of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Their only defense against what I say and write about them is to tell people; don't listen.  He's a nut; he's a crack pot, he's dangerous.  Amid all their allegations and for a full decade, they still manage to avoid having to respond the question.  In words any APS student can understand,

why are students are expected to hold themselves honestly
accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law while
school board members and senior administrators are not?

This about the message, not about the messenger.
This about that question.  It is not about who is asking it,
why I am asking it, how I am asking it, how many times I have asked it or how many times I will have to ask it before they respond; candidly, forthrightly and honestly.


For as long as the leadership of the APS has been refusing to communicate a candid, forthright and honest response; for as long as there has been a full blown ethics and accountability scandal in the senior-most leadership of the APS, the Journal has refused investigate that scandal and report on the squandering of our trust, our treasure and our power.

In the spring of 2007, the Journal investigated and reported upon, link, a scandal in the leadership of APS publicly funded private police force.  The scandal included allegations of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators.

The findings of every single investigation of allegations of public corruption, incompetence, and felony criminal misconduct now lie in the hands of Winston Brooks and the board.  Not one word from of any of them has been made public.  They are spending operational dollars, dollars that would otherwise be spend in schools, to keep the records redacted in their entirety forever. 

They are covering up a cover up of felony criminal misconduct.

The Journal steadfastly refuses to investigate and report on the cover up; if only to report that there isn't one.

The Journal has covered my current litigation against Esquivel, Brooks, Armenta and Tellez on two occasions.  On neither occasion was I afforded the simple courtesy and journalistic basic obligation of a personal contact; an opportunity to tell my side of the story to balance the coverage.

The Journal repeatedly prints Marty Esquivel's allegations against me and repeatedly fails to provide me any opportunity to refute, rebut or deny his unfounded allegations.  Even through several school board elections.

There is a digital record of every meeting that Esquivel alleges I disrupted. 

If there is a digital record; incontrovertible proof that I disrupted a meeting, why can't he produce it?  If I have been "hovering over administrators for years, why can't he produce even one photograph of me so doing?

Why doesn't the Journal insist that he produce evidence?  Would you publish an allegation against Esquivel without asking for proof?  Why is Journal coverage so apparently lopsided?

It is because Journal coverage is lopsided.  On its face.

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