KRQE covering up for APS and Modrall

KRQE has reported, link, that the leadership of the APS has entered into a settlement agreement with an employee.

KRQE reports;

It took them more than a year to get APS to hand over the supporting documents.

(Why did it take a year; how much did the delay cost taxpayers. This is typical APS; they paid lawyers to obfuscate the surrender of public records.  KRQE chooses to let it slide - undoubtedly upon the advice of their lawyer Marty Esquivel(?).)

The suit ended up costing APS considerably more than the $65,000 settlement because the district also had to pay Broussard’s attorneys and pay a high-powered law firm to represent the district.

... his attorney declined to comment on the settlement.

KRQE should know; they should have found out, how much the leadership of the APS had to pay to the “high-powered law firm”. They know who the high-powered law firm is and didn't mention them.

KRQE decided apparently; neither fact is “newsworthy”; their viewers have no need to know those two salient facts.

KRQE furnishes a link to the settlement agreement which does not include the amounts that APS paid its own attorneys nor the amount paid to the plaintiff's attorney.

Viewers can read the actual settlement agreement; they can decide for themselves whether taxpayers have bought more admissions of no guilt in exchange for operational funds.
Operational funds are tax dollars that should, could and would be spent in classrooms if they were not being squandered instead in courtrooms; if they were not being spent instead on "high-powered", and really, really expensive lawyers and legal weaselry.

Secrecy surrounding APS and their lawyers is particularly important now because the leadership of the APS needs stake and interest holders to believe that APS is so strapped for cash that they cannot afford to underwrite middle school sports.

They need stake and interest holders to not know;
how much money they’re funneling to their friends at the Modrall and others.  Modrall makes so much money, through their large bore pipeline into APS' operational fund, that the amount they guzzle is secret.  The board spends without limit and without oversight.

The "oversight" that the APS school board is supposed to provide amounts to

1. meetings in held secret, 
2. of which no recording is made, and 
3. over which, there is no oversight. 
   Subordinate oversight is not oversight; it is an oxymoron.

KRQE has been in the bag for APS for a long time; for at least as long as, former school board member and direct beneficiary of APS’s willingness to squander millions of dollars in cost-is-no-object legal defenses for school board members and senior administrators, Marty Esquivel has been their lawyer.

In fairness, it’s not just KRQE covering for APS.
You will notice that there isn’t a word of this in the Journal this morning. Nor anything (a cursory search revealed) from KOB or KOAT.  No surprise there.

When the Journal finally does get around to it, if they get around to it, they cannot be expected to have honestly investigated and reported upon the wholly unjustifiable amount of money the leadership of the APS squanders every year on litigation and legal weaselry.

cc KRQE upon posting
KRQE responded "The settlement follows the dismissal order – just scroll down"

Pat Davis, Congressman, Role Model. Not.

With his announcement that he is running for Congress, and whether he has even considered it or not, Albuquerque City Councilor Pat Davis would have voters believe that he is ready to step up as one of New Mexico's five senior most Congressional role models.

Role models of what; and before whom?

What ever else and, for whom other else he wants to be a role model worthy of emulation, he claims to be ready for be a role model for a hundred thousand APS students and their contemporaries in charter and private schools, of honest to God accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence within his public service.

That seems unlikely in light of his current stand on role modeling, which is; that he finds compelling language "vague and coded".

To wit; a role modeling clause;

In no case shall the standards of conduct for an adult,

be lower than the standards of conduct for students.

The language could not be less vague; there is no coded language as Davis avers, link.

When given the opportunity to defend this indefensible position, he did not.

He still has not.  Nor will he ever.

Davis is not ready, willing and able to be held accountable as a role model, for students and the communities and community members he would serve, of honest to God accountability to the same standards of conduct as are public school students' higher standards of conduct; ethical standards of conduct.

There is no such thing as an inconspicuous role model.

Davis needs to explain to students, in words they can understand, why it is that he cannot be expected to model honest to God accountability to the higher standards of conduct that students are expected to "model and promote".

If we expect students to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone is going to have show them what it looks like.  The obligation grows with (even political) stature.

The only thing that stops Davis and nearly every other politician I have ever met, from holding themselves accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human being, is their own individual lack of character, courage, or both.

If there is another explanation, I cannot imagine it, nor has it been suggested to me by any of them.




photo Mark Bralley