Will the Albuquerque Journal cover the APS School Board election?

That's the $64K Question. wikilink

So far, the Journal has admitted their names and occupations.
link sub req

It can be reasonably argued that, the Albuquerque Journal
has a very real obligation to provide voters with all of the information they need to participate meaningfully in the February School Board elections.

There is a very real probability, I would argue, a certainty,
that the Journal will ignore its obligation.

Ignore is actually the wrong word, and explanation of why it is the wrong word bears writing; Whomever it is at the Journal who decides whether or not the question is "newsworthy" will not ignore the question, she, he, they, will make a very deliberate decision not to investigate and report upon the question of public servants being accountable to the truth.

You can decide for yourself, why they are coming to that conclusion.

It is worth noting that they really aren't pushing the issue of
Bill Richardson's refusal to answer legitimate questions
about current scandals in his administration.


There is a central and very fundamental question.
Voters have a right to the answer.

The question is;

Are you willing to tell stakeholders the (ethically redacted) truth?

If elected to the school board,
will a candidate make a solemn promise to stakeholders, that
they will create a district wide policy that requires public servants in the public schools to answer legitimate questions, candidly, forthrightly, and honestly?

Voters, I think, will not cast their vote for any candidate
who would answer the question; no.

Nor would they cast their vote for any candidate
who cannot summon the courage to answer the question at all.

The only real question at all is;

Will the Journal ask them each the question,
and then will it tell voters, what each of them said?

cc. Journal Education Reporter, Andrea Schoellkopf
upon posting.

Parade gets rained on.

Setting the piece;

My wife and I went to San Diego.
We have been wanting to go for a long time;
the reservations were almost as old.

It was raining the day we got there,and the next day it rained four inches. Apparently a record since the dinosaurs.

The next day was pretty great;
San Diego has a lot of very cool things to see.

And then it started raining again,
and still is, as far as I know.


Note: if you go to San Diego;

• A San Diego "Go" Card costs more than its worth,
  if for some reason, you can't do a lot of outdoor stuff.
  
  

• If you are not careful about the location of your lodgings,
  you can end up under the flight path of the busiest runways on the planet.
  When they're on a roll, a really big plane flies over your room every ninety seconds.
  
  They always missed the top of the building,
  but not by much.
  
  

• Which is only slightly more frequently than a train goes by your room and blows a huge fog horn, which is apparently blown all night long for any reason at all, just for the hell of it, or maybe even out of spite.
  
  

• There is no place in the entire town of San Diego, where you can park a car, and not be parked next to a parking meter. Carry lots of quarters.
  
  

• At our Holiday Inn, their parking garage is a parking meter. You get metered for twenty bucks a day, and you don't even get a kiss.
  
  

• Airlines charge you almost as much to move up a ticket out, as they charged you for the one that got you there in there in the first place.

If it all gets too much for you,
plan a trip by the Japanese Tranquility Garden
in Balboa Park. and you will feel much better.

School board filing day

Today is the day for candidates for the school board to file
their candidacy.

With any luck at all, Paula Maes, Berna Facio and
Mary Lee Martin will be too ashamed of their failure
to stand up as role models to even run again.

In any event, Mary Lee Martin will have substantial
opposition from David Robbins, who has already
committed to accountability as a role model.

Jon Barela still has not answered the question about
role modeling. If that is his continued intention,
then he must be deposed as well.

This is a golden opportunity to replace a majority of the
board, 4 of 7 seats, with people with the character and
courage to be role models of the student standard of conduct.

Keep your fingers crossed.

APS students are out of control

One of the biggest reasons behind the lack of educational
success in the APS, is one that no one will talk about,
certainly not administrators, upon who's shoulders the
responsibility lies. APS students are out of control.

I submit the following as metaphor for the out of control
rather than an example of it, because there are elements of
it that could have happened anywhere, effective administration
or not.

A skydiver landed at a local middle and students were injured
in the resulting stampede. link

The stampede can be chalked up to youthful enthusiasm.

The refusal of the students obey adults who told them to stop,
cannot.

I have been there. I have walked up on fist fights, told the
crowd to disperse, and then been ignored.

I have told students to settle down in class, and then been ignored.

Adults have lost their authority over students; in and out of
the classroom. This loss of authority is a key factor in the
ongoing negative influence of chronically disruptive students.

Administrators are charged, in the negotiated agreement
between teachers and the district,
with enforcing the school's discipline policies.
I would suggest that most teachers do not believe that
the administration backs them up.

There is no hard data to corroborate my assertion.
But only because the administration refuses to compile data.

APS and UNM used to collaborate on a yearly survey of teachers.
Several of the questions had to do with the amount of time that
teachers lost every day as the direct result of student misbehavior.

A significant number of teachers reported a significant amount
of time regularly lost managing the behavior of recalcitrant kids.

Suddenly, the questions disappeared from the survey.
When I asked why the questions were no longer asked,
I was told "because the numbers never changed."

I would suggest that the questions were removed because the
data they produced reflects badly on an administration
who's job it is, to back up teachers who have kids with discipline
problems.

Nowhere in the evaluation process for school principals,
is data gathered from staff regarding their feelings about
whether on not the administrator is a good or effective
disciplinarian. The question is not asked for a reason.

Unless teachers have meaningful and enforceable authority over
students, learning will suffer. Not only for the kids who
misbehave regularly, but for the other students in their classes.

I used to believe that any student who wanted an education
could get one. I did not believe that anymore at the end of my
career. I had seen the curriculum watered down too far, and too
many classes out of control, to continue to make that argument.

Anyone who cares to experience this issue first hand,
needs only to substitute teach for one day.

Tell a few students to stop doing what they want to do, and to
start doing what they should be doing, and see what happens.

The leadership of the APS cannot show you a written discipline
philosophy; not even a badly written one.

The leadership of the APS has never taken the time to compile
the shared beliefs of stakeholders, to form a foundation for
discipline policies.

The result is a bunch of policies with no common grounds, and
often in conflict with each other. It makes it nearly impossible
to enforce those policies, which undermines the authority of
teachers over students,

and ultimately results in students trampling each other
in an effort to indulge their childish wants.

The trouble with lawyers is;

they think that it is alright to hide the truth from stakeholders
to the extent that the law allows; the law with all of its
loopholes, technicalities and legal weaselry.

Their children, if they are students in the APS,
are taught that, they would engage in that kind of behavior
at the sacrifice of their good character.

We teach their children that a person of character
often does more than the law requires, and
less than the law allows.

At least that's what we tell them.

By the example set for them by their role models,
they learn something quite different.

Character Counts! in the APS.



Right, and I'm a Chinese sea cook.

A perfectly legitimate request for information

When Gil Lovato "retired" from his position as the Chief of the APS Police Department, he complained that the leadership of the APS was using private investigators to investigate allegations of their misconduct or incompetence, instead of letting him and his Praetorian Guard conduct the investigations.

So what we have here is that, when someone gets wind of an administrator or board member doing something wrong. So the leadership of the APS hires a private investigator to gather evidence and testimony, and then to turn both over to the leadership who will decide what will be done with both.

A case in point. A private investigator was hired to investigate Peanut Butter Gate. The scandal was huge and included significant criminal misconduct, including felony criminal misconduct by at least one very senior APS administrator.

The testimony and evidence that were gathered by the private investigator are now in the possession of the leadership of APS and Modrall. And no one else.

APS Custodian of Public Records Rigo Chavez relates that the testimony and evidence has not been turned over to the DA's Office, because the investigation is still "underway."

The "investigation is still under way" two years after the scandal made headlines. link

The investigation will not be completed until after statutes of limitation expire, and good ol' boys except themselves from accountability to the law. The expiration of statutes of limitation are weeks, maybe days, away.



It is fair to assume that many of the private investigations of executive and administrative misconduct have revealed criminal misconduct. How many of those were referred to law enforcement? How many were not?

Beth Everitt alluded to this possibility when she suggested that Lovato would retaliate against her by revealing something about her and drunk driving. She did not elaborate.

At the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest is created when the leadership of the APS investigates itself and then keeps the results secret from public knowledge.

The leadership of the APS "claims" accountability to standards of conduct which prohibit creating the appearance of a conflict of interest.



So my perfectly legitimate request for information is this;

Will the leadership of the APS surrender an ethically redacted version of every one of those investigations to public knowledge?

Yes or no?

cc Winston Brooks, Monica Armenta, Jon Barela, Marty Esquivel, Delores Griego, Berna Facio, Robert Lucero, and Paula Maes upon posting.

I will also shoot a copy to KOB, KOAT, KRQE and the Journal
for whatever good that will do.

photo courtesy of Mark Bralley link

Whistle blowing still dangerous

"A whistleblower is a person who alleges misconduct.
More complex definitions may be used, but the issue is
that the whistleblower usually faces reprisal." wikilink

A recent audit by the Council of the Great City Schools
revealed that the APS has "... a culture of fear of retribution and
retaliation ..." against whistleblowers, (among others.)

One might suppose that whistle blowing is less risky in the
modern age. They would be supposing that, wrongly.

I intend to write at least a few posts on whistle blowing,
in particular whistle blowing in the APS.

In order to set the piece, I would refer readers to the
Government Accountability Project, Washington DC link

From that site, their mission;

Mission: The Government Accountability Project (GAP)
is a 30-year-old nonprofit public interest group that
promotes government and corporate accountability by
advancing occupational free speech, defending
whistleblowers, and empowering citizen activists.

A recent example of the treatment of whistleblowers by
the leadership of the APS is the story of
APS Accounting Department Director, Lou Anne Boothe
who blew the whistle on a number of problems in the now
thoroughly discredited APS Finance Division,
and who has not been heard from since.

"On Sept. 19, Boothe was placed on administrative leave with pay
90 minutes after sending an e-mail to members of the
Albuquerque Board of Education alerting them of her concerns
about district expenditures of state money." link

And there is of course, my own story of the retribution and
retaliation to which I was subjected, for blowing the whistle
on incompetent and corrupt administrators and board members,
and on the abdication of the leadership of the APS,
as role models of the student standard of conduct.

Allen Weh saw the writing on the wall,

and then pretended it reads something else entirely, link
and canceled the meeting of the NMRP Central Committee.

Allen Weh, rushing headlong into a humiliating ass handing
at the scheduled meeting of the Central Committee, saw the
writing on the wall about his efforts to prevent an amendment
to the NM Republican party rules which would have added
Roberts Rules of Order and Parliamentary procedure to
Republican Party meetings on the state level,
as is the case in Republican Party meetings on the national level.

Parliamentary procedure is a real threat to the kind of
ham fisted leadership that characterized Allen Weh's tenure
as the Chairman of the NM Republican Party.

The fight is postponed, it is not over.

Once upon a time

Do you know the difference between a fairytale and a sea story?

One begins with "Once upon a time",
and the other begins with "This is no shit."

The following is no shit.

I had been told that the administrator that I had locked horns with, was falsifying public records with respect to fire drills at Hoover Middle School. The story, about principals not doing the required number of fire drills became a Larry Barker investigation. Hoover Middle School was given a "D" for failing to follow district policy, state fire code, and state law regarding the number of fire drills which must be conducted on an annual basis.

I went to the Office of Risk Management to inspect and copy the (falsified) public records. The Director of Risk Management was pretty adamant about not surrendering the records, even though the NM Inspection of Public Records Act requires the immediate surrender of immediately available records.

The APS Police were called by the Director and by me.

The APS Police Department is a Praetorian Guard. It is a publicly funded, private police force that reports to the leadership of the APS, and to no one else. The police force is not certificated or accredited by anyone but the leadership of the APS.

Two of them rolled up.

The first thing I did was to insist that they begin recording our discussion. They claimed to have no way of creating an incontrovertible log, either on their person, or in their vehicle(s). And then they made me leave.

Before I left, I asked them to seize the public records in question in order to protect them. In essence they said.
Sorry, but that's just not the way we roll.

Except that they left out the "sorry" part.

The APS senior administrator prepared a statement and filed it with the APS police. It was a sworn statement.

Later, during an arbitration and under oath, he offered testimony which contradicted the written sworn statement.

In fact, neither statement was true.
In reality, only one of two conflicting accounts can be true.
The other is a lie.

If it is not perjury; a fourth degree felony; what is?

The settlement agreement that I signed with APS Modrall
included prohibiting me from taking that incontrovertible
evidence of the commission of a fourth degree felony by a
senior APS administrator, to any agent of law enforcement.

Tax dollars, unwitting taxpayer support of "education", were
used to buy exception to the law, for one of the good ol' boys.

And that's where the story ends. Because
the leadership of the APS is not even accountable to the law.

Right now, they are holding evidence of criminal misconduct
by a whole different set of administrators.

They are currently suppressing evidence of criminal misconduct
involving senior APS administrators in the Peanut Butter Gate
scandal in the APS Police Department.

They are waiting for statutes of limitation to expire,
in order to except another senior APS administrator from
accountability for felony criminal misuse of the BCSO
NCIC data base.

They are not even accountable to the law;
the lowest commonly accepted standard of conduct.

A far lower standard of conduct than
the student standard of conduct;

a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.


They cannot even be held accountable as role models.
They've abdicated, and they refuse to talk about it.

They will not explain, defend, deny, or even acknowledge that
they have excepted themselves from accountability as
role models of the student standard of conduct.

Did APS Modrall spend tax dollars against the public interest?

As part of a settlement agreement between the APS and myself,
I was paid not to take incontrovertible evidence of felony perjury
by a senior APS administrator, to any agency of the law.

In essence, unwitting taxpayer support of "education"
was used to buy exception to the law,
for one of the good ol' boys.

It is one of the situations I am writing about when I write that
the leadership of the APS is not accountable, even to the law.

I think this is spending against the public interest.

I think that it should not happen again.

It is conduct that is prohibited by the standard of conduct
that the leadership of the APS, will enforce upon 89,000
of our sons and daughters, but not upon themselves.

Obviously.

My motives in question

Not that the motive of the questioner
has anything to do with it.

The legitimacy of a question is self evident.

One can't refuse to answer a legitimate question
because they don't approve of the either the questioner
or his motive for asking the question.

In any event, I have two motives.

The first has to do with my training in Character Counts!
It worked.

What ever else, I believe that the leadership of the APS must
subject themselves to honest accountability as role models
of the Pillars of Character Counts! for at least the few hours
that they hold students accountable to that standard.

The second has to do with the concept expressed first by another;

"No debt is too old for an honest man to pay."

First they must be made accountable to a higher standard of
conduct than the law,

and then;

they can be compelled to provide a principled resolution of
my complaints.



I am ashamed of neither motive, and both
have been on the table since the very first day.

Why have there been no consequences in the APS Finance Division?

Why has no one been punished for going along with a system

• that lacked adequate financially sound procedures, and
• that lacked accountability for spending large sums of money, and
• that lacked record keeping complete and adequate enough to send anyone to jail

and not having blown the whistle on the incompetence
and corruption?

Why were they instead,

promoted to more senior positions and given raises in salary
despite their abject failure to protect the public interests
from incompetence and corruption?


To knowingly permit, or negligently allow administrative
incompetence on this scale, and for this long (forever)
is corruption

plain and simple.

Their steadfast refusal to respond

Whether it is apparent or not, I struggle with my side of the
argument.

My side is that;
there is no good and ethical reason for public servants
to stonewall legitimate questions about the public interests.

It is only after a great deal of reflection that I come to the
conclusion that there are only one possible explanation
for refusing to answer; a lack of character and a lack of courage.

I have invited the leadership of the APS, repeatedly,
to lay a another reason on the table, and they will not.

What possible excuse can there be
for not laying that reason on the table,
except that it is indefensible?

If there were any good and ethical reason at all,
why wouldn't they share that good and ethical reason with
stakeholders?

I can accept that there are good and ethical reasons to
refuse to answer some questions,
or some parts of some questions.

I can not think of any good and ethical reason
not to answer one question in particular;

Why won't you answer legitimate questions
candidly, forthrightly, and honestly?

There is no excuse for refusing to answer that particular
question. It is an absolutely fair and reasonable question.

And there is really only one explanation for that refusal;
a lack of character and courage.

If they are so embarrassed by, and so ashamed of,
their answer, that they will not explain, defend, or even
associate themselves with it,

how can that reason, not be an indictment of their character
and their courage?

Their refusal to sit still and answer legitimate questions about
the public interest, candidly, forthrightly and honestly
can only be explained by their lack of character and courage.


Correct me if I'm wrong.

Seriously, correct me if I am wrong.


cc Winston Brooks and
every single member of the Board of Education upon posting.



Robert "the weasel" Lucero was the only one to respond;

Mr. MacQuigg,
Take me off your e-mail list!

Like he's on my email list! ha!

Accountability audit not cost effective?

I am told that an honest and impartial administrative
accountability audit has been rejected by the leadership
of the APS, not because they need to hide their institutional
lack of standards and accountability, but because
it would cost too much.

Let's take a look at the math.

APS' total annual budget is $1.3B.

Salaries constitute $.8B. Spending on salaries is fairly
straightforward with little room for graft.

Leaving $500M vulnerable to graft in a Finance Division
that impartial auditors, Meyners + Co., reported; was/is

• lacking adequate financially sound policies,
• lacking actual accountability to any standards at all, and
• lacking record keeping; complete and accurate enough to send anyone to jail.

An decent audit would cost $150K.

Therefore, if the audit which would effectively end all of the
waste due to incompetence and corruption,
saved more than $150K, it would be cost effective.

$150K is roughly .03 of 1% of $500M.

If corruption and incompetence waste more than .03% of
the annual budget, the audit would save money the first year.

If the waste due to incompetence and corruption amounts to
less than .03% of the budget, the audit would not pay for itself
the first year.

However, the audit is a relatively one time cost,
which would return dividends year, after year, after year.

If 1% is wasted on an annual basis (a conservative estimate)
the district begins to see $5M in savings year after year,
after year.

Not to mention the non-financial rewards; increased efficiency,
increased effectiveness, and increased public confidence.

It would appear to be a no brainer.

The rub;
the consequences for the corrupt, and for the incompetent,
and for those who tolerate and enable their corruption and
incompetence.

And since they are the ones calling the shots in the APS,
guess what, no audit.

No matter how much sense it makes financially,
no matter how badly it is needed for every other reason.


As a point of reference;
the new board room, which is yet to be justified,
cost taxpayers about $1M; more than six times the cost of an
audit.

$1M which would not have been wasted, if there were
administrative accountability verified by at least one honest audit.

Anyone who would care to challenge the math,
is free to do so, anonymously or otherwise,
by means of a comment on this post.

cc Winston Brooks upon posting.

"Winston Brooks is not incompetent,

not crooked and doesn’t countenance that crap."

according to a member of the APS Board of Education.

On the other hand,

Winston Brooks will not present himself to answer legitimate
questions about the public interests in the public schools, ever.

Those two positions are irreconcilable.

The second is the truth.

NMSU's process for finding a new president

Drew the attention of Journal editors this morning. link

Part of the controversy centers on whether or not the names
of finalists will be made public.

The secrecy is necessary to keep the current employers of the
candidates, in the dark about the intentions of their employee.

In other words, we are going to hire an employee who
believes it is alright to deliberately deceive their employer.

How could this possibly go wrong?

Saint Pete not really a saint afterall?

Senator Pete Domenici is basking in adulation of fans at one
get together after another around the state.

Blogger Monahan is the first apparently, not including me,
to point out that not everyone shares in that adulation. link

In my book, if Pete Domenici did anything at all to qualify
for sainthood, it was when he went to Aspen Colorado, and
along with 93 other dignitaries, founded Character Counts!

And then slipped to sinner status when he couldn't summon
the courage to stand up to the APS Board of Education
when they abdicated as role models of the student standard
of conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!, and when they
renounced their personal accountability to that nationally
recognized, accepted and respected code of ethics.

The slide continued when he failed to step up and respond
to allegations that the APS Character Counts! Leadership
Council was nothing more than a sham, formed to take
advantage of a federal grant under Domenici's name.

I hope the history books don't miss that little jewel,
although I will not be surprised when they do.

Saint Domenici?

Not in my book.

Which side is Steve Pearce on?

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

There is a battle between good and evil going on in the
leadership of the Republican Party of New Mexico
and Steve Pearce has not yet picked a side.

When you see a bully beating up a little kid,
you are immediately obligated to pick a side.

If you don't, you have taken the side of the bully.

The bully in the NMRP is Allen Weh et al.

The little kid, would be everyone else in the NMRP
who believes in their right to meaningful participation
in decisions that affect their interests.

The fight is over whether or not there will be parliamentary
rules that level the playing field between the powerful and the powerless.

Allen Weh and the other bullies,
suppose that they make decisions by "the rule of the gavel";
a manifestation of their power over the great unwashed.

Parliamentary procedure, already afforded to Republicans
at the national level, ends the arbitrary and indefensible
rule of the gavel.

There is no more fundamental question.

The most important decision that a group will ever make,
is when they decide on how decisions will be made.
It should also be their first. again,unk

Potentially the next Chairman of the NMRP,
Steve Pearce needs to pick a side.

He needs to stand up in defense of the amendment which
creates Parliamentary Rule to govern party meetings.

If he does not take a stand at all,
then he has take the side of the bullies.

The same can be said for Allen McCullough
and anyone else who aspires to lead the NMRP.

Things are so bad in APS' Finance Division

that our State Auditor must commit sorely needed SAO
auditors to engage and assist in rebuilding
their internal audit division.

Rebuilding, not tweeking, not fixing, not helping, but
rebuilding. There is nothing there now, that can be repaired.
There never has been.

They have never had adequate policies, and
they have never provided adequate accountability, and
they have never kept adequate records; records complete and
accurate enough to send anybody to jail.

They say if you are going to steal money,
keep lousy books.

No one ever went to jail for keeping lousy books,
even on more than a billion tax dollars a year.


Things are so bad in the APS Financial Division, that their
internal audits will be sent directly to the SAO and to the PED.

Things are so bad in the APS Financial Division, that the
SAO has implemented the most aggressive referral system
including local, state, and federal enforcement authorities
for investigation of criminal misconduct.

Things are so bad in the APS Financial Division, that
they had to promote two departmental employees,
who never blew the whistle on the irregularities in the division, to positions from which a cover up could be mounted;
Chief Financial Officer and Director of Internal Audits.

Things are so bad in the APS Financial Division, that
Winston Brooks had to fire the Director of Internal Audits
barely a month after vetting him for, and promoting him to that position.

Things are so bad in the APS Financial Division, that
Winston Brooks will not answer legitimate questions
about the division, candidly, forthrightly, and honestly.

Not even about the criminal misconduct.

Not even about how many tax dollars have gone missing.


How bad must things really be ?

That Winston Brooks cannot look into stakeholders' eyes
and tell them the simple truth?

"Re-Election of PRC Chairman Jason Marks a Public Financing Success Story"

So reads the headline on a post at Democracy for New Mexico
link

The author writes;

"Public campaign financing is one of the most powerful tools in the movement towards better government transparency, improved ethics and increased accountability of elected officials to the citizenry."

I take issue with "movement toward".

Ethics and accountability are not steps in a journey.
They are a singular point; you either are or you're not,
there are no half way points, you cannot be "on your way" there.

There is either inescapable accountability to unequivocal standards, or there is not.
There is inescapable accountability to unequivocal standards,
and there is the "also ran".

If anyone suggests that they are at some halfway point,
that they are on a journey,
it is only to draw attention off of the reality which is;
they are not willing to take the plunge entirely.

• They are not willing to establish higher standards of conduct and competence, and
• they are not willing to be held honestly accountable to those standards
  

Get back to me please, when they actually step off the curb.