APS "average" Halleluiah

APS Supt Winston Brooks and
the Journal, link, are pleased
as punch to report that APS
isn't the worst school district
in the country.

Brooks is "ecstatic" that APS,
while failing 2 kids out of 3,
isn't doing any worse job than
"similar" districts.

The testing that pleased Brooks and the Journal so much, revealed;

APS performed better than average in fourth-grade math, with 34 percent of students scoring “proficient” or better on the NAEP test. For all large cities combined, the percentage was 30 percent. That difference is statistically significant, ..."

While the difference between a failure rate of 66% is "statistically' significantly better than school districts which fail 70%, I fail to see anything to get excited about - we're still failing two kids out of three.

Brooks admits being "ecstatic" that for "the first time APS has been able to compare itself to districts with similar demographics and challenges. “I think it’s very instructive to know.”

Ok, so it's instructive to know we're not failing worse than most.

We're still failing.




photo Mark Bralley

Winter stonewalling, and breaking the law.

APS Chief Operating Officer Brad Winter doesn't want to tell the truth about the spending on APS new board room.

I've been trying to get the truth out of him for years.

At the District Goals Meeting at Manzano High School on Thursday November 17th, I called him out again and he promised to surrender the truth, but only if I filed a formal request for public records.

I did, the following morning.

According to the law; the NM Inspection of Public Records Act, the records must be surrendered within 15 calendar days of the request. That would be have been Friday last; maybe Saturday depending on whether the day of request counts or not.

APS is in violation of the law.

I could sue for the records of course; take on APS lawyers with their unlimited budget for litigating exception to the law for APS senior administrators and board members. But why should I have to?

It's our board room, it's our money. The truth about the spending of public resources belongs to the people.

I shouldn't have to sue to see it.

Nobody should.




photo Mark Bralley

Another budgeting snafu in the APS

The Journal comes with a report, linkless; the district comes with its own report, link, and taxpayers find there's a $128M gap between the capital improvements the district has promised, and the money they actually have to complete them.

According to APS,

There is no evidence of incompetency or inappropriate behavior, so there’s no individual to blame.

Rather,

"a perfect storm of the events ... caused the need for readjustment."

According to the Journal,

"the Albuquerque school district has a $128 million gap in its capital program due to overspending, accounting errors and the economy, ..."

The Journal offers;

Many problems found in the report stemmed from failure to adjust the master plan when circumstances changed. For example, the plan was not updated in 2002 when a bond question was defeated by voters. It was also not adjusted when projects ran over budget or when capital money was spent on projects outside the master plan.

Those who aren't responsible, APS Chief Operating Officer Brad Winter, and Chief Financial Officer Don Moya, just finished seven public meetings where they presented the successes enjoyed by their capital planners and the Finance Department and no mention was made of the report, 18 months in the making.

New District Goals to be presented

The agenda for the December 7 School Board Meeting has been posted at last, link.

On the agenda; a presentation
by Supt Winston Brooks.

They're calling it;

Preliminary Input and Consideration of Approval for Plan from Community Meetings Regarding District Goals (Discussion/Action) Presenter: Winston Brooks, Superintendent

This is where the leadership of the APS presents the conclusions they drew from seven meetings on seven nights in seven different corners of the district.

This is where we see what a couple of million dollars a year worth of APS senior leadership is worth. This is where their mettle is tested.

I can't wait to hear Winston Brooks tell us how important communications are; or in the alternative, not use the word at all. He's between a rock and a hard place; on the one side, the need to utter all the usual and meaningless platitudes about the importance of establishing communication with stakeholders, and his other side, his manifest denial of due process for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication Petition. Ouch.

Noteworthy; the only public notice about the planned presentation, the agenda, was published at the last moment. Noteworthy; they are not proudly promoting their presentation; encouraging attendance rather than discouraging it.

I will be kept out of the meeting and away from the public forum by officers in APS' publicly funded private police force. They will be obeying their own corrupt leadership and enforcing Marty Esquivel's unlawful restraining order.

If you cannot attend in person, you can watch the meeting live, link, in real time. Real time for meeting goers means 5pm, earlier if you want to sign up for the public forum.

If you can't watch it live, you'll have to wait a few days for them to push the button that makes the web-stream available as an archive.




photos Mark Bralley

APS Communications Department

There is racial tension at Highland High School.

If you google racial tension at Highland High School, you will
find it made the news, link.

If you search racial tension at Highland High School on APS'
award- winning website, link, you will find nothing at all.

... just saying.

Administrative and executive conduct and competence, in the APS

Whether the Albuquerque Public Schools succeeds or fails to adequately educate nearly 90,000 of our sons and daughters, depends on a number of factors some of which we can control and others we must simply accept.

One we can control, and one which consumes the overwhelming majority of spending on education, is human resources.

If the spending of human resources is done well, if there are meaningful standards and real accountability to them, the likelihood of succeeding educationally increases exponentially.

There are really only two aspects of the spending of human resources that affect the outcome;

the standards that apply to their spending, and
actual accountability to those standards.

There must be both. If there is no accountability, there isn't one whit of difference between the highest of standards and the lowest, in terms of outcome. And, if the standards are not high enough to ensure success, then even honest accountability to them makes the same, not one whit of difference.

If we want to predict the likelihood of APS administrators and board members actually fixing problems, we have to look to the standards and accountability which apply to their public service.

I suspect that an impartial examination of the standards that apply to APS administrators and board members would find them average; written by lawyers whose interests lie in mitigating their client's actual and future accountability to any meaningful standards of conduct and competence.

Whether the standards of conduct and competence that apply to administrators and board members are adequate, is not a rhetorical question. Nor is it impossible to measure empirically.

It requires only impartial investigation and reporting.

A good start would be for the leadership of the APS to simply answer the questions about the standards that apply to the leadership of the APS, by posting on their award winning website; a candid, forthright and honest list of every standard of conduct and competence that applies to them.

Then, let's look at their honest accountability to even the lowest of those standards.

Under their list of the standards that apply to them, they could identify all the processes under which allegations of failure to meet those standards, can be filed. They won't, but they could.

They won't because even the slightest scrutiny of them will reveal; there is no place within the entire APS, where the least powerful stakeholders can file a legitimate complaint against an administrator or board member and expect due process for their complaint.

There is no place in the entire APS where the complaint will not be adjudicated by someone who is clearly impartial, having no interest in the outcome of the adjudication. For example, a complaint filed against Supt Winston Brooks is adjudicated by a subordinate.

There is no place in the entire APS where adjudication does not include the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The School Board recently struck language from School Board Policy that had provided due process for whistle blower complaints, and now they have none.

If there is not honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, under a system that is beyond undue influence, and powerful enough to hold even the most senior administrator or board member accountable, even against their will, all of the time,then there is honest accountability none of the time.

That they will neither post their standards nor defend their processes (for accountability to them), speaks to their fundamental unwillingness to be held honestly accountable for their conduct and competence,

and to their failure to adequately educate those 90,000 of this community's sons and daughters.

Super SAC is a sham

The Journal reports that students on the Superintendent's Student Advisory Council are "Partners in Policy", link.

The gist, if you believe education reporter Hailey Heinz, is that students are actually participating in decision making that affects their interests.

I don't believe it for a minute, but let's assume, for the sake of argument, students do actually have a voice. Questions are begged;

• Why do students have a voice, but their teachers don't?
• Why do students have a voice, but their parents don't?
• Why do students have a voice, but taxpayers don't?

There is no Teachers Advisory Council, there is no Parents Advisory Council, and there is no Community Advisory Council (witness the denial of due process for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication's Petition for standing).

Students and Brooks may well enjoy their little confabs, but if students think they have any more of a voice than their teachers, their parents and their community, they are sadly mistaken.

It is a sham.

Letter to the editors, upon posting.

APS School Board; best in the state!

The Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education attended
the New Mexico School Boards Association Annual Convention, Friday and Saturday last.

They were voted the Best School Board in the state, link, due in part, to, "... the board’s diligence to continually seek community input ..."

Those who laud the APS School Board on their diligence to continually seek community input, were either unaware of, or did not care about the board's efforts to stifle community input through efforts that run the gamut from a paucity of public forums, through prohibiting the asking of questions at forums, to arresting people for holding posters in peaceful protest of the board's denial of due process to a legitimate petition for standing for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication.

Those who gave the board an award for "seeking community input" are ignorant or corrupt; ignorant seems the likely culprit. How would they know what really goes on at board meetings?

They certainly wouldn't have been able to read about it in the Journal which has yet to investigate and report upon even one of the outrages perpetrated by the board on free speech and the right to petition one's government. Nor have they reported upon any of the other ongoing outrages including;

• denial of due process to whistleblower complaints, nor
• the cover up of public corruption in the leadership of their publicly funded private police force, nor
• their abandonment of their responsibilities and obligations as role models of the student standards of conduct, the Pillars of Character Counts!, nor on
  
• the board and leadership's ongoing refusal to hold themselves honestly accountable to their own Code of Ethics.

The Board was also recognized for raising graduation rates, though they did so mostly by making what was a four year plan into a five year plan, and by dropping the students least likely to graduate from their calculations, link.

Marty Esquivel and Paula Maes were the only board members who were not recognized for, and were not given Leadership Development Awards, indicating perhaps, a shred of legitimacy in that process.

I hope the board shares their accolades with their crony Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz, without who's aiding and abetting, he would not have even been considered for positive recognition.

Walz is seen here before the NM Foundation for Open Government Awards Banquet giving APS Supt Winston Brooks the formerly prestigious Dixon Award for heroes of transparency while Brooks was, and is, busily hiding the Caswell Report on corruption in the leadership of the APS Police Force, from public knowledge.

Just another example of the good ol' boys slapping each other on the back and giving each other awards they have not earned and do not deserve, and turning a blind eye to each others shortcomings, failures and naked corruption.




frame grab Mark Bralley

Editors call out Armenta and APS

The Journal editors have pounded out an editorial, link, in which they wonder aloud; "Why are Burping and Cash a Crime in the APS?"

The editorial is manifestly dishonest or, it is based on their genuine belief that a student was actually put in jail for nothing more than burping.

It is within their power and responsibility to actually investigate the facts; to ferret out the public records created between the burp and the slamming of a jail cell door. If there was an assault and battery in there somewhere, shouldn't it be part of the story?

They complain that APS Executive Director of Communications and Crisis Manager Monica Armenta (APS) has yet to comment on the lawsuit "... which raises troubling allegations ..." but not troubling enough, apparently, to warrant a real investigation and reporting.

The public record of the actual arrest is held by the city, not APS. A Journal reporter could get a copy if they thought it (the truth; the whole truth and nothing but the ethically redacted truth) was important.

Armenta did comment actually; telling the Journal a few days earlier, link; she "... had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment."

"Could not" being the fly in the ointment. (Ignore for the time being, the premise that APS' Crisis Manager "has not seen" a lawsuit that will affect APS' image so dramatically.)

APS administrators and board members routinely pretend that the law "prohibits" them from standing and delivering candid, forthright and honest answers to legitimate questions about the public interests and about their public service.

When Armenta was a presenter at District Goal Setting Meetings, she often told citizens that she was not allowed to respond to their legitimate questions.

When Board Members hold public forums, they claim they're not allowed to respond to questions asked in public forum.

Not allowed? by whom? each other?

The editors argue;

"... when you are funded by taxpayer dollars and accountable to the public you owe them a full explanation ..."

They continued;

"The “P” in APS stands for public. District officials owe students, parents and taxpayers a complete accounting ..."

So how do you explain the fact that the Journal editors are ignoring the dispute over the petition for standing for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication?

If the editors really want a complete accounting of the spending of the public trust and treasure, why aren't they standing in support of an earnest effort to do exactly that?

Why won't they write an editorial in support of the petitioners and their petition; why won't they decry the board's months long denial of due process?

Why won't they call the the board out for;

• denying due process to hundreds of whistle blower complaints, or
• hiding the Caswell Report on public corruption in the leadership of APS' police force,
• their unlawful restraining order banning dissidence at public forums at school board meetings, and arresting a half dozen petitioners for holding posters in a peaceful petition of their grievance against their school board.
  

Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz and School Board Member Marty Esquivel are tight. The two of them managed to bamboozle the NM Foundation for Open Government's Board of Directors into giving APS Supt Winston Brooks their formerly prestigious Dixon Award, while was and still is, refusing to surrender an ethically redacted version of the Caswell Report to public knowledge, and refusing to explain, defend, or even acknowledge his refusal.

The integrity of the editorial staff is damaged by their failure to acknowledge the appearance of a conflict of interest in Walz deciding what truths about Esquivel and Brooks, get investigated and reported upon.

An honest investigation and report upon ethics and accountability in the leadership of the APS, including but not limited to the denial of due process to a legitimate citizen petition, would go a long way to restore their integrity.

In the meantime, the editors doth protest too much
about the wrong things.

cc the editors upon posting.




frame grab Mark Bralley

Brandenburg still waiting on APS

The simple truth is that a number of APS senior administrators committed a number of felonies. No one in the leadership of the APS, or their lawyers, has ever, or will ever, deny that simple fact. Nor will they surrender to public knowledge; the Caswell Report on an independent investigation of the corruption, and which names the names of APS senior administrators who broke the law.

Nor will they deny; the only investigation of felony criminal misconduct in the leadership of the APS Police Force was done by the leadership of the APS Police Force itself.

Nor will they deny; they have never surrendered any evidence of felony criminal misconduct to District Attorney Kari Brandenburg for her determination whether to prosecute APS senior administrators.

In early 2008, nearly a year after the scandal was exposed on the front page of the Sunday Journal, link, I asked Brandenburg for any public record the showed that APS had surrendered one shred of the evidence they collected. She refused, so I filed a complaint with the NM AGO.

In response to the complaint, Brandenburg wrote to the Attorney General's Office on February 19, 2008, and told their investigator that she didn't have to surrender those records because doing so "... would compromise the integrity of the ongoing investigation and prosecution of the case."

In August of that year, she gave us an update;

The investigation is ongoing & being reviewed. It will take months before we make any decisions, as it is complex and we are working on many other things, too.

Four years later, she's still investigating, link, and the evidence of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators is still secret from public knowledge.

Statutes of limitation on the felonies have or soon will expire.

She once admitted, in public and on the record, that APS hasn't surrendered any evidence of felony criminal misconduct, and she was powerless to compel them to do so.

Apparently so is the Attorney General, link.

So which is it; Is Brandenburg investigating, or just sitting around waiting for the leadership of the APS to surrender evidence of their own felony criminal misconduct?

And why won't the Journal investigate and report upon what's going on?




photo Mark Bralley

Character Counts!; failure to launch

In 1994, the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education adopted standards of conduct for students; and by logical extension, for adults. They adopted the standards unanimously. The standards of conduct for students have not changed since;

Students are expected to model and promote
the Pillars of Character Counts!

This is not about Character Counts!, link, a nationally recognized, accepted and respected model for character education. The failure to launch character education in the Albuquerque Public Schools would include every other model for character education that required adults to hold themselves honestly accountable as role models; any model that required their honest accountability to the same standards of conduct they enforce upon students.

At one point, the standards of conduct that applied to the leadership of the APS had a role modeling clause. It read;

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

They removed the clause from their code of conduct,
rather than be held accountable to it in litigation against them.

The Pillars of Character Counts! play, not because they are the only standards, or even because they are the best. They play because they are the standards the Board specifically and expressly adopted and because they are currently cited in School Board Policy.

If the leadership of the APS wants to change the standards of conduct for students, then let's have that open and honest public discussion.

You may wonder why the leadership of the APS won't talk about student standards of conduct and their obligations as role models for students, of honest accountability to those standards.

They're willing to tell children that George Washington's example of holding one's self honestly accountable their conduct is worthy of emulation, but they're not willing to show kids what it looks like. Character and courage are taught by example; they are taught only by example.

Long ago, School Board Member David Robbins put the role modeling clause on the agenda in a policy committee meeting. David Peercy tabled it until it finally disappeared (in violation of Roberts Rules and School Board Policy).

Co-incidentally, Robbins turned his back on his commitment and obligation to fight to hold board members and administrators accountable as role models; not a peep.

Robbins is no longer willing to insist that the leadership hold themselves honestly accountable to the Pillars of Character Counts!; as reasonable standards of conduct for students and for them.

He has abandoned the Pillars of Respect, Responsibility and Trustworthiness as his personal standards as a Board Member and senior role model of APS Student Standards of Conduct. Now he embraces the manhandling of peaceful protesters calling him out on his public service, link.

In a conversation with School Board Member David Robbins, long ago, I ventured that there are only two reasons why the leadership of the APS won't hold themselves honestly accountable as role models of the Pillars of Character Counts!; a lack of courage and/or, a lack of character. He agreed.

If there is a third reason; any reason beside cowardice and corruption, that the leadership of the APS will not step up as role models of the Pillars of Character Counts!, I cannot imagine it, and no one, and I mean no one, in the leadership of the APS has suggested what it might be.

The proof; they will not communicate openly and honestly about executive and administrative standards of conduct, nor about their obligations as role models for students, staff and community.

Character Counts! failed to launch in the APS, because we couldn't find a single board member or administrator willing to hold themselves honestly accountable as a role model of accountability to the Pillars of Character Counts!, not even for the few hours a day they hold students accountable to them.

Not one.

Character counts, apparently, only for kids.




photo Mark Bralley

More oversight failure

The people's power and resources are not held by the people. Control over both must be surrendered to government. Because that power and those resources can be expected to corrupt those who spend them, absolutely, oversight is necessary. Without oversight, we have only "trust" in politicians and public servants, to protect our power and resources from being squandered, stolen, or abused.

It is impractical to expect "the people" to provide oversight on a day to day basis. The government has to oversee itself. When government fails to provide adequate oversight, it is no small thing. The failure of oversight, promised and not delivered, is fundamental to the persistence of public corruption and incompetence. It is part and parcel to the cultures of corruption and incompetence in government.

Accountability (read; oversight) is fatal to public corruption and incompetence. 100% accountability is 100% fatal.

Consider the Police Oversight Commission; it is a perfect example of supposed oversight over the wielding of power entrusted to public servants.

In the Journal this morning, link, we read about an investigation that found; though it is supposed to have nine members (nominated by City Councilors and appointed by the Mayor) the POC has only seven, and that even those are not even properly trained and educated."

We trusted "the government" to protect our power and resources from abuse and now we find "it" failed.

It's fair, I think, to blame
Mayor Richard Berry, for
the problems on the POC.

In response to the issues of
under representation and
training, he offers;
“I would always recommend
... more training, especially
for something like this;
it’s critical.”

His recommendation strikes me as too little and too late.

There has already been a failure of oversight, and the buck stops on his desk.

The buck touches down on another desk on the way to Berry's, and that is the desk of POC Chairwoman Bambi Folk, who, surprise, surprise, "... could not be reached for comment."




photo Mark Bralley

Student goes to jail for burping?

On the front page of the Journal today, link, we are led to believe a student was sent to jail for burping.

I'll bet there's more to the story than; kid burps, kid goes to jail.

Little light is shed on the incident by APS Executive Director of Communications and Crisis Manager Monica Armenta who told the Journal, she "hasn't seen the lawsuit and can't comment."

There's something else that Monica Armenta hasn't seen and can't comment on; APS' efforts to control chronically disruptive students before they "burp" and then get hauled off to jail.

She cannot show you the district's Student Discipline Philosophy, because there isn't one. There is not one shared philosophical underpinning for any of APS' discipline policies. There is not even agreement on whether to "punish" deliberate misconduct. The result is a discipline policy of virtually unlimited second chances followed by frustration driven overreaction.

Student discipline problems stem failure to shape behavior before it becomes misbehavior. Yet Armenta can't show you any district wide effort to prevent student misconduct by developing good character in students. The lack of preparation leads to "last straw", "last nerve" overreactions to relatively insignificant misconduct.

She cannot show you a meaningful proactive approach to dealing with student discipline, behavior and character development.

She cannot, or will not, put together a PowerPoint presentation on student discipline in the APS. APS Supt Winston Brooks will not defend his failure to make improving student discipline a district goal, nor why he will not have a public meeting goal setting meeting on student discipline.

Why not?

Because neither Armenta, nor Brooks, nor anyone else in the leadership of the APS wants to have to explain to you, why the leadership is will not hold themselves accountable as role models of the standards they create and enforce upon students. She can't, or won't, tell you why APS has no role modeling clause in their own standards of conduct. Or, why they removed the one they did have that read;

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

They won't have a public meeting because Armenta can't explain to you, why a kid goes to jail for "burping" and Supt Winston Brooks can commit a public assault and battery, link, and doesn't even get written up for it.

Not even by the Journal.




photo Mark Bralley

Charter School salaries are up on APS' award winning website.

When Winston Brooks and the Journal were celebrating "Brooks'" online publication of APS employee salaries, link, they tried to cast Charter Schools in a negative light for not having beaten them to the punch, link.

Well, less than three weeks later, Charter Schools salaries are posted, link, and neither Brooks nor the Journal editors uttered one word of acknowledgement that Charter School salaries were posted in a timely manner and that, the Charters weren't dragging their feet after all.

Another school board running amok.

The Rio Grande Sun comes with a piece, link, on more public school leadership running amok.

In a nutshell, APS Supt Winston Brooks' counterpart in the Española Public Schools, link, just like Winston Brooks, wants to control the spin on the truth about the public interests in the public schools. She, like he, thinks it is up to her to decide which truths will and will not be shared with the people who own them.

Española Public Schools Supt Evelyn Maruska would like control access by requiring Sun reporters to submit their questions in advance, for her to "approve or disapprove".

Sun News Editor Lou Mattei pointed out that if the Supt is allowed to approve or disapprove questions,

"... no one would know some students in the District were still without textbooks, that the District had not been reimbursed for over $300,000 in improper federal Title III expenses, or that a BB gun was brought onto an elementary school campus."

It begs a question; from where exactly, does the superintendent of the Española Public Schools, get the authority to approve or disapprove questions about the public interests or about her public service?

The only answer I can think of is; she gets it from the same place Winston Brooks gets the authority to hide from public knowledge and criminal prosecution, evidence of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators; with his de facto "disapproval" of questions about the Caswell Report.




She gets it from the same place School Board Member Marty Esquivel gets the authority to create a "banning letter" against dissidence and deploy APS' publicly funded private police force to enforce it.

They usurp it.



The usurpation will not go unnoticed in Española because they have a Managing Editor Robert B Trapp, who is manifestly ready, willing and able to investigate and report upon the spending of public power and resources in the public schools and the executive and administrative abuse of privilege and power.

Citizens in Albuquerque, unfortunately, do not.

Instead of investigating and reporting on the cover up of corruption the Journal first exposed, link, our managing editor Kent Walz gives out hero of transparency awards instead, for covering it up, link.





photos, Walz and Trapp frame-grabs Mark Bralley

APS success story

For the second time in three years and for the fifth time in a decade or so, APS' Nursing Program, link, at the Career Enrichment Center, link, has seen 100% of a graduating class pass their national licensing exam on the first try, link.

They can be rightfully proud of completing a "rigorous" two year training, and especially proud of their graduating class, all of whom passed a test hard enough to fail more than one in seven nationally.

They have three to four times as many applicants for the program every year, as they have openings.

I have never understood why we can't offer the same kind of opportunity to all of the non-college students. Why are we still denying all those students real "vocational" training, and expecting them instead, to devote their energy to preparing for NCLB tests instead of preparing for life?

That, or drop out entirely.

Pounding, and the law

There is an old trial lawyers’ saying, link,

“When the facts are on your side, pound the facts.
When the law is on your side, pound the law.
When neither is on you side, pound the table.”

It occurs to me, there is another kind of pounding that goes on when ethics are not in play;

When neither the law, nor the facts are on your side,
pound on the complainant.

It is the kind of law practiced by the leadership of the APS by and through their lawyers.

Proof? The Council of the Great City Schools Audit found;

"... a culture of fear of retribution and retaliation ..." against complainants.

A culture!

Not an isolated incident, not a pocket of, not an occasional lapse into; they found that the "the total of the inherited ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge which are transmitted and reinforced" by the leadership of the APS created (and still create) a culture of fear over the filing of complaints against corrupt and incompetent administrators.

Willful ignorance on the board

First they ignore you,

then they laugh at you,
then they fight you,
then you win.

Mohandas Gandhi

I am given to believe that APS Board Member Lorenzo Garcia said, the reason he is part of a denial of due process for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication Petition, is that he has never seen it (or words to that effect). I wasn't there, in accordance with Marty Esquivel's unlawful "banning letter" and APS' award winning website has no archive of committee meetings. I have been misinformed; I will bow to the controverting truth.

If Lorenzo Garcia really has not seen the petition; after it was presented to the board during a public forum, and after it was copied and distributed to board members at least once (my bet is twice) by the board staff, then a question is begged; why not?

Before anyone runs for the board, they are asked if they have time enough to do the job; to read the paperwork the board staff hands them to read.

If a board member is too busy to read the paperwork put before him, if he is too busy to read the paperwork placed in his lap in public and on the record, is he too busy to serve?

If Garcia has not been too busy, then has he been too ... what?

too distracted?
too overwhelmed?
too confused?
too misguided?
too complacent?

too complicit?

The window of opportunity to claim legitimate ignorance has closed; they have had their noses rubbed in it too many times in public and on the record, to continue to claim they've never seen it. Their ignorance at this point, is manifestly willful.

They can't laugh at the petition, because it is legitimate on its face.

They have only left to fight it, and that's a fight the people will win.




photo Mark Bralley

Houston pulls APS cop's commission

Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston, according to the Journal, link, has revoked his commission for an APS police officer.

In an environment where "... violent outbursts from students have increased in frequency and intensity" an APS police officer is accused of making an "unacceptable choice" in handcuffing a student who was out of control and violent.

We don't know the whole truth about what happened that day, and it is likely we never will, given APS' modus operandi in dealing with inconvenient truth.

Apparently Bernalillo County Sheriff Dan Houston agreed with APS Supt Winston Brooks' calculation that the officer's actions were beyond the pale, no matter the circumstances. He pulled the commission he gave the APS police officer, that gave her authority as a "police officer".

Houston did not pull the commission of APS' (in secretly promoted) Chief of Police Steve Tellez, who gave the order and set the example for the use of force to remove peaceful protestors, for holding up posters in the background of a public meeting.

Unlike the officer who handcuffed the autistic student, Tellez had a lot of time to think before deciding what he was going to do when he was ordered to remove peaceful protesters. There was no threat of any imminent harm to anyone or anything.

It wasn't confusion, or anxiety, or ignorance that guided Tellez, it was a deliberate plan they had a long time to hatch.

Tellez is far more deserving of a revocation of his commission than some poor cop, in over her head in a poorly defined situation.

Yet Houston isn't going to do anything about Tellez' use force to stifle dissent, anymore than he is going to do anything about the fact that Tellez is hiding evidence of the felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators using Sheriff's Department computers, link. Just like the Journal.

For (indefensible) reasons of their own, Kent Walz and the Journal aren't going to investigate and report on Tellez' unjustified use of force on peaceful protestors, and they're not going to investigate and report upon Tellez' suppression of evidence in a felony criminal case. They are happy to "investigate" and report upon some poor cop caught in the middle of a situation far beyond her control.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?




photos Mark Bralley

Pepper spray in schools counts as a vegetable.

I find this image of peaceful protestors being maced by their government in response for exercising their Constitutionally protected human right to free speech; profoundly disturbing.

Perhaps we should count ourselves as lucky, that despite the fact that they are using force to eject people from school board meetings for asking questions, APS' Praetorian Guard has not yet begun macing them.

Given the cover they get from the Kent Walz and the Journal, the encouragement they get from APS' leadership, and the tacit approval they're getting from the Sheriff who grants them the authority they are abusing, it cannot be ruled out as a tactic to be employed when it suits their interests.