Think of learning experiences as stepping stones ...

Think of public school education as stepping stones
in a body of water students must cross
in order to graduate with meaningful certifications.

There are more stepping stones than any one student could step on if they had GPS, Google Map and stayed in school forever.  More stepping stones are added every moment.

Our current approach is to gather up to 30 or more kids with nothing more in common than their age and the neighborhood they live in, and then make them on step on the same stones, all at the same time, for 12 or more years.

Even if you could make kittens jump
from stone to stone in unison, (think Fantasia)
why would you want to?
What purpose does it serve?
except to waste time and annoy the pig, link.

Where are we going to draw the line on student self selection of learning experiences?  Do they have to step on the same stones we did; and the ones our parents stepped on?  Or, can they pick their own stones as long as they're moving in the right direction at an appropriate overall speed?

All that matters is adequate progress toward a worthy goal.

The responsibility of educators is to provide as many kinds of stepping stones as there are kinds of learners and numbers of questions;  It is their responsibility to teach learners how to tell the sound from the unsound stones.

And then, make sure they don't slip off one
because no one's paying attention.

Will the Journal cover the APS School Board election?

I submit; if you search Journal archives, you will find a profound lack of coverage of APS School Board elections.  In particular, there is a profound lack of coverage of the issues of ethics, standards and accountability for senior administrators and school board members.

I have run for the board twice. Part of the reason I run, is an effort to get the truth on the table for open and honest public discussion.  I expect that a bonafide candidate should be able to count on the press, the Journal, to get out an absolutely legitimate message.

The messages is; there is an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS.

By which I mean; the standards of conduct and competence that apply to senior administrators and school board members are either or both of inadequate and practically unenforceable.

That allegation is founded or it is not.
It makes a difference whether it is founded.

If it is founded, there is public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.
It makes a difference if there is.

There is no better foundation for this allegation than the public record.  The public record includes meaningful standards of conduct and competence, or it does not.  The record demonstrates honest and actual accountability to those standards, or it does not.

The public record of the leadership of the APS includes involvement in felony criminal misconduct and cover up.  The senior administration and school board are hiding the public records of public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of their publicly funded private police force.

Tax dollars ostensibly destined to educate nearly 90,000 of this community's sons and daughters, are being used instead to underwrite cost is no object "legal" efforts to hide those and others from public knowledge.


As an example; there are findings of investigations of allegations of criminal and civil misconduct involving senior administrators and school board members.  A few such, are the investigations conducted subsequent to the 2006-7 scandal in the leadership of APS' publicly funded private police force, link.  Investigations like the Caswell Reports I and II.

Those findings are public records of the spending of public resources and the wielding of public power.  Yet they are being hidden.  The "how" of the hiding involves spending without any real oversight on legal weaselry in an effort to hide the records in the personal best interests of the members of the leadership of the APS.  The "why do you need to hide the ethically redacted truth" never gets answered.


Proof;

APS police report to Brad Winter

ask APS Interim Supt Brad Winter, why the district will not produce the ethically redacted findings of all investigations into allegations of felony criminal misconduct involving the leadership of the APS police force and other senior administrators.

Not "how" they are able to hide them, but rather
"why" to they need to.

This where the Journal is supposed to come in.  You have to wonder, why not?

The democracy needs to know the truth about the spending of public resources and power.  The press is obliged to inform it.  The press enjoys Constitutional protection of their efforts to inform it, because it is so important that they do inform it.

The Journal is obliged to inform it.
KRQE, KOAT, and KOB TV are obliged to inform it.

Through two school board elections and a number of mill levy and bond issue elections, the Journal has steadfastly refused to tell interest and stakeholders the truth about the corruption in the leadership of the APS Police force, senior administration, and school board.

The APS School Board is right now, spending untold hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-viable litigation in order to not produce ethically redacted public records of their public service.

This not just the problems in the leadership of their police force.
It is every finding of every investigation and audit they could ever hide.

According to the school board's own code of ethics, link. a code they frankly admit is absolutely unenforceable; the board is required to;

1.  Make the education and well-being of students 
the basis for all decision making.

On what basis are the education and well-being of students served by hiding the truth about senior administrative and executive misconduct?

Why are they hiding the ethically redacted truth about the public interests and their public service?

Why won't the APS credentialed media ask Brad Winter "why?"  Why won't they ask school board enforcer Mary Esquivel, why?

Except that they are all in cahoots, they are all complicit.




photo Mark Bralley

Journal Winter stroking continues unabated

In the Journal this morning, link, another testimonial in support of Interim APS Supt Brad Winter.  Journal coverage of Winter's ascendency is manifestly one sided.  It amounts to journalistic malpractice.

In normal circumstances, one might ask, who cares if the people who run the Journal take care of the people who run the APS?

These are not normal circumstances;

• there are three school board members to elect, and shortly thereafter;

• there is a new superintendent to be hired

How can administrative and executive ethics, standards and accountability not be on the table for open and honest public discussion?  How can the Journal wantonly deny the democracy the truth upon which it absolutely relies?

Except that the people who run the Journal and the people who run the APS, would rather that their ethics, standards and accountability not be on the table for open and honest public discussion; except that they would rather no one know,

1. how inadequate are their standards and 
2. how inadequate is their accountability to those standards?

The people who run the Journal and the people who run the APS would rather have stake and interest holders believe;

the findings of such an examination and review would be positive.  

Think about that for a moment.

If the findings would be positive; why don't they pay to have them found?  If for a few tens of thousands of dollars, it could be demonstrated that

the leadership of the APS has protected the public interests in the public schools by means of actual, honest senior administrative and executive accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence, 

they would be the best tens of thousands of dollars they ever spent.

What better way to get voters to support a bond issue or mill levy than proof that power and resources will be spend by politicians and public servants who are actually and honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct within their public service?

Clearly, those would not be the findings. 

The findings would be that senior administrators and school board members are not really accountable even to the law, for a variety of reasons.  They routinely engage in expensive litigation and legal weaselry, against the public interests in their effort to except themselves from the law and the consequences of breaking it.

The findings would be that senior APS administrators and school board members as a matter of practice, trade operational dollars for their personal immunity, scrubbing their names from settlements of complaints of even felony criminal misconduct.

Will he model and promote the
Pillars of Character Counts!
or not?  Any answer except yes,
means no.

All Brad Winter has to do to refute the allegation that he is only barely accountable, maybe, even to the law, is to point to the place and the process in which and by which, he is.

He is at this very moment, spending operational dollars in non-viable litigation to keep ethically redacted public records of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators and the leadership of their publicly funded private police force under his oversight, hidden from public knowledge.

An independent examination and review of APS senior administrative and executive ethics, standards and accountability would settle the question at once and for all.

It is time to pick a side; for or against an immediate standards and accountability examination and review; immediate as in; in time for the school board election and before the next superintendent is given another golden parachute.

"Against" the examination and review we will have;

the people who run the credentialed media and
the people who run the APS.

In favor of an examination and review count;

likely every interest and stakeholder who hears or reads about it.

Therein lies the rub; ... stake and interest holders who hear or read about it.

There is an abject lack of establishment's media investigation and reporting upon credible allegations and evidence of an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS and an immediate solution to that crisis.

Abject; and utterly indefensible.




photo Mark Bralley 

Brad Winter double dips in Journal well

The APS superintendent is accustomed having at their disposal, a monthly column in the Journal.  Interim APS Supt Brad Winters got two in two days link, and link.  They did not find space to publish the ruminations of Robby Robertson, link on the subject of Brad Winters' hire.   Just sayin'.

Absent from Journal coverage of Winter, is Winter's response when they ask him for a candid, forthright and honest accounting of out of control spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd under his oversight.

Auditors found inadequate standards, inadequate accountability to inadequate
  standards, and poor record keeping; the trifecta for embezzlement and fraud.
.

Absent as well, Winter's response when the Journal asks Winter why the district will not produce ethically redacted public records of findings of investigations of corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS police force under Winter's direct oversight.

Why will the Journal ask for neither?

Why will the Journal not investigate and report upon a manifestly obvious ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS?

They're getting ready to hire a new APS superintendent and nobody wants to talk about standards and accountability.

I can understand why school board members and senior administrators don't want to talk openly and honestly about their standards and accountability and role modeling of student standards of conduct.

I cannot understand why Kent Walz and the Journal won't investigate, if only to prove that there actually are in fact;

• administrative and executive standards of conduct and competence high enough to protect the public interests in their public schools, and that

• there is in fact, honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence within their public service.  That school board members and senior administrators are actually accountable to those standards by due process; under a system over which they have no undue influence and powerful enough to hold them accountable even against their will. 

photo by ched macquigg

Why if Kent Walz could tell community members that wonderful news, would he not?

Why would he not?

If Kent Walz, after an investigation, had to report that there is in fact an ethics, standards and accountability crisis in the leadership of the APS, why would he not?

Except that before he can report credibly on the scandal, he must first report credibly on his failure to report credibly on the scandal, heretofore.  And, he will not.




photo Mark Bralley

Chief Eden's "some" problem officers

The Journal reports this morning, link;

Albuquerque Police Chief Gorden Eden said in an interview with USA Today that it will be difficult to reform the department because it is “stuck” with officers who “shouldn’t be on the force.”

Eden's excuse for tolerating the presence of officers who shouldn't be on the force, is that he is not allowed (by the Constitution and a union contract) to put officers in double jeopardy over previous misconduct.

In my experience, when a bad employee cannot be dismissed, it is because bad supervisor did not provide due process.  To characterize a union's insistence upon due process as an attempt to allow problem employees to remain employed, is dishonest.

Eden avers, all large departments have people on the force who shouldn’t be on the force."

It's a bet I would cover in a heart beat.

Albuquerque Police Officers’ Association President Stephanie Lopez said Eden’s comments were a “surprising disappointment.”  I hope none of the surprise has to do with manifest truth that there are "some" problem cops on River City's police force.

A contributing factor in drawing a conclusion that there are bad cops on every city's police force, is the Blue Code of Silence, wikilink, in every city's police force.  There wouldn't be one, if there didn't need to be one.

To the extent that silence gives consent; good cops give their consent to the existence of the Blue Code of Silence.

If Eden wants to call cops out on their character;
he needs to call them out on their Blue Code of Silence.
The cops can't have it both ways; it's either/or;

either enable a Blue Code of Silence, or

allow bad cops to get what they have coming

The Blue Code of Silence is to the trustworthiness of police officers as; owning slaves was to representation that all men are created equal.

It is disappointing that police officer and teachers unions in particular, can't figure out and put into words; what it means to be a good member of their profession.

It's worse that because of that failure, they still haven't figured out how to meaningfully police their own professions.

Editors stumble on truth, bounce off.

In the Journal this morning, link,

• Big things are coming out of a small school...
• buy-in from students, parents, teachers and staff can lead to big gains
• Its success can be a lesson for others.

Perhaps in public school administration, a top heavy decision making oligarchy is not the best administrative model after all.

Apparently there is magic to be conjured; synergy.
Apparently there are magicians; an extremely small handful of real leaders willing and able to enable synergies to build in a school communities.

APS needs just such a magician; someone with a proven track record of enabling synergy among stake and interest holders.

There are no other skills nor acumen any one person can bring to this district that will have a greater positive effect than, their ability to synergize the wealth of intellect, experience, energy and dedication that exist here already and in great abundance.




photo Mark Bralley

Brad Winter's first Journal self-evaluation

Steve Tellez reported
directly to Brad Winter

Kent Walz and the Journal have been in the habit of offering to the sitting APS superintendent, a monthly column.  As APS' Interim Supt, Brad Winter's first such, appeared this morning, link.

I have taken the liberty of separating for your convenience, his wheat from his chaff. his chaff in italic.

I found myself poised for the challenge, excited about the opportunity to help turn things around.

Is he, or is he not fresh off just that opportunity?  As APS' COO and one of the inner, inner circle, did he not have just such "opportunities to turn things around"?

As APS COO, Winter  could have told the truth about spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd, and he did not.

Bad enough they wasted tax dollars,
worse that they are still covering it up.

As Interim Supt, Winter could tell the truth; he could respond candidly, forthrightly and honestly to questions about the public interests and about his public service, but he will not.

As APS COO, he could have produced ethically redacted findings of investigations into allegations of felony criminal misconduct involving senior APS administrators in and above the leadership of APS' publicly funded private police force, and he did not.

As Interim Supt, he could produce those ethically redacted public records now, but he will not.

As Interim Supt, he represents the senior-most administrative approval of the spending operational funds in a "legal" effort to keep those records hidden from public knowledge in their entirety, and without any real oversight.  Especially none from the Journal or any of the other APS "credentialed" press.

… I have a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. I’ve (been) …involved at all levels...

What Brad Winter has, amounts to guilty knowledge of administrative and executive corruption and incompetence.  A public servant whose is aware of public corruption and or incompetence has an obligation to expose it.  period.

Guilty knowledge in a public servant is malfeasance.

Brad Winter knows about the spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd. He knows how much money was spent during a time when Meyners and Co auditors were finding;

1. inadequate standards, and
2. inadequate accountability to inadequate standards, and
3. inadequate record keeping.

... the trifecta of public corruption and graft

Auditors found APS senior administrators spending up to $50K at a whack "without involving purchasing".

Winter won't produce a candid, forthright and honest accounting of the spending of millions and millions of dollars, because one does not exist.

My immediate goals are to continue efforts… while regaining public trust and creating more stability for the district.

No better way to regain the public trust than to point to a time, a day and a place where he and whomever he needs to sit with him, will sit down and answer legitimate questions about the public interests and about his public service. No better way to regain the public trust than by responding to legitimate questions candidly, forthrightly and honestly.

one of my goals is to reach out to the community and encourage input…

Unless of course the input is negative and delivered from the podium during a public forum. In which case the praetorian guard he commands, will "eject" the offender.

I look forward to talking to you, hearing your concerns, listening to your suggestions. In the meantime, you’re welcome to get in touch with me.

 Hmm, he didn't mention looking forward to "answering your questions".

The best way to reach me is at superintendent@aps.edu

No, the best way to reach you is to stand up during a public forum, look you in the eye, and ask you questions you don't want to answer.

Dr. Winter, as the interim senior-most administrative role model of APS' student standards of conduct, would you care to explain to students in words they can understand,

why students are expected to hold themselves honestly accountable to the Pillars of Character Counts! and you are not.

photos Mark Bralley

APS Board to consider banning sagging

This is not about sagging, wikilink.
It is about the permission of prohibited behavior.

The first rule must be; you have to follow the rules.
Else, there is no point in the second and third and fourth ...



According to their agenda, link, Policy Committee Chair David Peercy intends to discuss his latest rev. to School Board Policy.  It references a Procedural Directive, link, which reads in significant part;

Prohibited clothing and accessories include… "Sagging", or the wearing of pants below the waist and/or in a manner that allows underwear or bare skin to show, and "bagging", or the wearing of excessively baggy pants with low hanging crotches.

The problem is that the leadership of the APS has no intention to stop students from sagging.  Some administrators will try to foist the enforcement problem off onto teachers, but most will simply ignore the misconduct in so much as enforcing rules is more trouble than it is worth.

It is far worse to permit a prohibited behavior than to simply deal with the "mis"conduct in another way.  "Discouraging" a behavior does not carry with it, the enforcement obligations as "prohibiting" a behavior.

There is a problem with permitting prohibited conduct.
It gives kids the idea that they don't have to do what their teachers and other adults tell them to do.

Administrators who allow students to routinely engage in prohibited behavior strip teachers of the authority they need to maintain order in their classrooms.

The lesson to rule writers;
don't "prohibit" something if you don't intend to enforce the prohibition.  It has to be a hill worth dying on or don't bother.  If you aren't willing to do whatever it takes to extinguish misconduct, you will endure it until you are.


Who is in charge in APS schools really, the adults who make the rules or the students who ignore them?

The truth about who is in charge at APS schools is manifest in the number of students at that school who as a matter of course, ignore school rules and school board policy.   Drive by a school.  If kids are sagging (or smoking or whatever else they've been told to not do), those kids are in charge at that school.

The truth about student discipline and chronically disruptive students in the APS is important.  Interest and stakeholders need to know what's going on.  The truth about discipline in public schools is disappointingly hard to find.  It cannot be found on APS' award winning website.

Not only is it not on their website, they won't give it to you if you ask for it.  Where is the PowerPoint presentation on student discipline, link; historically, currently and future?

David Peercy is a coward, link.

He does not allow, much less
encourage, public participation
in his committee meetings.

There is no public forum ever.

It's "legal" for Peercy to disrespect interest and stakeholders, but it isn't ethical; in particular on issues as controversial as student (and staff) dress codes.

The standards of conduct the Peercy and the board establish and enforce upon students every year are called the Pillars of Character Counts! link.  They amount to a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct.

Whether they should be APS' student standards of conduct is moot; simply because they are, and will continue to be, until the board formally abandons them.

Peercy and rest of the leadership of the APS tell students every year in their Student Behavior Handbook, an extension of School Board Policy;

students are expected to model and promote honest accountability to higher standards of conduct than the law.  

Failure to do so; failing to expect from themselves more than the law requires and less than the law allows, comes at the forfeit of their good character.

We are about to hire a new superintendent.

Is s/he going to be actually and honestly accountable as a role model of student standards of conduct?  Or is s/he going to join the stonewall.  Is s/he going to ignore the elephant in the room?

There are two standards of conduct in the APS;
higher standards for students, and lower standards of
conduct for school board members and senior administrators.

The situation is as manifestly hypocritical as it is categorically unacceptable.

If we really want our children to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what they look like.

Thank the credentialed media, the establishment's press; Kent Walz and Journal, the news directors at KRQE, KOAT and KOB TV.

Thank them for their complicity in or complacency regarding the ethics, standards and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.

Combating chronic absenteeism; not "who" but "how"

In the Journal this morning, link, Del Archuleta and Terri Cole of the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce implore community action in the effort to combat chronic absenteeism.

September is national Attendance Awareness Month and there is no other state that needs more awareness on chronic absenteeism than New Mexico.

Is a lack of awareness really the problem?  Is it even an issue?

There is awareness enough of chronic absenteeism.  The problem does not persist because of a lack of awareness.  It persists because of a lack of solution.  Awareness is not a solution and increased awareness is not going to create one.

All an effort to "increase awareness" will create is an opportunity to hold a bunch of public meetings to make it look like someone is doing something.  Does anyone really believe someone is going to stand up at one of these meetings and finally share the magic spell that will cure truancy?
There is no magic, there are no magicians.

There are solutions we have yet to try.

First, let's separate the apples from the oranges; the "chronically absent" students who want to be in school from the "truant" students who do not.

The truants who do not want to be in school to be educated cannot be forced to learn.  Compulsory attendance and becoming educated are not the same thing.  You really cannot make a horse drink water.  While attendance can be made mandatory, learning cannot.  Education is not something one person does to another; it is something a person does to them self.  The best teacher in the world cannot educate a child against their will.

The solution to the problem of students who choose truancy is the simplest.  Offer they something they want or wait until they find what you willing to offer, attractive.  The more alternatives we offer, and the more attractive those alternatives are are, the more likely truants will return to school and their education.

Nothing else matters.

Those who argue, children can't learn if they are not is school, and feel justified in then dragging children kicking and screaming into classrooms of students who do want to learn, and then expect them to participate positively in their education; miscomprehend children and learning.  The believe apparently, a child in school is a child who is learning.  I would invite those people to substitute teach for a day or two, to cure their boggle.

As for children who can't make it to school for reasons beyond their control; the solution is two fold

1. address the issues that keep them from school, and
2. address the issues created by their not being in school.

As to the second; we do chronic absentee, truants and even the very occasionally absent student disservice by further penalizing them for not being in school.  If a child is home sick for a week, that child falls a week in their education. That's one consequence.

Another entirely separate consequence is that they are a week behind everyone else's education and are expected to catch up, while at the same time, stay up with a group of kids with whom they have little more in common than the year of their birth and the neighborhood they live in.

Ask a teacher, it doesn't work.  Students who fall behind will continue to fall further behind.

Every student has a certain amount of ground to cover between K and 12.  All they really have to do is cover the ground, they don't have to cover it at exactly the same speed and don't have to follow exactly the same path.

All educational achievement gaps are individual and every student has one.  There is only one child at a time, and the difference between where they are and where they could be on their path to graduation.  Each has their own obstacles to becoming educated.

The question becomes whether we will identify those obstacles and address them individually.  There are no group solutions to individual problems.

There are no socio-economic or ethnic education gaps.  There are no Native American, Hispanic nor African American education gaps.  There are no Native American, Hispanic nor African American absenteeism rates.There is only one child at a time who is either engaged on not in their education, who is in school or who is not, and whose individual problems we will address, or not.

The so called educational gaps of groups of students are created to sell "group solutions" and group solution experts.  The numbers reflect only the success of a misguided effort to standardize the individual performance of students.  It's nonsense.  But, it does make people a lot of money and garner them a lot of power and prestige.

Archuleta and Cole argue;

the community must move toward a larger conversation about the impact of missing any school, whether excused or unexcused.

They are wrong in so far as they fail to grasp the context in which absenteeism and truancy exist.  The larger conversation must be about public education in general, including but not limited to the whole notion of cemetery seating and the effort to standardize individual performance, and their effects on chronic absenteeism and truancy.

Public education needs to revisit its fundamental mission.
Do we really want to prepare students for standardized tests,
or would we and they, be far better off if the mission, ultimate goal and primary objective is creating independent lifelong learners at the earliest opportunity?

Two really good editorials this morning in the Journal

The first has to do with legislative efforts to erase criminal records, link.  All I would add is; the editorial could just as well have been written about erasing the discipline records of students.  Including the fact that the legislature wants to erase student discipline records by law, link.  The records of the most chronically disruptive students are erased so quickly, they might just as well be written in disappearing ink.

Apologists for the ceaseless second chance; the consequence for most APS students who ignore rules, will defend the relentless postponement of meaningful consequences despite the manifest failure of the approach.  The actual evidence, the real data on the effectiveness of the ceaseless second chance is so damning that it doesn't exist.  The leadership of the APS does not gather the data, they do not record the data.  That, or they do gather data, and they're hiding it, link.

The relevant data is either not compiled or hidden because it is evidence of administrative incompetence, plain and simple.  Is that not evidence tampering?  Is that not malfeasance?

The enforcement of school and district discipline policy is first and foremost, an administrative responsibility.  If schools are *out of control, the administration is where the buck stops (try as they may to foist the onus on to teachers who have no authority to impose meaningful consequences for deliberate misconduct).

*A school is out of control, if the standards set by the adults are ignored by the students.  The person whose will is being done, is in charge.

It is against APS School Board Policy for students to sag.
This is not about sagging.  It is about the permission of
prohibited behavior.

Go to any APS school.  Are there kids sagging?
If there are, those students are in charge at that school.

The second editorial, link, had to do with a school spirit raising effort at Del Norte High School.

I will preface my observation of that effort by pointing out that I have a quarter of a century of teaching experience in the APS including a few years at Del Norte.  The observations of current APS teachers would be more relevant.  Between them, they have nearly 100,000 years of teaching experience in the APS, 4,000 times more than I.

I have seen a lot of clever attempts to change the reality the teaching and learning process.  Despite relatively small success stories, none of them change the fundamental truth that, except for very momentarily, there is no such thing as a reluctant and disengaged learner.

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
You can make students sit in desks,
you can't make them want to there.

If students want to learn, we can help them.
If they don't want to learn, all we can do is wait until they do.
And in the meanwhile, try to expose them to as many different things as we can until we finally catch their interest.

Students at Del Norte will sign a pledge the editors argue;

puts students' academic future firmly in their hands as they agree to stay on top of their transcripts, find a mentor, ask teachers or staff for help if needed, choose friends wisely and help inspire classmates to succeed.

It is not the pledge that will enable them, it is their agreement.
As the editors wrote; it is their buy in.

Any student who doesn't buy in, is no closer to a diploma than they would be otherwise.

Students who don't want to become educated simply have not found something they want to be educated in.  The more choices we can offer, the more likely it is they will find something they want to learn.  Then we teach them how to learn; our real goal.

I wish Del Norte students the best of luck. I hope many more of them do graduate with meaningful diplomas.

The obstacle they must surmount; cemetery seating; the relentless belief that thirty kids with nothing in common but the year of their birth can learn in unison.  Even if a thought choir could be formed, why would you want to?  How could that possibly improve on every student learning at their own speed?

Why isn't the goal, and therefore the immediate primary objective of education creating independent lifelong learners at the very earliest opportunity?

Non-viable suit earns Journal editorial sanction

In Wednesday's Journal, link, the editors praise a judge for sanctioning a group of lawyers for pressing their case against the government after their case had been determined to be “no longer viable” however personally profitable.

The lawyers

 “continued the charade of proceeding forward with this matter, causing the taxpayers of Albuquerque to expend additional resources for attorneys’ fees in spite of the fact that the plaintiffs’ counsel knew or should have known that this case was over.”

The editors conclude that the sanctions will discourage non-viable lawsuits against taxpayers.

Paradoxically, the editors are manifestly unconcerned about non-viable defenses conducted at taxpayer expense.

Criticizing politicians and public servants
from the podium during a public forum,
is not grounds for a lifetime ban.  
It is not, no matter how many tax dollars
they're willing to spend in non-viable
litigation in an effort to prove that it is.

Consider their support for APS' Marty Esquivel et al, who have already spent three quarters of a million dollars and are planning to spend a half million more on their non-viable defense.

They have no evidence to support their defense.

The entire weight of an enormous body of evidence (videotapes of the incidents in question) is against them.  They have been told as much by a federal district court judge not just once, but twice now.

Their entire defense relies upon the manifestly conflicted testimony of the likes of Marty Esquivel, Winston Brooks, Monica Armenta, Brad Winter and of course, former APS chief of police Steve Tellez.

Yet Esquivel's personal interests in postponing the inevitable, and lawyers ready, willing and able to continue happily bilking taxpayers for as long as they are allowed, portend an expensive future for taxpayers.

They are being allowed by Esquivel's cronies at the Journal, the editors who enable him, through their relentless refusal to investigate and report upon the amount of money board members and superintendents spend on their own defenses; cost is no object defenses, long after their non-viability has been established, and without one iota of real oversight.




photo Mark Bralley

APS copy crisis; who's fault is it? Marty Esquivel owns a good bit of it personally.

The Journal reports, link; APS teachers will be strictly limited in the number of copies they can make even for the most justifiable of reasons.  From the report we glean;

• "Somebody" in the leadership of the APS decided that the shortage in APS operational dollars was going to be addressed by 'limiting printer and copy machine usage in an effort to “keep down costs'”

• (The leadership of the APS) did not have figures on how much the district expects to save.

Operational dollars are the dollars spent educating students as opposed to the dollars spent on capital improvements like building outrageously expense school buildings.

The need to keep down costs is indisputable.  The need to do it by limiting the number of copies teachers can make is most disputable.  It is the product of a poor decision making process.  It is such bad solution; it is going to be rescinded. 

update; the policy was rescinded the following day.

I have often pointed to the accumulation of teaching experience in the APS; nearly 100,000 years.  I have pointed out just as often that despite their experience, expertise, training and education, they have no seat at the table where decisions are made.

Had teachers participated in the process that created the copy crisis, they would have nipped the idea in the bud; for the very same reasons that it is going to be repealed.

APS' decision making process is to blame.  The process is flawed because the people with the most expertise and experience are not part of it. 

So how is Marty Esquivel to blame for the copy crisis?  

Assume for the sake of argument; all the reasonable cuts have been made; all the administrative dead wood has been trimmed and copies really do need to be limited.  If not for Esquivel et al, there would still be a bunch of money in the pot.

If it were not for the cost is no object legal defense of APS School Board Member Marty Esquivel's ego, there would still be more than enough money left to cover the costs of whatever number of copies teachers need to do their jobs.  I write "more than enough"; that is my impression.  As usual, the relevant data is missing.  The APS spokesperson said she didn't have figures.  Why not?

Did she not wonder and ask, how much money would be saved by making teachers lives more difficult and less effective?  Why didn't Journal reporter Jon Swedien ask her to find the figures and email them to him before deadline?

Maybe they don't even have a figure.  Maybe someone just to decided to limit copies and see what shook out when teachers, students or parents started paying the tab.  The deliberate absence of truth, invites speculation.

Speaking of figures you won't find; the number of dollars being spent in litigation in defense of Marty Esquivel's ego.  Those are of course operational dollars as well; the same dollars that there aren't enough of, to make the copies teachers need to teach.

Esquivel and the school board members who enable him have already encumbered nearly $750K.  Because he and Winston Brooks, Monica Armenta, Rigo Chavez, current and past board members and even the recently fired APS chief of police Steve Tellez have an unlimited budget for litigation, and because they can spend it with no real oversight, they will spend 1.25M operational dollars  before they finally loose in a federal court of appeals.

How many copies would one and quarter million dollars buy?

And that's just the litigation around my complaints.  It's a pittance compared to the rest of the litigation that is going on and has gone on, in efforts to except superintendents and school board members from accountability to the law.

The Journal could investigate and report upon the dollars spend on unjustifiable legal defenses for APS big wigs, but they won't.

NM FOG Executive Committee to review APS public participation policy

APS has a new public participation in public meetings policy.  The policy, the brainstorm of APS School Board Member Marty Esquivel and cronies in a local law firm, is manifestly unconstitutional.

The only thing Esquivel's APS lawyers could hope to gain from their participation in the creation of this monstrosity will be the hundreds of thousands of dollars they will make defending (unsuccessfully) Esquivel's policy from inevitable lawsuits.

APS lawyers will win even in losing - winning and losing pay the same; very well.  Reason enough apparently, for them to back Esquivel's play.

The policy has been circulated to the NM FOG board for review.
A response is expected this week.

APS Modrall; will Journal shake up change anything?

There has been a shake up in the Journal's newsroom, link.  There has not been a shakeup in ownership; we know whose fist pounds on the table last in meetings of the leadership.

For as long as I have been trying to get the Journal to investigate and report upon the money that flows through APS and into the coffers of a few select law firms, the Journal has been refusing to.  I have long surmised that it had to do close personal and political ties between the heavy hitters at APS and at the Journal.  I have also surmised that it had to do with Journal owner Tom Lang and his personal and political ties to the APS.

APS is both self and other insured.  APS other insurer, United Educators, raised APS' premiums recently.  The premiums are paid with operational dollars; dollars that could be spent in classrooms.

United Educators raised our premium because APS engages in wholly unjustifiable amounts of very expensive litigation.  The primary beneficiaries of APS' administrative and executive largesse include the Modrall.  For the longest time, the APS school board president and the president of Modrall were literally married.

Defendant Marty Esquivel once admitted to me, he was aware of the fact that firms like Modrall were milking taxpayers at the direct expense of nearly 100,000 of this community's sons and daughters.

If a Journal reporter interviewed a few lawyers who have litigated against APS, Modrall, Robles et al., they would find APS lawyers run up huge bills and then settle on the courthouse steps.  They settle for huge amounts of money so that politicians and public servants like Marty Esquivel can scrub their names from their misconduct.  Operational dollars pay for admissions of no guilt.

I doubt Journal coverage will change.

Time will tell.

I would argue that there is a story here.  I would argue it is newsworthy no matter what the investigation uncovers.

If the Journal investigates and reports upon the public record of tax dollars flowing to select law firms for the last 12 years or so, the investigative product will be newsworthy.

It will be newsworthy if the Journal can report that the millions and millions and millions of dollars that flowed into Modrall and handful of APS family law firms have been spent well; in the interests of educating children.

It will be newsworthy if the Journal must report that the millions and millions and millions of dollars that flowed into Modrall and a handful of APS family laws firms has been spent on cost is no object legal defenses in efforts to litigate exceptions to the law for APS school board members and senior administrators.

That the public trust and treasure have been squandered is newsworthy.

The worthiness in question, is of the Journal newsroom and of the people who tell them what is the news they will investigate and report upon.

Will they from now on, inform the democracy in order that the administrative and executive leadership of the APS can be held accountable by the community members they serve?  Will there be government of, by and for the people?

Will a government of, by and for the people be enabled by a press that doesn't give a crap about where APS Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta thinks they have to stand during school board meetings?

Will the Journal continue to kowtow for APS credentials and or for some more sinister reason; like their complicity in cover up of the ethics, standards and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS?

That will become abundantly obvious, shortly.




photo Mark Bralley

Esquivel and NM FOG part ways

Tip of the hat to Peter St Cyr, link, former FOG President Marty Esquivel has resigned from the FOG Board of Directors.

Esquivel cited the time he needs to spend with his twelve year old son and his private law practice as the contributing factors.

He did take the time to protest FOG's involvement in the effort defeat his efforts to secret from stakeholders, the truth about Winston Brooks' very expensive departure from the APS.

FOG is trying to pry open a lid that Esquivel is sitting on as heavily as he can.

Of course he can't sit on the Board of Directors any more.

Wait until FOG gets around to reading the Esquivel and Modrall policy and procedural directive limiting public participation in public meetings of the school board, and have to take a stand on the record against that too.




photo Mark Bralley

Does APS' new social media policy apply to school board members?

APS new social media police requires students to use social media in a “responsible, ethical and polite manner.”

How exactly are students supposed to know what ethical means now that ethics isn't part of the curriculum?  If they have been exposed to ethics at all, it was likely on a list of words to spell.


I love that the Journal, link, tracked down APS School Board Member Kathy Korte for a quote.

posted on social media by Kathy Korte in an effort to
slander and libel photo-Journalist Mark Bralley after
attacking him before a school board meeting.

It violates APS social media policy.

Nor is it Korte's first rodeo, link.

APS Executive Director of Communications Monica Armenta informs us;

consequences for violating the policy will vary; 
they will be handled on a case by case basis. 

In other words; same old, same old.

Never mind the consequences of disparate enforcement of rules.

Exposing the Brooks file; pressure mounting

KOAT has a couple of reports up, link, link, on the public records fight between the APS School Board and the community members they serve.  Give KOAT credit for applying some pressure.

They have an expert legal opinion to headline what is turning into a very lopsided battle between the APS School Board and pretty much everybody else with even a modestly learned opinion.

Marty Esquivel's APS PR image.
If he and the real Marty Esquivel
met on the street, they wouldn't
recognize each other.

Open government lawyer and school board enforcer Marty Esquivel is the only lawyer on record, in agreement with the board in their belief they can hide Brooks' file from public knowledge.

Modrall lawyers recently helped Esquivel write his manifestly unconstitutional public participation in public meetings policy and procedural directive.  It will surprise no one, if Modrall lawyers show up to argue, it's all "legal".

Not right, not ethical, not moral; "legal".

When Marty Esquivel and the board decide to spend operational dollars on legal defenses for themselves, they do it in meetings in secret.

When they decide to spend dollars that could be spent in classrooms  instead, on "legal"efforts to scrub their names from their convictions, they decide in secret.

There is no real oversight over their spending of what amounts to unlimited amounts of money.

APS Chief Counsel,
Modrall lawyer and great
personal friend of the
leadership of the APS
Art Melendres.

Don't believe it?  Ask for the
public records of how much
money that has been funneled
into Modrall over the years.

They won't produce it.

They make so much money,
Art Melendres couldn't recall
even under oath, how much
money they make.


There is only one reason to hide the truth; it is to
avoid the consequences of the truth becoming known.

If they were proud of the truth, they wouldn't need to hide it.
If the truth does not embarrass, shame or indict them, why hide it?




photo Mark Bralley

The day after the next APS Supt is hired

will be a day too late to ask questions about the secrecy
that will characterize the process.

Consider the recent annual evaluation of former Supt Winston Brooks and the secrecy that surrounded it.  All we really know about it for certain is, the board met in secret to do it.

Within these meetings in secret, questions are asked and answered.  Some of the answers may actually enjoy legitimate exception to the law; good and ethical justification to be kept secret.  The rest do not.  The questions asked, do not.

Politicians and public servants meeting in secret have to follow rules, make that laws, that pertain.

One of those laws has to do with reasonable specificity.
School board members and senior administrators are required to describe with "reasonable specificity" what it is they intend to discuss and, after the meeting, what they it was they actually did discuss. 

The APS school board and open government hero Marty Esquivel's idea of reasonable specificity is;

• we're going to meet in secret to evaluate the superintendent, and then,

• we evaluated the superintendent.

We all have some issue I presume, we hold as more important than most others.  Mine is administrative and executive role modeling of honest accountability to meaningful standards of conduct and competence.

I would like to know if any questions were asked, or, are going to be asked about standards, ethics, accountability and, role modeling, specifically the obligations of the senior-most administrative role models of APS student standards of conduct.

The answers to those questions may qualify for exception according to an ethical interpretation of the law, though honestly, I can't imagine how.  Nevertheless, I would like to know if the questions were asked.

For reasons I cannot imagine, NM statutes allow politicians and public servants to self-redact the public record of their own public service.  But open government law is pretty clear about redaction; public records custodians must redact public records specifically, not in their entirety.

The leadership of the APS is fond of, and litigates it's way into, redacting entire records rather than  honestly redacting them, and then producing the rest of the record.

The concept of reasonably specific redaction applies to every aspect of government, not just public records.  Meetings cannot be simply redacted in their entirety because at some point in the meeting, something that earns legitimate redaction takes place.

There is a solution; create transcript and ethically redact it.
That solution has been rejected by the leadership of the APS.

It turns out, the APS school board by their own deliberate decision, does not create any record at all of what they do in secret.  The law allows them to not record the meeting.

They are fond of pointing out that "the Inspection of Public Records Act does not require politicians and public servants to create public records".

There is only one reason to hide the ethically redacted truth;
to avoid the consequences of the truth becoming known.

If the APS board had the collective character and courage,
they would record their meetings in secret.  They would create
an incontrovertible record of their public service.  The recordings
would be sealed to anything but a court order.  They would have
their staff create an ethically redacted transcript and they would
post it on their award winning website.

They could, but they won't.  Contrary to their annually reiterated expectation of students;

in defense of your good character; strive always to do 
more than the law requires and less than the law allows

Esquivel and the board will produce only what the law requires, secreting as much as "the law" will allow; and then, only after spending without any real oversight, unlimited operational dollars on cost is no object litigation and legal weaselry.

Why won't Marty Esquivel and the board produce
ethically redacted transcripts of their meetings in secret?

The Esquivel Modrall law on public participation in public meetings prohibits anyone, but especially me, from asking them that question from the speaker's podium during the public forum of regular school board meetings.

Arrested by APS Police Chief Tellez
This, though according to Esquivel
and Modrall, holding up a poster at
a meeting is"generally acceptable".

If I insist upon asking it, they are prepared to have their publicly funded private police force arrest me; deprive me of my liberty.

They will not entertain the question in private.

They will not entertain questions from me at all.

If the establishment media; the government "credentialed" press asked the question, one of two things will happen;

1.  someone will answer the question, or

2.  someone will not.

The Journal, KRQE, KOAT, or KOB TV will do one of two things;

1.  they will investigate and report upon the (non) response, or

2.  they will not.

The very worst thing a politician or public servant can do
is anything they do in ethically unjustifiable secret.

The very worst thing "the press" can do is,
allow them get away with it.




photo Mark Bralley

Journal editors have it right; but don't expect an apology

I've argued for a long time that reliance on graduation rates as a measure of public schools success was delusional.  The editors of the Journal have agreed; link, though they never did get around to apologizing for their part in misleading interest and stakeholders by selling "graduation rates" as the measure to promote in the first place.

No scientist ever endorsed the use of graduation rates to measure anything except that graduation rates are easily manipulated enough to make people believe that things are getting better when they really aren't getting any better at all.

The editors concede;

 ... tests (and not graduation rates) would seem to be an important measure for both the student and the education system.

The editors wrote;

"If you think New Mexico’s public school system is just fine and doesn’t need sweeping reforms ..."

and some other stuff.

The thought that popped into my mind was;
If you think NM' public school system is just fine and doesn't need sweeping reforms then you have been paying too much attention to the Journal, mustlink, and the leadership of the APS. 

They've been singing their praise of Winston Brooks' administrative success primarily on the basis of the "fact" that "he raised graduation rates".

If there is a need for "sweeping reforms" then why did the Journal editors endorse Brad Winter as the interim APS Supt? Trust me, Brad Winter was not hired because of the sweeping reforms he proposed.

The people have been deliberately misled and believe that Albuquerque Public Schools are actually doing a better job of educating students than they are.

It really is all about, and only about

• students passing tests and

• the number of students who are able to pass those tests after 

• some reasonable number of years in public schools.

If graduates cannot pass tests, it makes no difference how many of them we "graduate".

"... New Mexico (will) stay right where it always has been
– at or near the bottom of the education barrel."

for as long as we continue to place the future of public education in the hands of people who have no respect for the intellect, experience and expertise that is immediately available to them.  Intellect, experience and expertise that if utilized would truly reform education and for the good.

APS teachers and employees have between them nearly 100,000 years of teaching experience in Albuquerque Public Schools.

The smallest handful of them, the inner circle of the leadership of the APS, have seats at the table where decisions are made.  Decisions like;

OK, let's sell graduation rates as the measure of our
success because we can easily manipulate them upward.
The Journal and our credentialed media friends will back our play.

NOBODY talk about ACT and SAT test scores.

We are disappointed but not surprised that Journal editors endorse Winter

In the Journal, link; the editorial opinion

APS right to pick Winter

APS Chief Tellez, his boss Brad Winter

They, he, she, argue;

When you are entrusted with putting the largest school district in the state ... back on a steady course it makes sense to go with experience and with what you know.

The editorial opinion is that back on a steady course is what APS needs.  It is not.

"Back on a steady course" is the battle cry of those who endorse the status quo.  Unless the status quo is acceptable; it rarely is and is not in this case, back on a steady course is a bad thing.

Back to inadequate standards, inadequate accountability and inadequate record keeping and production, is a bad thing.

I know for a fact that at least one of the candidates for interim superintendent intended use that authority to clean out the rats nest in preparation for a new administration.  It was not his plan to get the administration of the APS back on its "steady course".

APS' steady course is and has been to use public power and resources to enable school board members and senior APS administrators to escape accountability for their incompetence and corruption.  Regardless of whatever else happen to accomplish.

They, she, he opined;

If anyone knows APS and can embrace the work that needs to be done and leave the drama on the sidelines, it’s Winter, who over more than two decades with the district has worn every hat from teacher to assistant principal to administrator.

Let's give them that one.  Who know better than a man who has worn every hat from teacher to 2nd in command, where all the bodies are buried?

Who knows better than Brad Winter where lies the administrative and executive incompetence, corruption, and the policies and practices that enable them?

The current city councilor and former APS chief operations officer has earned a reputation as a calm, civil problem solver who puts public accountability at the top of his list.

Bullshit.

If that were true, Brad Winter would show us his list.  Where on that list is

• his PowerPoint presentation on student discipline and in particular the presence of chronically disruptive students, and
• his production of a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd, and
• his production of ethically redacted findings of audits, investigations, examinations, and reviews into senior administrative and executive incompetence and corruption, and
• his  commencement of an independent examination and review of senior administrative and executive standards and accountability, and
• his production in particular, the ethically redacted findings of investigations of felony public corruption in the leadership of the police force Winter directly oversaw, and
• his public promise to respond to legitimate questions about the public interests and his public service, by answering candidly, forthrightly and honestly?

As a matter of fact, where on his list will we find

• him standing up as the senior-most administrative role model of honest accountability to the same standards of conduct he establishes and enforces upon students?

Where on his list has he placed stepping up as the senior-most administrative role model of student standards of conduct; a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts!?

It is not on Winter's list, even in the form of an open and honest public discussion of student and adult standards of conduct and accountability. Nor is it on the Journal editors list of newsworthy facts about Brad Winter.

When the head of an organization falls under circumstances the 2nd in command knew or should have known about, you have to consider guilty knowledge.  If they were aware of problems, why didn't they expose them.  If they weren't aware of the problems, why weren't they?  Did they remain willfully ignorant or were they only mind-numbingly incompetent?

Brad Winter has guilty knowledge of most of the public corruption and incompetence in the leadership of the APS.  That or he remained willfully ignorant.  That or he was mind-numbingly incompetent in his oversight over APS' publicly funded private police force.

He represents the worst possible choice; the 2nd in command who will now oversee APS' self investigation of numerous complaints of senior administrative and executive misconduct.  Who will then hide the findings of those investigations from public knowledge at least until a new superintendent is hired.  Who will spend unlimited numbers of operational dollars in litigation against the public interests and without objective oversight of any kind in a cost is no object effort to hide the ethically redacted truth.

If there was any real doubt that Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz and whomever else at the Journal are in cahoots in the cover up of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS this should extinguish it.

Standards, ethics, and accountability in the spending of a fourth of the state budget, are newsworthy.  They are newsworthy when they exist and more newsworthy when they don't.

If the Journal editors can ensure us that the standards of conduct and competence that apply to school board members and senior administrators are high enough to protect the public interests in the public schools, why won't they?

If the Journal editors can ensure us that school board members and senior administrators are honestly accountable to those standards; accountable by due process under systems over which they have no undue influence and powerful enough to hold them accountable even against their will, why won't they?

If the Journal editors, because of circumstances, must report that the leadership is not honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct and competence within their public service, why won't they?

Except that the editors are part of the cover up; they are in cahoots.




photo Mark Bralley
Walz photo ched macquigg