Oma on Board: August 2012

APS bond issue election facts hard to come by

APS administrators and board members will put a bond issue before voters sometime next year. It could be as soon as next February as part of the school board member elections.The lack of certainty over the date, and frankly any other details at all, illuminates the lack of open and honest two-way communication between the leadership of the APS and the community members they serve. This despite the impassioned and repeated claims by board...

Rogers is "sorry"; Williams Stapleton was "sorry"; Martinez is good with it.

Is that alright?One could argue, whether Governor Susana Martinez forgives and forgets Rep Sheryl Williams-Stapleton's racist remark is Martinez' call; after all, the remark was directed at her.Republican Party heavy hitter Pat Rogers also enjoys the Governor's forgive and forgetness, though in this case she wasn't the subject of his racist "humor", nor is she the target of his "deep personal animosity" as is CD1 Candidate Rep Janice Arnold-Jones.Some...

APS Property theft tops a quarter million

During the year 2011-12, $260,516.03 worth of APS property was lost or stolen, link.Recently, COSO auditors found, link;apparent lack of accountability for the protection of district assetsmanagement culture shows varying emphasis on integrity and ethicsDistrict management's approach to allegations of nepotism, cronyism and protection of property needs improvementit is unclear whether the District has reported to the State Auditor discoveries...

APS Whistleblower complaints up 61%

APS reports that the number of "Ethical Advocate issues" (whistleblower complaints) is up 61%, from 90 issues in the year 2010/11 to 145 issues in the year 2011/12.Recently, COSO auditors, link, foundthe absence of a periodically acknowledged code of conducta lack of communication of management responses to conduct/ethical lapsesemployee standards of conduct are sparsely worded; ...no code of conduct is formally acknowledgedmanagement culture...

Will the real Republican Party please stand up?

Over the past two days, link and link, blogger Joe Monahan has painted a picture of two Republican Parties in New Mexico; one of common folks with the usual Republican inclinations, and the other of folks with nothing in common with common people, who are utterly out of touch with the common people (my words not Monahan's) and who carry big sticks in order to have their way; folks like the "Pat Rogers-Jay McCleskey-Mickey Barnett-Keith...

On again, off again, Bullying Prevention Forum, on again

On May 15, 2012, education report Hailey Heinz, reported, link, APS was planning two public meetings on bullying.Albuquerque Public Schools is planning two community meetings in June so people can comment about how best to confront bullying.By the middle of June, it was apparent that the meetings had been cancelled without explanation or apology. I don't know by whom, for certain, but it seems reasonable that it was APS' COO Brad Winter...

Families United for Education will be united in their disillusion

for at least two reasons;the solution they propose is fundamentally unworkable, andthe school board and administration have no real interest in communicating with anyone, even the Families United for EducationWriting in the Journal, link, for the Families United for Education, Robert A. Heckman;The Albuquerque Public Schools Board recently passed a groundbreaking family engagement policy that, once implemented, can have a profound effect on truancy rates and community health. He believes he has established two-way communication...

Brooks being sued again; Walz on top of it

Kent Walz and the Journal had no choice but to publish information on the most recent lawsuit filed against APS Supt Winston Brooks; this one further alleging his misogyny and bully behavior. They met their obligation this morning, link.There are two stories here;the suit against Brooks and the Journal's coverage of yet another lawsuit that is going to go very badly for taxpayers.If Walz had had a mind to, he could have minimized Brooks'...

KRQE Esquivel conflicts of interest and propriety

KRQE has a responsibility to investigate and report upon the Albuquerque Public Schools, including potentially, public corruption and incompetence that reaches to the highest level.School Board enforcer Marty Esquivel is their lawyer.He is the lawyer supposed to be getting APS to surrender an ethically redacted copy of the Caswell Report on the investigation of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators. That and the findings...

Korte stands alone against bad teachers

To hear the editors tell it, School Board Member Kathy Korte is the only member of the Albuquerque Schools Board of Education "brave" enough to talk about bad teachers.The premise of the editorial is misguided; that bad teaching is a school board policy issue. Board members really aren't supposed to be involving themselves in anything considered to be day to day.Dealing with bad teachers is an administrative responsibility, not an executive...

APS administration one of the most perfectly vetted in the world

According to Journal logic, the "newspaper" not Kent Walz and few other actual people, each with a fiduciary obligation to candor, forthrightness and honesty with readers:Only 60 of the district’s 5,000 teachers have been placed in the PAR program since its inception in 2007, a minuscule 1.2 percent. If the system does indeed work — and it was approved again in this latest union contract — that makes APS teachers one of the most perfectly vetted workforces in the world.By the same logic: the number of APS administrators...

Kent Walz fails his friends in the leadership of the APS

If Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz can offer the community a report on administrative and executive standards and accountability, he should. He would be doing his friends a huge favor.He could quell in one front page story, all the persistent and diametrically opposite rumors and allegations of a profound lack of standards and accountability that apply to the wielding of our power and the spending of our resources.If the leadership of...

"Technical difficulties" prevent streaming of board meeting

Anyone who tried to watch yesterday's school board meeting online, on APS' award winning website, found the following instead;PLEASE NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, the Wednesday, August 15, 2012 Board Meeting will not be available to watch live. We're working on the problem and will have the archive video posted later this month.This isn't the first time.The likelihood of a technical malfunction correlates with the board's discomfort...

Publicly funded, private police force stiffling dissent.

A small group of supporters of a Citizens Advisory Council attended the Policy and Instruction Committee Meeting last evening. The Committee Chair, the coward David Peercy, link, doesn't allow interest holders to open their mouths during meeting he chairs, so the petitioners were carrying posters.They were met by the Albuquerque Public Schools Police, in cars and afoot; at least five in all. The APS police, link, are a publicly...

Character education in the APS

Two questions;what is character education, should there be any in the APS?What is it? Wikipedia, link, offers an acceptable definition; Character education is an umbrella term loosely used to describe the teaching of children in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good, mannered, behaved, non-bullying, healthy, critical, successful, traditional, compliant and/ or socially acceptable beings....

Walz gives Korte 46 inches, and a headline

In the Journal this morning, link, an op-ed by the Journal's darling on the APS School Board, Kathy Korte.Korte would like to blame APS' failure to educate half its students on bad teachers.For the sake of argument, let's say the failure really can be blamed on a relative few bad teachers and no way to hold them accountable.Korte and Walz would have readers believe that the current version of the Negotiated Agreement between teachers and...

APS' Sagger Solution

I am told that the leadership of the APS has come up with a solution to avoid having to enforce an Administrative Procedural Directive, link, that prohibits sagging.At, at least one middle school, the rule about having shirts tucked in has been suspended. If you can't see their belt line, you can't see they're sagging.So who won the sagger wars;the Superintendent who prohibitedstudents from sagging, orthe students who pulled theirshirts...

Testing the media's mettle

The following was sent to the Journal, KRQE, KOAT, and KOB.My expectation is that Journal Editor Kent Walz will decide to ignore it, as will the managers at KRQE, KOAT and KOB.The APS School Board intends to vote to change school board policy during their Policy and Instruction Committee meeting. https://v3.boardbook.org/Public/PublicAgenda.aspx?ak=1000056&mk=50057628They intend to strike the language that provides for Citizen Advisory Committees. The Current language reads in significant part;K.01 Community Involvement...

Auditgate lands in Martinez' lap

Blogger Joe Monahan published an email this morning, link, that built a pretty good case for holding Governor Susana Martinez accountable for the fraudulent New Mexico Finance Authority audit.The email came to Monahan from a "Senior Gator" and read;The buck stops at the Governor's office. No matter how much finger pointing is going on, the NMFA is controlled by Martinez appointees. The Board includes four members of her cabinet, some of...

APS students sagging; so what?

For as long as there have been fun seeking children and fun spoiling adults, adults have been setting rules and children have been breaking them. It is to be expected.There are different kinds of disobedience; deliberate and inadvertent. Inadvertent disobedience isn't the problem. A kid forgetting gum is not allowed, will get rid of the gum when they are reminded of the rule. The real problem is children, students, who deliberately...

Does APS Board back the new sagger policy; do they even know about it?

My cursory research into the creation of a Procedural Directive, link, prohibiting "sagging" indicates the new administrative ban on sagging may come as as big a surprise to APS School Board Members as it will to saggers showing up at school on Monday with their butts hanging out. Yeah, we're sagging. So whadya gonna do about it?I went looking for some evidence that the board actually understood what they were agreeing to when they...