Families United for Education will be united in their disillusion

for at least two reasons;

1. the solution they propose is fundamentally unworkable, and
2. the school board and administration have no real interest in communicating with anyone, even the Families United for Education

Writing 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 with the board and administration.

Open and honest two-way communication between decision makers in the APS and the community members they serve depends upon all party's willingness to be candid, forthright and honest in their communication.

I cannot speak to the candor, forthrightness and honesty in the Families United for Education. I can speak the lack of candor, forthrightness and honesty in APS board members and administrators.

If you can appreciate the sensibility in the advice;

Trust that man in nothing, who lacks conscience in anything. unk

then, it makes little sense to trust that you have established open and honest two-way communication with board members and administrators, who are manifestly unwilling to be open and honest,neither individually or nor collectively, about;

• their abdication from their responsibilities as role models of APS' student standards of conduct; the Pillars of Character Counts! nor about
• their denial of due process to hundreds of whistleblower complaints, nor about
• their cover up of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators, nor about
• student discipline and chronically disruptive students, nor about
• their denial of due process to a legitimate petition for standing for the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication, and their effort to establish open and honest two-way communication between APS decision makers and the community members they serve, nor about
• their use of a publicly funded private police for stifle citizens' legitimate free exercise of constitutionally protected human rights to assemble and speak in their petition for redress of their several grievances, nor about
• anything else that manifests their incompetence and corruption. They are spending nearly a million dollars a year on a Communications Department that places a higher priority on APS' apple, than on fully informing stakeholders.
  
  Submitted as proof of that allegation, the response you will receive when you ask them for a simple candid, forthright and honest accounting of their spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd and even in the face of another bond issue election.
  

On the issue of fundamental unworkability; even if politicians and public servants in the APS were willing to respond candidly, forthrightly and honestly to legitimate questions about the public interests, the Families are beating a dead horse.

They're still looking for solutions to solve problems en masse, in apparent continuing disregard for students' individual needs and capacities. They want to make cemetery seating work in a world where nobody, ever again after school, will sit in a desk in one of five rows of desks, there to join a thought choir, thinking and learning about exactly the same thing, and exactly the same pace, in order to pass exactly the same test, and taken at exactly the same time.

There is no challenge that faces a group of children, that they each don't face individually. All achievement gaps are individual. There is no good reason to add them together. There is no reason at all, except to design some group approach to solve the problem. This despite the obvious evidence that group education is becoming more obsolete by the day.

Heckman writes;

There are other barriers to education that often go overlooked ...

Overlooked by whom?

If they are overlooked at all, it isn't by anyone who actually works in a school. It is by people who breathe the rarefied air in the twin towers and boardroom. People who hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see.

Interestingly, one of four "elements" of the agreement deals with "expanded communication", a concept which is immediately limited by the phrase "between home and school". What about taxpayers and other interest and stake holders, who don't happen to have a child currently enrolled in a public school?

Heckman and APS boast;

This policy, developed with a group of 400 family and community members and 43 local supporting organizations called Families United for Education, calls for APS to engage our community ...

APS conducted nearly two dozen meetings after the Citizens Advisory Council on Communication Petition was placed in their hands. Not only weren't CACoC members invited to participate; they were not even informed that meetings were taking place.

Heckman believes;

When every school makes local cultures and histories an integral part of instruction, students will be more eager to go to school.

His belief flies in the face of the fact that, communities themselves, both minority and majority, have failed to engage their own children in their history and culture. If children don't care about their history and culture at home and in their neighborhoods, they are not going to care about them at school.

If Heckman gets everything he hopes for, he will have only another class, another discipline that most students don't want to learn, and therefore will not learn. You really cannot make a horse drink water you offer them, unless and until, they want to drink water.

Heckman is spot on, writing;

When school and district personnel build partnerships with parents and other family members based on mutual respect, more families will help students do well in school.

And perhaps most important, when family and community members organize to shape their educational system in ways that are important and meaningful to them, schools and communities get healthier.

He is unfortunately mistaken in his belief that a "new day is dawning in Albuquerque Public Schools" and that it will include "equity, respect and collaboration". There is no action more disrespectful, nor less equitable, nor less collaborative than APS' ongoing refusal to provide a venue where legitimate questions can be asked and where their candid, forthright and honest responses are to be expected.

I wonder if the agreement the APS hammered out with the Families includes competent and impartial facilitation, or will the meetings follow the administrative agenda. School Board Member Kathy Korte makes no bones about her intentions with regard to facilitating open and honest two-way communication, link.

Heckman asks that we join him in welcoming the new day dawning.

There is no new day dawning.

When the question is;

will you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the ethically redacted truth about the wielding of our power and the spending of our resources?

any answer except yes, means no.

Should ever the new day dawn, you will know it.
The School Board and senior administration will point to it;
the time, the day, the place, where they will sit and listen
to legitimate questions about the public interests and about
their public service, and then respond to those questions
candidly, forthrightly, and honestly.

Til then, more darkness and more obfuscation.