Oma on Board: January 2013

Should the establishment media and Winston Brooks decide if bond issues and mill levies should pass or fail?

Is it too important a decision to be left up to voters?If the truth about extravagant spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd were exposed now, the passage of bond issues and mill levies would be threatened, perhaps. It depends upon the truth. Though if they have been spending well, efficiently and effectively, they would be flaunting the books, not hiding them.Voters will not know the truth about whether board member's chairs, to be sat...

APS being sued over the handcuffing of students.

In the Journal this morning, link, a report on students being handcuffed and APS (tax payers) being sued over it.I have no personal knowledge in any of the cases in question. I do have a perspective developed over a third of a century of close attention to similar students in similar situations.A question is begged; how young is too young handcuff?Is an 18 year old student too young to handcuff? A 17 year old, a 16 year old, a 6 year old?Like any law based on chronological age and ignoring the myriad of more influential...

The Mayor had the time to press the flesh,

but not to respond to even one of my questions.OK, I get it, he's busy.Had he the time, I would have asked him if he has given any more thought to recognizing the First Amendment rights of bloggers.His position is that bloggers aren't "the press".They are not entitled to First Amendment protection of their free exercise of a Constitutionally protected human right to be "the press".More specifically, they are not entitled to inclusion...

It looks like we really did pay $800 a piece for board member chairs after all.

At nearly the instant this photograph was taken, APS Winston Brooks was making a commitment to "find out by noon" yesterday, whether taxpayers ponied up $800 dollars a piece for the chairs that school board members sit in twice a month.We have not heard back.Two possibilities occur to me;He found the answer and doesn't want to share it with voters before the bond issue and mill levy elections, andHe couldn't find the answer because the...

KRQE, KOAT, and KOB have videotape of Brooks' good faith gesture.

They were there when APS Supt Winston Brooks promised to tell voters whether or not they spent $800 a piece for chairs for school board members. They have videotape of Brooks' commitment to a gesture of good faith to bond issue and mill levy voters; a candid, forthright and honest accounting of spending at capital spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd.Why haven't the put it on the air for voters to see?Why won't they? photo Mark Bral...

Journal editorial fails to enlighten any more than Journal reporting

The Journal editors expressed their upset this morning, because after all the stink and hullabaloo about how westsiders are underrepresented on the APS School Board, they managed to field only one candidate, and a flawed one at that.DWI convictions, the editors think, should count in school board elections. One wonders, why? One will have to continue to wonder because, one doesn't have standing enough, to ask the editors any...

Step away from the brownies!

Whenever APS hosts a press conference, community goals setting meeting, bullying forum, or similar public meeting, they lay out the goodies.As a participant in any of these public meetings, I am as entitled to a brownie or two, as any other taxpayer, retired teacher, community member and/or member of the press.APS Supt Winston Brooks hosted a presser at West Mesa High School. It's purpose was to put the best spin possible on APS' gradation...

APS' 70.1% graduation rate

For the sake of discussion, let's give APS Supt Winston Brooks the 70.1% graduation rate he claims. Forget about whether charter students should be included, or whether the semiannual recalculation of norms, which co-incidentally makes historical trends harder to quantify, signals something.Did the graduation rate increase because of Winston Brooks orin spite of Winston Brooks? It is scientifically nonsensical to suppose that because two thing exist simultaneously, one caused the other.There are a number of people...

Are the Pillars of Character Counts! passé in APS?

Does character count in Albuquerque Public Schools?Character Counts! at its most fundamental level, is a declarative sentence. Because it amounts to a declaration, and someone is declaring it, it makes a difference whether it is true. In particular it makes a difference, if the declaration is the foundation for student discipline policy making and enforcement.Will character count in the APS?The election of a majority of board...

Answer, not one thin dime

Question,How much money did APS spend on district wide efforts to develop character in 89,000 of this community's sons and daughters?That, according to APS' Custodian of Public Records and longtime Director of Communications Rigo Chavez.Question, Even in the face of a board member election and mill levy and bond issue elections, how much Journal coverage can voters expect, on subject of the ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership...

Best APS Superintendent in decades, gets 40%

In the Journal Questionnaire for School Board Candidates,they were asked to evaluate APS Supt Winston Brooks.School Board Member David Robbins gave him 40%,an "F" even by APS administrative standards.The spin out of Monica Armenta's Communications Department, link, is;David Robbins thinks Winston Brooks is"the best superintendent Albuquerque Public Schools has had in decades, not just years, but decades.” Ouch!And from the same piece.“The...

APS Standards and Accountability Scandal; the cover up of the cover up

In general, any endeavor succeeds or fails according to two sets of circumstances;circumstances over which we have no control, andcircumstances over which we have at least some control.Ignore circumstances over which we have no control; the quality of parents for example. Spheres of concern reaching beyond spheres of control are filled with only with frustration.There are at least two circumstances over which we have control;the standards...

Journal 2013 APS School Board Candidates Questionnaire

The Journal has prepared a questionnaire author(s) unknown, link, and submitted it to candidates for their responses. The questionnaire fulfills in part, their obligations to voters in the upcoming school board, bond issue and mill levy elections.Their question #5;Please give your evaluation of Superintendent Winston Brooks’ performance.All the candidates responded.I invite you to judge for yourself whether the question is legitimate,...

On golden parachutes

KRQE reports, link, State Rep Bill Rehm is introducing legislation that would limit the size of golden parachutes for public employees. In the report, KRQE pointed to a couple of golden parachutes gone awry for taxpayers, NMSU President Barbara Couture's and the infamous UNM Head Football Coach Michael Locksley's.KRQE chose to not mention APS Supt Winston Brooks' golden parachute, which the APS School Board just re-inflated to a whopping...

Drawing the line on transparency

There is a line in government, between information that is made public and information which is kept secret for many good and ethical reasons.We think of that line as a vertical line separating on one side, the published truth and on the other, the unpublished published. I use the word publish deliberately though not literally. It is impractical for government to actually publish everything, but people who go looking for information...

Oh, boy! A SuperTAOSAC

In order to create the perception that he is in communication with students, APS Supt Winston Brooks formed the Superintendent's Student Advisory Council. He likes to called it the SuperSAC.He meets with the exceedingly atypical group of students once a month, in order to increase his understanding of typical students.There are those who believe that Brooks is out of touch with teachers and other staff. Apparently it came up in Brooks' so-called evaluation. To ease the perception that his administrative style...

Brooks gets another year

A series of in-secret meetings by the APS School Board has resulted in another contract extension for APS Supt Winston Brooks. His contract expires more than a year after Marty Esquivel's, Kathy Korte's and Analee Maestas' terms on the board expire. All three end their current terms on the board in February 2015; more than a year before the contract they gave Brooks ends.The entire process was conducted in secret. No public input was gathered at anytime during the process. Teacher input was not gathered. ...

Will questions be allowed at the APS candidate forum?

The short answer is no of course, as their "armed and loaded", link, police force will stand between me and any opportunity I might have to ask a question.On a broader level, will others who are allowed in, be able to ask questions?The commitment the leadership of the APS made in their flier is;You are invited to meet and ask questions of the school board candidates ...Past practice is that questions will be written down and collected. The stack will be dutifully massaged by representatives of the League of Women Voters, who...

Third meeting in secret today, to evaluate Brooks

The APS School Board will meet today, link. For the third time in as many meetings they will adjourn into a meeting in secret from interest holders. In secret, they will complete their evaluation and then come out into the light of day to" (consider) ... of Approval of the Contract Revisions for the Albuquerque Public Schools Superintendent (Discussion/Action)No telling what "the contract revisions" are, they're a big secret too. Smart money, or at least the money that's been paying any attention at all, is...

"A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money."

Though the quote is widely attributed to Everitt Dirkson, it appears that it is mistakenly so. Wikipedia reports, wikilink, that when Dirksen was asked point blank, he replied;"Oh, I never said that. A newspaper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so good that I never bothered to deny it."On February 5th, two weeks from today, a handful of voters will decide who will be entrusted with control over our comparatively paltry...

My attention has been called to a post I wrote a long time ago.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 to be exact; my first post. link.More than six years and nearly six thousand posts later.I regret to report, people running for the school boardstill won't answer the question;To what standards of conduct, will you hold yourself honestly accountable?The law; the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings, or,the standards of conduct School Board Members established and enforce upon students;...

APS could simply post the public record

APS School Board enforcer Marty Esquivel maintains that myconduct at school board meetings has been so abhorrent thathe is justified in revoking my several First Amendment rightsto participate in school board meetings.There is a body of evidence that he will seek to have introduced,all the horrible mean spirited crap he can have found, but also including; any public records which might exist and are not specifically excepted by the Inspection...

"Hard to have" conversations hard to come by.

Let's begin with definition. Hard to have conversations are characterized by open and honest two-way communication about the truth that (almost) nobody wants to talk about.They are about the truth; however embarrassing, however shaming, however incriminating.They are about that part of the truth that enjoys no exception under the law, but that can be easily hidden under nearly feckless law; the Caswell Report for example; findings...

Fine tuning the Open Meetings Act, will provide 72 hrs notice.

Republican State Rep Jim Smith and Democrat State SenatorDaniel Ivey-Soto have collaborated in a bipartisan response tothe demand for better open meetings law.They propose, link, extending notice for public meetings by requiring meeting agendas to be published 72 hours before a meeting.The current minimum of 24 hours is routinely abused by pols and public servants whose need is to make it difficult for stakeholders to attend meetings. ...

Journal editors a day late and a dollar short ...

In the Journal this morning, link, the editors express their concern over a lame duck school board inflating APS Supt Winston Brooks' golden parachute by extending his contract again and in meetings behind closed doors.No one but the board seems to know how they intend to perform their evaluation.Where is the PowerPoint presentation of the Superintendent's Evaluation Process?Where is the APS highly paid Executive Director of Communications...