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 questions that would clarity their position.

In the absence of their input, we can assume that maybe they're concern about the role modeling aspects of drunk driving.

If the issue is role modelings, then as far as being a useful role model for students, I would rather see

• a repentant drunk driver, willing stand in front of students as a personal example of acknowledging bad choices and their consequences; a modern day George Washington, than
• someone who is unwilling even, to stand in front of students as role model of personal accountability to the same standards of conduct they establish and enforce upon students.

So why are the editors on Steven Michael Quezada's back, over decade old misconduct unrelated to public service, and not on the back of other candidates in the race over their current and far more appalling failure as role models?

The incumbent candidates, by their own deliberate choice, remain unaccountable as role models of APS' student standards conduct.

Not one of the incumbents will deny, defend, or even acknowledge that they are not honestly accountable as role models of the Pillars of Character Counts!, the standards they established and enforce upon students.

A role modeling fail of epic proportion and the Journal takes no note.
But a decade old DWI, that's news we can use.

There is an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS. The Journal is in cahoots with the school board and Winston Brooks in its cover up.

School Board election voters are the only ones the Journal is manipulating.  Bond issue and mill levy voters are being denied pertinent information as well.

Yesterday, APS Supt Winston Brooks stood in front of running cameras, microphones and Journal reporter Hailey Heinz, and promised "an answer by noon" to a legitimate question about the public interests and their stewardship over our trust and treasure;

Did they spend $800 dollars a piece for chairs that
board members sit in for about four hours a month?

In as much as past practice is the best predictor of future practice, and in the face of voting to entrust them with another $368M in taxes and mill levies, it's fair to ask if they spent the last of our support of education on our children, or on padding their butts.

Brooks agreed as well, and as a gesture of good faith, to offer up a candid, forthright and honest accounting of all the capital spending at 6400 Uptown Blvd.

There is some evidence that it might have been spent badly.  The fact that that evidence is unavailable to voters, indicates voters would not find it reassuring.

The single best predictor of future spending is past spending.

The Journal was at the press conference.  There is no reason to believe their reporter didn't hear Brooks' commitment.

Journal reporter Hailey Heinz, David Peercy and Brad Winter

She had the opportunity to follow up with APS COO Brad Winter.  If anyone can produce the accounting it is he.  If she did, she did not mention having done so, in her report this morning, link.
The Journal had an obligation to report Brooks' gesture of good faith to bond issue and mill levy voters, and did not.

In so far as the Journal doing too little to drum up interest in the elections, and then bemoaning editorially, the lack of interest in the elections; I told you so, link.  The "editors" contribute jack to creating any interest in the public schools elections, and then moan in their editorials about how nobody shows any interest in school board elections.

There is little interest in these elections, in no small part, because the Journal is hiding that which would interest voters the most; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the ethically redacted truth.

And in so doing, manipulating the outcome of three elections.




photos Mark Bralley