Teachers and parents should be supporting Don Duran

Don Duran is running for the APS School Board.  He is the first candidate I've heard say that he thinks decision making authority should be delegated to school communities.

The accumulation of decision making authority in 6400 Uptown Blvd is counterproductive; things are getting worse, not better.

Between them, APS teachers have a hundred thousand years of teaching experience and more.  Most hold masters degrees, many hold doctorates, many hold national certifications.  They have everything they need to be effective and efficient, except a seat at the table where decisions are made.

No one of us is a smart as all of us, or knows as much,
or has as much experience as all of us, or has as many good ideas.

When Winston Brooks came to APS, he initiated a power grab that saw decades of progress in site base management trashed in a few key strokes.

Board Members Paula Maes and David Robbins supported Winston Brooks' power grab, undoing decades of progress in empowering teachers.  Their record is not of empowering teachers and supporting site based management.  They are the antithesis to meaningful participation by teachers and community members, in decision making  regarding the education of nearly 90,000 of this community's sons and daughters.

Inexplicably, the teachers union that once fought so hard for a teacher's voice, has endorsed Paula Maes. link.

Apparently the union people who decided to endorse Maes, don't care as much as they once did, about the necessity of including teachers, staff and parents in the decision making process.  When I interviewed with them, they were more concerned about my support for collective bargaining than my offer to fight for a real seat for them, at the table where decisions are made.  They endorsed Marty Esquivel instead.

I didn't think to ask Duran, when I chatted with him at the Tea Party Candidate Forum, but I will as him the next time I see him, if he will support a survey of teachers, allowing them to relate their impressions sans fear of retribution or retaliation over their responses.  They have not been surveyed heretofore, link.  Not once.

Teachers, parents, staff, and community members interested in participatory governance in their neighborhood school should be interested, I think, in Don Duran, link, for School Board District 6.




photo Mark Bralley