Despite 36% approval rate, Brooks is good to go.

According to the Journal this morning, link, APS Supt Winston Brooks enjoys a 36% approval rating.

Brooks attributes the low rating to the ignorance of those who were polled;

"... city voters who aren’t parents may not follow education closely or know much about his performance."

APS School Board President Marty Esquivel was quick to jump on Brooks' bandwagon;

"... he is pleased with the progress APS has made under Brooks’ direction, of which some voters might not be aware."

Esquivel has to justify giving Brooks a quarter million dollar golden parachute every year.

I will grant that the survey surveyed the wrong people.  Brooks thinks parents, not voters, should have been surveyed.  I disagree.

Mark Twain once observed (derived), people who don't read APS' award winning website are uninformed, while people who do read APS' award winning website are misinformed.  Parents are misinformed by the leadership of the APS as a matter of course.  Where, for example, is the PowerPoint presentation on student discipline, link?

If the Journal, or anyone else wants some meaningful survey results, they should survey teachers.

They don't; they won't.

If anyone ever asks the nearly hundred thousand years of ongoing teaching experience what they think of Brooks, he will be lucky if he gets a 3.6% approval rate.

I dare the Journal to survey teachers on their approval rating of Brooks.

I dare them to survey teachers on student discipline and the effects of chronically disruptive students.

Hell, I dare them to survey teachers on Marty Esquivel and the School Board, and on the APS Police force under Steve Tellez.

I dare them; I double dare them.




photo Mark Bralley

Sent to Journal Letters to the Editors, upon posting