They have offered up exhibit A. Exhibit A is the result of a struggle that began at Hoover Middle School more than a dozen years ago. They aren't saying where Exhibit A came from. APS Executive Director Monica Armenta said she was being fed information about me by a teacher from Hoover Middle School. She refused to identify the "woman" by name.
If I had twenty dollars to bet and a place to make it, I would bet that the woman is H Wayne Knight, former Hoover Middle School Principal. More about him later.
The problem at Hoover was that the administration (charged by negotiated agreement, with the enforcement of discipline policies) was permitting students to engage in prohibited behavior. Specifically, they were allowing students to "sag" in blatant defiance of specific and explicit prohibition in School Board Policy.
In retaliation for the complaints I filed against the Principal H Wayne Knight, the Asst. Principal Michael McNamara, and the APD school resource officer, they made allegations against me in an effort to chill me from filing further complaints and in an effort to discredit me and the complaints I had filed against them. APS had and still does have, a culture of fear of retaliation against complainants and whistleblowers.
As usual, the leadership of the APS has found all of the allegations and none of the exoneration.
They did not find the transcript of the polygraph examination I gave them. It was placed in evidence at the same hearing where Exhibit A first turned up. The polygraph examination transcript was exonerating.
Nor did they find the what the arbitrator, a former New Mexico State Supreme Court Chief Justice William Riordan wrote about H Wayne Knight and Michael McNamara. His decades of experience listening to witness testimony lead him to believe that; Knight and McNamara "lacked credibility in the face of contradictory evidence from any other witness. emphasis added
He didn't call them liars, but I will.
The APS Resource Officer's testimony is also conflicted. It was offered in retaliation for my taking a photograph of him permitting students to engage in prohibited behavior.
Specifically, it was in the Hoover cafeteria before the first bell. Students were actively engaged in the usual eating, chatting, tomfoolery, and copying each other's home work.
Cheating is of course prohibited behavior but the administration chose to enable it rather than confront it. Students cheated brazenly because H Wayne Knight enabled them to.
In any event, the resource officer was sitting at a cafeteria table, in the midst of all the cheating and who knows what else, reading a newspaper. I took a photograph of a public servant, in a public place, and within his public service, derelict in his duty.
Exhibit A includes complaints made by the parents of a chronically disruptive student. Because Esquivel and his lawyers couldn't figure out how to remove it, Exhibit A still includes a letter I wrote about complaints and the complainants. In it, I offered that we all take polygraphs - liars to pay for them all. Knight wrote, do what you want, we are not obligated to participate.
Nor was I asked during my lengthy deposition, nor in any other venue to respond to anything alleged in Exhibit A. The accusations are on the record, my denials are not.
They dropped another brand new tidbit in the pile, an incident report supposedly typed up by APS Police Chief Bill Reed. It does not bear a Bates number and this is the first time they have produced it despite several requests for its production, and as many denials that any such record ever existed. It was "found" too late to depose Bill Reed, or to respond to it in writing.
Another late allegation; that I had disciplinary issues before leaving APS. The accusation comes too late to refute either in deposition or affidavit. The record shows, the disciplinary issues were complaints filed in retaliation for my several complaints against them; in especially, despite the fact that they were directly responsible for enforcing the rules they, as a matter of course, permitted students to engage in prohibited behavior.
Esquivel and his lawyer would have the judge carefully consider all of the unsubstantiated allegations that were made against me in retaliation for my legitimate complaints over of their incompetence and corruption, without giving me any opportunity at all to rebut their efforts to defame.
Winston Brooks threatened this defamation more than four years ago, link. After an "incident" in which it is alleged that I "took a fighting stance" with Brooks, and of which, the security camera footage has conveniently been destroyed, Brooks threatened to publicly humiliate me if I continued to point to the lack of due process for complaints filed against him, other administrators and board members. He said;
We should just follow Marty Esquivel's suggestion,I informed him, they already were, link.
that the circumstances of your termination be examined
and made public.
And now, apparently the false allegations and defamation will come out again in an effort to chill me from my resolve. and to illustrate for any other potential whistle blowers what will happen to them if they do.
I asked a teacher once to testify to the truth in my behalf. She offered that she couldn't afford to lose her job. Look, she said, at what they have done to you.
Marty Esquivel tells students, their character rides on their willingness to do more than the law requires and less than the law allows.I would call this poor role modeling by the absolute senior-most role model in the entire leadership of the APS of a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical conduct; the APS student standards of conduct, the Pillars of Character Counts!
Esquivel's cronies at the Journal won't call it anything at all.
photo Mark Bralley
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