APS throws down gauntlet on "sagging"

The leadership of the APS has sent a letter out to new parents, advising them of important issues related to school readiness.  On the subject of how to dress, they offer a link to a Procedural Directive that prohibits "sagging".
"Prohibited clothing and accessories include, but are not limited to:
'Sagging', or the wearing of pants below the waist and/or in a manner that allows underwear or bare skin to show, and "bagging", or the wearing of excessively baggy pants with low hanging crotches."
What was reported by KRQE, link, as a aberration at three high schools, apparently will apply to all schools.

According to the same directive (here quoted in significant part, emphasis added);
"... Principals may customize their individual school dress codes ... through use of a process which ensures input from students, parents, faculty and staff of the school and other interested community members. Students and their parents/legal guardians shall be aware of the individual school dress code and shall conform to those requirements. Principals shall interpret and enforce the dress code of his/her school. Individual school dress codes shall be reviewed periodically with parents, teachers, and student group representatives to enlist their support and encourage pride and good taste".
It would appear that if individual schools want to address their dress codes, they can, as long as they endeavor to involve the community in the decision making process.

In contrast, it would appear if Supt Winston Brooks gets a wild hair up his ass and decides to draft teachers into a war they had no part in starting and wouldn't if they could, there is no need to involve anybody in the decision.

Brooks is seen here at a community meeting at Manzano High School just before ordering the arrest of petitioners, link, looking for stakeholder input in decision making that affects their interests.

If the decision making that will start the sagger wars again, included the teachers and staff members who will be expected to do the wet work of enforcing an unpopular dress code, I doubt they would have adopted this issue as a hill they're willing to die on.

In particular, any teachers who were around the last time the district decided to draft teachers into their war on sagging, and who remember how utterly unsuccessful that effort was (students are still sagging after all) they would be less inclined to try the same thing all over again.

The circumstances have not changed; teachers and staff will be expected to enforce the ban on sagging without administrative backing.  They will take kids to the Office where they will sign a "contract" or some equally feckless stupidity, and will finish their paperwork before the teacher finishes theirs.

There are nearly 100,000 years of current and ongoing teaching experience in this district, and no seat anywhere at a table where decisions as far reaching and with such impact as these are made.

School starts Monday August 13th.  By Tuesday, the war against saggers will have begun in earnest, and by Wednesday, it will be apparent who is going to win, again.




photo Mark Bralley
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Arnold-Jones has been warning anyone who would listen, about quasi-governmentals for long time.

Journal editors, link, have grown concerned about quasi-governmental agencies.  Quasi-governmental agencies are "quasi" because they are government without government oversight.  Not that government oversight is any great shakes, but it's better than no oversight at all.

Rep Janice Arnold-Jones at Conspiracy Brews
Those who attend Conspiracy Brews, have heard Rep Janice Arnold-Jones' expressed concerns about quasi-governmental agencies for years.  It's not just the lack of transparent accountability in the spending of our resources that Arnold-Jones has brought to the attention of the political discussion group she began many years ago; she and the group have discussed our lack of oversight over the spending of our power as well.  The regulatory authority quasi-governmental agencies exercise comes to them largely unaccountable to those whom they regulate.




photo Mark Bralley
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Esquivel; "I'm not an educator."

Some community members are upset that APS has a library named after one of the greatest betrayers of the public trust in state history, Manny Aragon.   KRQE, no link yet, also interviewed some community members who are happy letting bygones be bygones, who thought Aragon's theft of public resources was no big deal, and were happy continuing to hold him up as a role model for students, staff and the elementary school's community members.

School Board enforcer Marty Esquivel
APS School Board Member Marty Esquivel got some more face time on KRQE and responded for the board, on the issue.  He said;
the Board is so busy, it could be months before the board can deal with the issue.

Yet, a cursory examination of the record of past board meetings, link, reveals the cancellation of no fewer than 25 meetings this year alone.  And they were cancelled why?  Too much to do?

The issue of role modeling doesn't resonate with Esquivel.  I have been trying for as long as he has been a school board member, to get him to be a role model of accountability to the same standards of conduct that he establishes and enforces upon students; the Pillars of Character Counts!, link. As a school board member, Esquivel is one of the senior-most role models of student standards of conduct.  During those times he was School Board President, he was the senior-most role model of all.

When I argued, that as an educator, he was obligated to step up as a role model of APS' student standards of conduct, he told me, "I'm not a educator", link.

He's not much of a role model either.  APS student standards of conduct specifically and explicitly require holding oneself honestly accountable.  Esquivel cannot point to any venue where a complaint against him is guaranteed due process.  Where is the venue in APS where I can file a complaint alleging his creation and enforcement of an utterly unlawful restraining order, and see due process?  There is none.

How can one be a role model of accountability without having to demonstrate any real accountability?


NMBA and School Board President Paula Maes
It helps that fellow School Board Member Paula Maes has some juice with NM Broadcasters Association affiliates KRQE, KOAT, and KOB; none of whom will investigate and report upon credible allegations and evidence of an ethics and accountability scandal in the leadership of the APS.



It helps as well that Esquivel crony, Journal Managing Editor Kent Walz is more than happy to do his part to cover their asses.

Walz is captured here, praising APS Supt Winston Brooks as a Hero of Transparency, while at the same time Brooks was/is hiding public records of felony criminal misconduct by APS senior administrators, link.




photos and Walz frame grab Mark Bralley
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