In her sworn deposition this
morning, APS School Board
Member Kathy Korte
answered enough questions
about Character Counts! and
about the role modeling of
them, to conclude that there
are severe limits on her
knowledge about either.
Nothing in her testimony would lead anyone to believe that she knows;
- Character Counts! was adopted for the entire APS by unanimous school board resolution. The 1994 resolution has been neither rescinded nor modified. It is a binding today as it was on the evening they adopted it.
- The Pillars of Character Counts! are the current APS student standards of conduct, and have been since 1994.
- Every year, she and the board sign off on the Student Behavior Handbook, an extension of School Board Policy, and in it, a line which reads;
- Students are expected to model and promote the Pillars of Character Counts!
- The only way one can "model" any standard of conduct is to hold themself honestly accountable to it.
- Students are expected to hold themselves accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law.
- Korte thinks accountability as role models of the Pillars of Character Counts! applies to students.
- Korte thinks accountability as role models of the Pillars applies only to students.
- Korte does not realize that she is one of the senior-most role models in the entire APS, of student standards of conduct, and from a position of absolutely no accountability to them.
It is manifest hypocrisy.
Accountability is the foundation upon which any and all standards rest. Without accountability, there isn't one whit,
link, of difference between the highest standards of conduct and the low.
If you ask Korte, or any other board member or senior administrator, if they are accountable as a role model of the Pillars of Character Counts!, they will undoubtedly claim that they are.
The funny thing about "claiming" accountability to anything, is that is so easily tested. If you can't see it, it isn't there.
If Korte was actually and honestly accountable as a role model of student standards of conduct, she could point to a venue where that claim could be tested.
Where can a complaint be filed against Kathy Korte, Marty Esquivel, Winston Brooks, Monica Armenta, Steve Tellez, or any other senior administrator or board member, and where that complaint will see due process? If the complaint alleges their failure to meet higher standards of conduct than the law, where can it be filed? With Ethical Advocate,
link? In court?
Korte will tell you it is at election and, nowhere else.
They could create such a venue. Any guy worth more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, could figure out a way to do it.
If they did create such a venue, they could point to it when anyone asked them;
Where is the place where you can be held accountable as a role model? Where can I file a complaint?
There is no such venue, there is no honest accountability
for the leadership of the APS, as role models of the standards
of conduct they establish and enforce upon students.
They just won't admit it.
Fortunately for them, their establishment media friends
aren't about to rat them out.
Quite to the contrary, obviously.
photo Mark Bralley
