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Here's a question for the folks at the top of the food chain for the Albuquerque Public Schools system, which last week announced the hiring of TV veteran Monica Armenta to handle public communications: What problem are you looking for her to solve?

Armenta will be paid $105,000 and have an administrative staff of three. I've been around a few crisis management and public relations firms in my day, and let me just say that she's got her work cut out for her - possibly to the point of impossible.

At the top of the list would be thge former chief of the APS Police Department, Gil Lovato, who refuses to slink away into the night after some pretty tawdry allegations.

This is not good. Neither is grade-gate or the principal shuffle.

And it'll take more than a familiar face and some news releases to fight this.

Tom Garrity knows a thing or two about the public relations possibilities at APS, having served in that capacity for two years.

"What it comes down to is that organizations will never be saved by a PR professional if that's their only course of action," he said. "Good policy encourages good public relations."

We'll leave the policy discussions to others, but the oddest part of the announced hiring was the focus on APS internal relations.

"That's like using a pistol to go dove hunting," Garrity said of Armenta. "She has more influence with parents and the community than anyone else at APS.

"(APS Superintendent) Beth Everitt should be focusing on the internal communications with her key internal audience. Her success will not be with what parents think but (what) administrators think on leaving, no pun intended, no child left behind."

Doug Turner, principal at the Albuquerque public affairs firm D.W. Turner, has an interesting take on where both Armenta and APS should be coming from.

"Dealing with large organizations requires some deftness and, unless everyone is prepared to listen, it doesn't matter who is in that position," Turner said.

"What they're telling people inside must match what they say outside. The reality is everyone who works for APS is an ambassador for that organization and they all have to be on the same page. The difference is the people involved in crisis management should be dictating what people internally should be saying."

And that's the hitch. Does anyone seriously think this one person will have the unquestioned influence it will take to get everyone in this gargantuan organization to "stay on the farm," as they say in political message management?

Is, as Turner asks, everyone prepared to listen?

So Armenta walks in the door, and like one of those plate spinners on "The Ed Sullivan Show," doesn't even get to ease into it during the summer break.

With Lovato, grade-gate and the principals already on her table, she'll also have to brace for the Legislature's annual drive to break up the district.

"Some legislators will be quite justified in calling (for) that," Garrity said.

Both Garrity and Turner are quick to point out that akin to shareholders in a private business, the parents of APS students, are in fact, those shareholders.

So what's the bottom line? Is this a necessary and long overdue move by APS or just another shade of lipstick? What exactly determines her as a success or not?

"You need to have people who are not afraid to tell the truth and people who are not afraid to hear it," Turner said.

Whether Armenta is that truth-teller and APS can hear it remains to be seen.