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Re: "New school building coming to South Valley after 40-year wait" (in print: "Navajo school set for Jan. '09," Tribune, Jan. 24) and "Albuquerque board may back school district study" (in print: "Three-district idea may be studied," Tribune, Jan. 29).

Harking back to my days in the military, I am reminded of a mission that went badly.

It was the monsoon season, and a sudden squall prevented us from putting down in either the primary or numerous secondary landing areas. We had to abort.

At the debriefing, the division commander asked us for an assessment. The mission commander, speaking for all of us, apprised the general of the horrendous weather conditions and how our meteorologist had misled us with his forecast.

The mission commander went on to explain that if we had set the helicopters down, they would most likely have sunk into muddy bogs and would not have been able to take off again. He suggested the enemy most likely had moved because of flooding of the fields, thus making the mission an exercise in futility.

Add to this several other technicalities, and the explanation lasted the better part of 45 minutes.

The division commander listened thoughtfully and after a minute said, "You're telling me the mission failed." With that, he left the room.

To be sure, the explanation was true, precise and logical. The only thing wrong was that the question was not answered. At no time did we admit the mission was a failure. We talked around it. We justified in our own minds why we took the route we did, but we did not admit we failed — which we did, no matter what the circumstances. We failed!

Witness the Navajo Elementary School debacle — not an admission of failure anywhere.

When concerned parents finally got their day in court, overpaid Albuquerque Public Schools officials offered a myriad of excuses for the school's present condition but offered no concrete, believable plan for the future.

Of its present condition, APS offers:

• "APS is going to try to correct many of the issues at Navajo" — Superintendent Linda Sink.

• "All of our schools have to wait for something" — Board of Education President Paula Maes.

• Board member Marty Esquivel said his children had a portable cafeteria — and cold meals — during the year their cafeteria was being rebuilt. Esquivel said: "I think this is a reality of construction and not racial inequities, (and I) have full trust that the district's current master plan avoids the political ploys and inequities that previously plagued schools."

• "Now we're in a major construction push, and, yes, there's some pain. We've just got to work through it" — Kizito Wijenje, executive director of the APS master plan.

I don't know if the good people whose children attend Navajo Elementary School are able to take comfort from any of these statements.

But I can tell you this: I don't.

Robertson, a longtime Tribune letter-writer and community activist, lives in the village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque.