Reply to Taylor "No Snow Delay" Apology Email

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Reply to "Taylor "No Snow Delay" Apology Email"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He shouldn't have bothered apologizing.  You people are relentless.  Nothing will make you happy, ever.  It's very sad.[/quote]

I don't rely on MCPS to make me happy. That would be a horrible way to live. I would love for them to treat parents and teachers with a basic level of courtesy and honesty. Apparently, that is too much to ask.[/quote]

+1. I'm actually very often happy with MCPS. This situation was a mistake and [b]the letter from Taylor contains what very much looks like a lie (that the announcement was made in error and should have been a delay)[/b]. It's fine to be unhappy about that. I can expect both reasonable decision making and honesty about those decisions. That's not "relentless."[/quote]

How is that "a lie"? He's saying that cancelling morning child care was a mistake, that it should have been delayed instead.[/quote]

No he isn't.

There's two parts to what happened. There's the substantive decision (to close morning childcare) and there's the communication of that decision (the announcement). Saying that "the announcement was made in error" describes a problem with the communication, that is that the announcement should not have been made in the way that it was. It indicates that the announcement is wrong and what the announcement should have been for a delay.

But we know that that isn't true. The announcement was explained by Cat Malchodi as meaning what it said. KAH also indicated that they heard from the county that they were not allowed to open. The odds that the message that was communicated was not the message that was intended are virtually zero.

What almost certainly happened was a mistake in the substantive decision. Central Office (and ultimately Taylor) made a bad decision. If you wanted to say "we made a the wrong decision," you'd say that. Stating that "the announcement was in error" makes it sound like there was a big mix up, which again, is highly improbable. I hedged a little and said "it very much looks like a lie," because there's a very small possibility that I'm wrong. I don't think there's a good case to be made that there was a problem with the announcement though with a decent amount of public information.

I'm a boss, and I think about this through that lens. If an employee of mine used that language to describe a bad decision. I'd investigate and we'd have a conversation about it. If it happened again, they'd be gone. I've had to do that before (only once thankfully), and I've never regretted that choice. Honesty is important, and I hold public officials to the same standards.[/quote]

If the error was only in the announcement, it would have been corrected much more quickly. Taylor made a decision that he didn't understand the implications of and now he has to walk it back.[/quote]

Yes, that's correct.  The error was in the decision *itself* to close childcare rather than delay opening by two hours - not that there was a miscommunication.  Our aftercare provider said that MCPS would not allow them to open.  Normally they open at 6:30am and they should have been allowed to open at 8:30am, rather than being totally closed all morning until school began at 11:25......
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