We feel like it is our responsibility to speak up when things are not going well to help facilitate a change, but we also like to give credit where credit is due when the changes are made.
Yesterday, we ran a story about a plastic gun being found in a high school trash can which caused principal Tom Cochran to send and email home to all parents notifying them about the incident. As we learned in a meeting a month ago, this is normal protocol because the school admitted they have had problems in the past with social media getting the wrong story out.
In that meeting a month ago, the newspaper was asked by Marysville School Board President Sue Devine to come to the district office. Also in the meeting were board member Dick Smith, superintendent Diane Mankins, principal Tom Cochran and the school attorney, Jim Pebble.
After confirming with the Devine that the attorney’s invitation was not disclosed up front we told Sue Devine to have him leave.
Much of the meeting centered around our editorial calling for the school to be more responsive to our requests for details relating to emergency situations, especially drug overdoses that occur within the district.
Within that conversation we learned that not only the email home to parents is normal protocol, but administrators would visit the hospital to check on the student too.
After learning more about their normal course of action we asked them to take that protocol one step further. We requested that the principal contact the newspaper once his school obligations were met. We felt like that extra step would not only help the schools communicate to the rest of the tax payers that don’t get the parent emails, it would help them combat the inaccurate accounts some share on social media.
The incident with the plastic gun was the first incident that we know of that has come back into the public eye requiring an email to be sent to parents. Shortly after that email was sent out, Cochran sent us details about the incident so we could work on the story.
We are here to help, especially in situations that deal with drug overdoses and guns in school.
We are glad the school and Tom Cochran obliged our request for more information and took the extra step to get the details to us in a timely manner so we could do our job.
Thank you.