Hypothetical

I ran this one by my almost sixteen year old high school student. I just wanted to be sure.

"Let's pretend that the Howard County Government had just issued a new guideline about a particular unit you needed to complete in school, and you got an official packet in your English class detailing the assignment. The packet states the assignment, why it needs to be completed, and what you need to do to fulfill the requirement. When you read through it you notice there's no due date. What do you do?"

My daughter stared at me. She had thought this was going to be a whole lot tougher.

"Ask the due date."

"Do you think you could say you you didn't have to do the assignment because the due date wasn't in the packet?"

Eye roll.

"No, I'd have to find out the due date. It would be my responsibility."

Just as I thought. And this child is the product of the Howard County School system, ladies and gentlemen.

Imagine my surprise when the very same school system gave this excuse in not cooperating with the County audit of the school system budget:

I just heard the HCPSS response to why they haven't given documents to auditors yet is because they weren't given a hard deadline so they aren't technically late or unresponsive yet. I find it hard to believe there was no timeline known. -- Lisa Markovitz, The People's Voice

If you follow that logic, any preventative shredding that may be going on out there on Route 108 is just fine too, since it's likely that no one expressly forbid it.

Really? They didn't know the due date?

We wouldn't allow our high school students to get away with that kind of an excuse.