Patti Caplan Leaving HCPSS
The director of public relations said she doesn't have the stamina for the demanding job.
Patti Caplan is stepping down as director of Public Relations at the Howard County Public School System.
For 25 years, Caplan has answered requests from reporters for everything from public records to pictures to asking for comment on controversial incidents at HCPSS schools.
In an email to the media, Caplan said she made the decision to retire at the end of the 2011-2012 school year. “I love this job,” she wrote, “But in the last several years, I’ve realized that I just don’t have the stamina anymore for the long hours and unrelenting stress.”
Caplan has had to deal with some intense situations, including communicating with the media after a video of a fight at Long Reach High School went viral. She also helped keep the media up-to-date with former Superintendent Sydney Cousin in the months before his retirement.
Caplan's last day will be Friday, June 29. Until the HCPSS hires a successor, sometime in the next month or so according to Caplan, Anna Gable will handle public relations requests.
Jack
12:58 am on Friday, June 29, 2012
Retirement of Caplan is a good thing for Howard county. Closing down her office which has served to mislead the people of Howard county would be another step in the right direction.
Cousin should have steped down long ago or been removed and if we had real involvement in the hcpss we might not have lost a young man at Long Reach.
Jack
1:01 am on Friday, June 29, 2012
Anna Gable will handle public relations requests like this
"The office would field more than 100 phone calls a day, many from Realtors asking to check addresses against school attendance areas."
Imagine in "the so called great hcpss" it is not good enough to just live in Howard county, there really is a difference in the schools from one neighborhood to the next and the hcpss assisted in furthering the inequality instead of addressing it.
Jack
1:05 am on Friday, June 29, 2012
"Now, it seems there's a deliberative attempt to discredit public education and label public schools as failing," she said. "It's terribly unfortunate. We know here that not all public schools are failing. The other side of that is an increased push for accountability. Are there issues? Yes, but there are also systems like these that are really working."
See what living in a sanitized bubble will do for you, she really believes the hcpss is not failing.
A parting question for the hcpss spin doctor. The hcpss sends 90% of our children off to college with no carreer, vocational or technical training where 50% of them find out they need remedial ed, remedial ed can mean these children are placed in elementary grade math, and the college graduation rate is well under 35%. In fact at HCC the remedial ed rate is 2/3 and the graduation rate is only 11%. Care to spin those numbers for us or would you rather just lower your head in shame for all the participation in deceptive information you helped feed the public?
On Caplan's last day tell the public the truth which is most of these children do not succeed in college albeit 90% are sent there and then share the blame and ask the rest of the administration to retire as well.
Jack Thompson