As the saying goes, when you don't see your name in the obits, it's a good day. Well, some parents of a Tulsa school thought they were having a really bad day after reading about an impending death.
On March 31, Tulsa Public Schools sent out a press release stating the Newcomer International School would be closing. As the Tulsa World newspaper pointed out, the statement made it seem that this would have a happy ending, with students being able to attend their neighborhood school instead.
There was one tiny problem: Not only was the closing news to the parents who sent their kids to the school, it was news to the people with the power to close the school. On the same day the statement went out, the school board president took the New Yorker approach to "fuggedaboutit" and told the Tulsa World a mistake had been made.
"It was premature. The press release was not authorized by the superintendent," said school board president Lana Turner-Addison.
The president said that, while there had been discussions about closing the school, no decision had been made.
The school board, which makes the final decision on closing schools, had not even taken a vote on the matter. A member of the district's press office had sent out the news just a tad early.
Now the moral to the story could be some clichéd motto, maybe "Don't count your chickens before the hatch" or something old and mundane like that. Whenever CFN intern Bucky publishes a story we haven't approved, we provide this simple advice: "Don't be stupid."
