Veteran Cayman Islands educator Favourita Blanchard, recently retired to Barbados, wants to make something perfectly clear: She’s not taking the fall for anyone, not even her former colleagues in local government.
Some background:
On June 23, opposition lawmakers tabled two versions of a previously unseen report on behavior in local public schools, following a three-week inspection in November 2012. Consultant David Moore’s original draft of the report was much longer, far more detailed and significantly more critical than the final version that had been vetted by the Ministry of Education.
On June 24, Ministry of Education Chief Officer Mary Rodrigues issued a statement identifying Ms. Blanchard by her title of “Senior Evaluator” as the person who “finalized” the report to ensure “it met the quality standards set out for all reports.”
Over the next week, the Cayman Compass published several news stories and an editorial on the subject, referencing Ms. Blanchard as the one who “finalized” the report. At the time, the Editorial Board described the ministry’s revision process as “the equivalent of ‘grade inflation.’”
After the initial flurry of attention, there were no further public developments for more than a month. Then, on Aug. 5, the Compass received an email from the Barbados Consulate in Cayman, containing a strongly worded statement from Ms. Blanchard, who said, “I wish to categorically state that, as a person of high ethical and moral standards, I would never change the content or indeed the findings of a report written by someone else and I deny any accusation of my having done so. These accusations are false and indeed, libelous.”
She continued, “I wrote to the Ministry of Education several weeks ago when this story was first reported in the press, asking them to publicly clear my good name. This entire situation has caused a stain on my professional integrity and I wish to have these statements retracted immediately.”
At that point, the Compass did what any reputable news organization would do: We picked up the phone and sent some inquiring emails. We were informed that Education Minister Tara Rivers and Chief Officer Rodrigues were off-island. However, on Aug. 6, Ms. Rodrigues issued a statement:
“The Ministry of Education wishes to set the record straight that Ms. Favourita Blanchard did not unilaterally change the draft inspection report.”
Wait a minute, Ms. Rodrigues: “unilaterally”?
At the Compass, we’re in the word business, and even a neophyte copy editor can spot a “weasel word” or an errant adverb at 100 yards.
We won’t weasel our words. Here’s what we think happened:
The Ministry of Education, under Ms. Rodrigues’s leadership, commissioned a report on behavioral issues in our public schools. When the report was submitted, the ministry found the unfavorable findings embarrassing. It then sanitized the report, burying both the original and the edited version for 18 months.
Further, the ministry got caught when opposition members tabled both reports in the Legislative Assembly. In her statement, Ms. Rodrigues blamed the altered report on the recently retired Favourita Blanchard. Ms. Blanchard asked the ministry for a clarifying statement, clearing her good name. Officials dragged their feet for “several weeks.”
Finally, we believe, Ms. Blanchard lost patience and went to the media. Only then did Ms. Rodrigues respond with a press release so full of obfuscation that it needed a translator.
The record will not be “set straight” on this matter until, at a minimum, this straightforward question is answered:
Who ordered the editing of the report and who did the actual editing?
The public deserves to know the names of individual human beings, not the anonymizing names of collective committees or other entities.
Ms. Rodrigues, Minister Rivers: Time to hand in your answers.
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This sugar coating attempt to defraud my sense of what is really going on in our schools is as insulting as social promotion to the brain. If you ever attend a company brainstorming session, the first thing is understood is that no idea is a dumb idea. It may not survive the drilling down to final presentation, but it stands historically somewhere. Logically not every idea will be implemented, but who is responsible for drilling down those ideas to final approval. Usually it is the very team who came up with the ideas in the first place. By a democratic voting process they reduce ideas and recommendations to a final draft..
And here we go again. The fox who was left in charge of the henhouse is now saying the chickens were at fault as the fox stood there with feathers flowing from its mouth.
I have never seen so much finger pointing at other people since the World Cup of Football ended.
The idea of who me was never so apparent. Theres a smoking gun here and as usual Mrs. Rodriguez was not really holding it. It must have been someone else.
I’ve lived here 35 years, and, whenever an incident of significant magnitude occurs participants conveniently retire, go on vacation or resign and leave the country. Now, if nothing was done wrong, then minimally the parties should have been advised on how the timing of and type of actions would have been perceived. This administration is beleaguered by many issues where public satisfaction and morale is eroded or non-existent. Knowing that, their representatives need to learn from history and realize that courses of actions that were frowned upon and criticized in the past, should not be repeated, expecting different results.