Y'all know about the boring Bulletin Board on the main Gateway page, where you can ask questions of head TYC folk?  Well... here's my experience with it.

Last question I left was "It's been 4 months since you updated any answers to questions asked.  Why don't you provide more timely feedback or just get rid of it?"  Not an unfair question, eh?  I've asked a number of other topical questions there and somehow no one has ever addressed any of them.  Hmmm.  Gotta wonder why.  

Never mind.  The questions they DO answer online from others are softballs, which are replied to with platitudes and pat answers.  OK, but WHAT IF we really hit Central Orifi... ahhh, Office...   with some real doozies like:

"Why are we not now, and when CAN we expect to be fully staffed?"
""Why isn't a youth charged with a sex crime if he openly masturbates in front of staff?"
"Can we work out a requirement to have ALL steff on a dorm meet once a month to hash out concerns?"
"Are there any options other than the CoNextions program that might work better for kids and staff?"
"Can the 110 form be changed for notation of when 5/6 staff are on/off the dorm during a scheduled shift?"

It's important to keep in mind that agency-wrenching changes generally won't come about with a wave of the hand ~ ~ but if we have to work within The System, we have to work with what we have.  It sucks, I know, that there seems to be no admission of accountability from the Higher Up's that maybe, just MAYBE CoNextions is even PARTLY the reason we're having more problems on campus.  Sorry they can't acknowledge that it was/has been the PROGRAM -- not just THEM -- that has let us ALL down; the kids especially.   The youth are not being re-connected or re-programmed into acting like nice little children when they leave TYC nowdays as much as when we used the old Resocialization program... am I wrong?  Does the paperwork prove me wrong?  If so, I'll sit down and shut up.

Methinks we don't have another 4 months to wait for some straight answers and significant changes being made in "the way we do business".  Otherwise, the outlook is for more chaos -- and we can't deal with much more before the whole System collapses.  So ASK THE BOSS and see if you get a timely answer, say, within a week.  In light of the recent avoidable incident on campus, time IS of the essence at this point.  

Speak out!!