Grits commenter questions may get answered in TYC FAQ

by Scott Henson of Grits For Breakfast

I can see why Texas Youth Commission employees who've commented about the "State of the Agency" briefings by TYC brass called the events "dog and pony shows" that left them feeling underwhelmed. After more than two hours of presentations by various division heads (a majority of whom worked for TDJC not very long ago), the Q&A session in Austin today was tepid, particularly considering that I regularly see TYC employees' more harsh opinions and poignant questions in Grits' comments.

I'll write up my notes from the event soon, but I wanted to mention it was announced the TYC Central Office would compile a list of all the questions asked at these State of the Agency events and create an FAQ document to answer common employee queries.

Serendipitously, in this post yesterday I compiled questions from Grits commenters that TYC employees wanted management to answer; only a few of the subjects were addressed today.

So after the event I went and found Jim Hurley, the new public relations chieftan for TYC. I told him that Grits readers had suggested quite a few questions on the blog that people were fearful to publicly ask, or that they felt weren't answered to their satisfaction. Would it be possible, I suggested, for those questions to be included in the FAQ document TYC will create? He thought that was a good idea and asked me to forward him the the blog post, which I did when I got home.

So here's what I sent Mr. Hurley today: if there are any glaring omissions let me know in the comments and maybe he'll let us sneak a few more in. I can't promise they'll answer every one, or any at all; I'm sure in the end that's not Hurley's call. But it's better to have asked, at least the the questions are out there.