Superintendent’s letter misleads

Superintendent Rainwater and I engaged in a lengthy series of e-mails when I questioned the truth of a statment in a letter he wrote to Wisconsin congressmen to seek their help in reinstating the MMSD’s eligibility for funds from Reading First.
In his letter the superintendent said that the MMSD was told “we had to use one of the preferred reading packages authorized by USDOE.”
At first the superintendent denied that he said such a thing and asked me to retract the quote from the letter.
After I sent him a link to his letter, he kindly wrote:

I apologize. I did not recall the wording of the letter to our congressional delegation and the fact that we simplified the process in writing them. You are correct that this letter does not accurately reflect everything that happened during the process. Although it was made clear throughout the process that we could opt for one of the pre-approved programs and move ahead the choice was never presented that we had to do that. The final choice that we were faced with was to make the final changes that they required to our program, accept one of the pre-approved programs or reject the grant. Art


As I always say, take nothing from the MMSD at face value.