Good. Whenever nothing out of the ordinary happened, specifically the lack of anyone almost dying, there was distinctly less paperwork to organize.
"Hm... I may need that in writing." Nothing about his deadpan tone, nor the humorless disposition that he possessed around her, suggested he was being anything less than serious. There was certainly no glint of mirth in his glance as he turned back to his laptop; all that manifested in his expression, then, was a flicker of consideration toward the work in progress. "The damn liberals in DC are annoyingly insistent to hear more about the students' level of education, and at this point, input from anyone who works in the school's vicinity would be desirable." And the slight inflection he appointed to the word anyone implied that he would take assistance from even an orchestra teacher. "Test scores, passes, any behavioral trends over the last year. The usual."
He leaned back in the austere black wood chair, only enough to comfortably shift his elbows, and then he cast a look at Bethany.
"So, if you could temporarily defer from screeching on your cello and agonizing over which summer bikini to start wearing, I'd like you to do something useful and compile a few statistics for me by the weekend."