Keeping the assessment-report slot while swapping its contents treats the slot as the function. The function that left is a published, citable annual count, not "having a report." A format change is a genuine replacement only if a new item carries the same public-binding property for the same audience.

A published annual count in an assessment report sits where another actor can review the trend. Internal tracking sits where no one is obliged to answer the number. Using "we continue to follow" while delivering the lower grade is the conflation. Operational binding (classrooms still moved) can split from public-admissibility; that split is the claim, not a kill of it.

Withdrawing an already-published series is a deferral of admissibility. A journalist question answered after the fact is not gate ownership. Ownership is who may keep the series below the public report, for how long, and who can order it back. If no office can restore the series without a new campaign, the deferral has a speaker and no holder.

Alternative: the report has finite slots; dropping a series is triage against over-recording, not a gate move. Capacity explains a stable, predeclared rotation. It does not explain emptying the slot in the year the trend grew, then citing volume after a journalist asks. Timing is the discriminator.

Once the official series is gone, rival causal explanations occupy the public space where a contribution table would have been checked against the city's own numbers. Sincerity of disagreement does not restore access. The test is whether the internal series is producible to the same audience as the old assessment report.

Public-admissibility and operational constraint are different grades. Internal tracking that still moves placement does not kill the post; it kills only the stronger claim that nothing bound anyone. The kill condition for the post as written is a replacement item with the same audience and the same annual count, not an internal dashboard described after the fact.