McGinley's Hard-Learned Lesson Detrimental to Sanders-Clyde

When something looks too good to be true, it probably is.

This is the lesson that CCSD Superintendent Nancy McGinley learned from MiShawna Moore's brief tenure as principal of Sanders-Clyde and, then, at McGinley's insistence and at the same time, as principal of Fraser Elementary. We'll never know exactly what happened during PACT testing there, but it would be hard to find any rational person who believes that nothing untoward did.

What is most troubling about the entire fiasco is what it reveals about the Superintendent's readiness to grasp at any straw to show how she has improved failing schools. This is not "for the children"; it is for the reputation of an educational professional planning to use CCSD as a stepping stone to bigger and better job opportunities.

Thus, while McGinley did not put Moore into her position at Sanders-Clyde, she was only too happy to receive its amazing test scores as a sign that her policies were working, to the point that she trusted a second school to Moore over the objections of many in the district. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

Putting the best gloss on it requires some prevarication. [See Test-score Investigation Ended for her latest attempts.] The reality is that until the state testing agency brought to McGinley's attention that Sanders-Clyde's test copies showed unusual patterns of erasures, the superintendent never suspected or checked to see if the PACT scores tallied with other measures of performance for the school. The district had no choice about investigating once it was contacted by the state. Let's at least keep the record straight.

Given that no one has been disciplined or charged with any crime in the matter, what message has SLED (and the district) sent to other administrators desperate to polish their resumes by raising test scores in illegal ways? MiShawna Moore got an assistant superintendent's job out of it.

What did the kids at Sanders-Clyde get?

Lowcountry Media Ignore Burwell and Waring

Is it true that Lowcountry audiences don't want to hear and don't care about missing women?

If you live in one of those all-news-all-the-time households (and I do), you have more than a sampling every day of what interests the news media and what doesn't. No, I should say that what the media cover reflects what the media believe their audiences want to hear.

Did we really want to see wall-to-wall coverage of Michael Jackson's accomplishments and pecadillos for a week and more? Was the passage of cap-and-trade ignored simply because it was too esoteric for our poor little pea brains to comprehend? Apparently the media thought so. Frankly, most of the time media act like lemmings. You need only switch from channel to channel during the nightly news to prove that.

Over a month ago, local media briefly noticed two local women: Teista Burwell and Katherine Waring. The first had been missing for almost two years, and the P & C picked up the story that she was finally put on a national missing persons data base. The second made the front page of the P & C only five days after she disappeared. Nothing since.

No doubt the P & C and local TV stations will say in their defense that they dropped the stories because no developments have occurred. Really? Well, then, why bombard us with repetitions of other stories without developments ad nauseum? Has anyone on the planet not heard of Governor Sanford's trip to Argentina?

I struggle to understand why media and police put such low priority on missing females age 18 and over. Every one of them is someone's daughter. Really, how much time would it take to provide updates on these cases to keep them in the public eye? Maybe Charleston should have its own version of America's Most Wanted.

Too many times the idea that adults have the right to disappear if they wish is used as an excuse to avoid the work of finding them. Too many times they're not found alive.

CCSD Using Capital Assets for Operating Expenses

Too sanguine over the sale of property owned by the Charleston County School District--that's what the editors of the P & C are in claiming that "There is nothing to lose" from those sales. [See Sell Surplus School Property in Wednesday's editorial section.] Depends on what you mean by "nothing," I guess!

County residents should contemplate whether the district should have centrally-located schools or neighborhood schools. The first cut down on busing costs and wasting students' time being bused. The second allow parents, especially poorer ones, greater access to their children's teachers and a better environment for their children.

Further, older campuses paid for with public taxes should be readily available for the new public charter schools so desired by taxpayers. The Rivers building is a prime example. The present School Board is totally out of sync with public opinion, still smarting over Rivers' use by CSMS and still determined to stymie CSMS's success at every turn.

The P & C's just a bit too trusting of how the proceeds from capital asset sales will be used. No reputable business would take the proceeds from selling off capital and put them into the operating budget! So why does CCSD not deserve opprobrium for having done just that in the past? What is to stop it in the future?

Why shouldn't CCSD be required to put the proceeds from sales of capital assets back into the capital fund? Then maybe CCSD would not need to raise either of its taxes next time around.

Getting Around the Tax Laws, CCSD-Style

The CCSD equivalent of what brokers call "churning" an investment account for profit (the broker's, not the client's!).

Unable to continue to raise taxes for its overweight operating budget, CCSD has a better idea: sell off properties paid for with capital funds; put that money into the General Fund, where it can be used for operating expenses. Then raise taxes for the capital budget (building schools).

This is a scam that will never run out. Every few years new flaws can emerge in "old" school buildings that will demand that those buildings and the land they sit on be flogged in the real estate market and that new schools be built on cheaper (farther-out-of-city-center) land. Busing costs be damned!

Genius! Who cares if prices ebb? See Schools for Sale: Prime Sites to Be Listed in Monday's P & C.

"The Laing Middle School campus on Highway 17 will be the first to go on the market.

"'It's worth the most,' said Bill Lewis, executive director of the district's building program. 'We've already had numerous informal offers or expression of interest. … Even though the market is not great, there aren't many pieces of property like this left in East Cooper.'"

Coup for Charter School for Math and Science

It's great news for supporters of CCSD's Charter School for Math and Science and public charter schools everywhere!

David Cowell, who was driven to North Carolina by the edublob's representatives at 75 Calhoun, has agreed to return to Charleston County to head CSMS. He is quoted as saying, "[Its offer] represented an opportunity to come back and work in Charleston but not have to work in the box that I call the Charleston County School District. [The district] became a very, very cumbersome bureaucracy." [See Colwell to Lead Math, Science School in Tuesday's P & C.]

Described as "the most recent principal who had success in leading North Charleston High School," Colwell is too much a gentleman to point out the obvious to the reporter: he was never one of the favored ones at 75 Calhoun. After his years as a teacher and athletic director at North Charleston High School, he had to fight tooth and nail to get the principal's position there before disagreements with Superintendent McGinley sent him over the line to North Carolina, his home state.

Colwell provides a perfect example of an effective leader whom the bureaucracy just couldn't let alone: "under Colwell's leadership, the school became orderly. The number of students arrested and suspended dropped and test scores improved." And we all know what happened after he left, what the reporter euphemistically calls "continually changing leadership."

Meanwhile, new principal Middleton, scrambling to keep abreast of the myriad changes to NCHS's staff and curriculum, must now cope with additional problems of the high school's using a middle-school building for half of the next school year [See Brentwood to House School Part of Year]. Let's hope she's not being set up for failure.

Way to go with facilities' planning, Lewis!

Get Priorities Straight at North Charleston High School

During reorganization of a high school, if you rehire only 40 percent of previous teachers, why have you rehired every single one of the athletic coaches, that is, 100 percent of all coaches that are teachers?

Juanita Middleton, former principal of two rural high schools, whom CCSD Superintendent McGinley reassigned to Burke High School as an assistant principal three years ago, has now been selected by McGinley (with the cover of a community-based committee) to head the reorganized North Charleston High School. [Veteran Principal to Lead N. Chas.]

Because of its years-long failing record with NCLB, the high school had to be reorganized, made into a charter school, or face state takeover. Needless to say, McGinley chose the first option.

Most likely Fred Moore, the previous principal, knew when he accepted the job a year ago that his tenure would be brief; he could have read the handwriting on the wall as well as anyone else. It may even have been a condition of his hiring. As McGinley remarked, "The perspective that some individuals may have on what transpired is not the full picture that I have." Right.

None of this is surprising; after all, Superintendent McGinley is known for moving administrators around like ping-pong balls.

But rehire 100 percent of all teachers who are coaches? That means that only about a third of non-coaching teachers were rehired. Some excellent teachers are also athletic coaches, but it's hard to believe that true of all of NCHS's previous coaching staff! So, it was the non-coaching staff that was retarding students' achievement at the school? Do you believe in the tooth fairy?

And those ungrateful teacher-coaches are now whining that they haven't gotten their coaching contracts yet? [see North Charleston Coaches in Limbo]

Poor babies!

CCSD's Weeping, Wailing, Gnashing of Teeth

The headline says it all for the big spenders on CCSD's School Board and in 75 Calhoun: Classrooms Left Out in Tax Increase. That's what they'd like you to believe. It is true that many taxpayers do not understand the difference in raising taxes for operating expenses (what the P & C calls "classrooms") and the debt service budget for capital items (like new schools). But that is only half the story.

It should be obvious to the headline writer that the capital budget provides for classrooms--building them! And why did taxes need to be raised for this item? Because due to underestimated building expenses, the District has run out of money in the fund covering the schools under construction or about to be built. Hmmph. That's right. Who's responsible for that?

No one is calling Bill Lewis to account. The School Board and, heavens yes, the administration at 75 Calhoun are more than happy to pile requirement upon physical requirement for Charleston County's school buildings. Who could forget the (excuse me) necessity of earthquake-proofing all schools that were built before 2000? And we must have mega-schools built to satisfy the contractors and land developers who gain from their construction, never mind the impact on the busing expenses in the operating budget.

Lost in this process of everyone-getting-his is the education of students to read. Parents can sit back and revel in the knowledge that, should the never-to-be earthquake come, their children will be "safe" (not really, but the odds will improve). Should they care about the wasted time spent on busing? Do they know that mega-schools have fallen out of favor across the nation as they have become nameless, faceless government factories where no one really knows the children who fall between the cracks?

When you pay those higher taxes, just remember that, yes, the condition of school buildings in the Corridor of Shame is shameful, but it's even more shameful that a hefty percentage of children are entering high school reading on a third-grade level or below.

Around here, they'll be not learning to read in the safest, most expensive buildings money can buy. Gee, an accomplishment the taxpayers can be proud of!

OFA by Any Other Name

By any other name, it's still organizers for the Democratic party. Don't kid yourself.

OFA Holds N. Chas. Forum