- After a stint of 10 years, respected and effective Burke High School teacher Andrew HaLevi joins the district office as a disciplinary hearings officer. No comment in today's P & C from HaLevi, founder of the Charleston Teacher Alliance and Charleston Futures, who just returned from a year's sabbatical in Israel. Soul-searching led him away from the classroom? The district chose to keep last year's replacement in place? He thinks he can make more of a difference in the new position? Or was this move involuntary?
- Clearly voluntary is Michael Tolley's joining Maria Goodloe-Johnson in the position of director of instruction in Seattle. Tolley was principal at Burke prior to becoming principal of Academic Magnet three years ago. G-J appointed Tolley as interim associate superintendent for more than one constituent district prior to appointing him principal of AMHS. According to the P & C, the school will have an interim for only "two or three months."
- Three school board members--Hillery Douglas, Gregg Meyers, and Toya Hampton-Green--show where their true interests lie by skipping the CCSD meeting of July 23rd in order to see and be seen at the Democratic debate. In a roundabout way their absence leads to postponement of a decision on the size of the new Stall High School building project, which hardly seems likely to be finished in time for its proposed opening at this rate. And they say politics has nothing to do with education!
- Unhappy neighbors of St. Andrews Magnet for Math & Science are placated somewhat by McGinley's semi-promise to remove two mobile classrooms of the three that suddenly appeared next to the school last year. The land, owned by the district, had been used as a park for 50 years, and the surrounding neighbors woke up one morning to trailers. Inexplicable is how the school's carefully controlled population could burgeon about 75 students over the limit while no one noticed. Hmm. No one seems to know why or even how many out-of-the-neighborhood students attend, but parents' cars are a serious traffic problem. Will the promised address-check of all magnets resolve this mystery?
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
CCSD's Interesting Summer
Taking shape in the "lazy, hazy days of summer" are developments in the Charleston County School District.
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I hope Andrew HaLevi has a good personal attorney who is adept at criminal and civil liability issues. He may be walking into a hornets nest of problems. I'd like to know if the disciplinary hearing office will continue to be used to "place" students at other schools (including the Discipline School) within CCSD as a means to by-pass constituent board reviews. Under the Act of Consolidation every student is guaranteed the benefit of a legally approved transfer (i.e. a hearing before the constituent board). Who's responsible if subsequent to an administrative transfer and in the absence of a legal constituent board hearing a kid gets hurt, has a melt down as a result of a botched "placement" or is unable to get the promised counseling? What happens if it's later discovered that the student's rights of due process or legal right to a constituent board hearing were ignored by CCSD?
Goodloe-Johnson gave away seats at St. Andrews Math & Science in order to quiet some parents who complained about being unfairly cheated out of other magnet schools. G-J didn't mind overloading St. Andrews M&S under the heading of "administrative action" thereby overbooking the school. Funny thing is that she didn't mind leaving 15 or more seats unfilled at Buist. That's a good question. Will CCSD properly validate addresses or not? When St. Andrews M&S checked their own addresses it wasn't over crowded. Overcrowding became an issue only after G-J began to override the original school & constituent district administered transfer approval process.
Two things. One. The P&C let HaLevi off the hook in its story. He has been one of the biggest CCSD critics and he got a freee pass for changing teams. That shows what a good source he must have been. Two. McGinley can't keep losing talent like Tolley. If Don Kennedy goes to Seattle, she'll be screwed, even though that's not really part of her makeup. and Three. one day Arthur will play the sexual preference card and we'll see how the community reacts to that!!
Nancy Cook lied to those West Ashley residents at the last board meeting. She stated their board does not transfer students to St. Andrews Math and Science.
Amnesia perhaps, Nance?
So, let's see ...you live W. Ashley send a half dozen residents to a board meeting and poof! trailers for kids are gone.
You live downtown...have constituent board members and reporters knock on doors of false addresses users and duh! NOTHING is done.
CCSD is a joke. C'mon Dr. McGinley, don't play these games. We're tired of this. Tell these cheaters they don't meet the residency requirments...POOF! They could be gone!
If Don Kennedy goes to Seattle, then that paints an interesting picture of Goodloe-Johnson. She must have known much more about CCSD's questionable misuse of funds than just a casually assigned cell phone account or a first class plane ticket for a relative. She's currently surrounding herself in Seattle with "team players", with an inordinate amount of emphasis on building a wall around how she plans to oversee internal school district finances. Seattle will soon be doing some churning of some valuable school properties, too. Ordinarily this might just sound like good planning, but given Don Kennedy's ability to avoid answering almost any direct question about the budget, it might be something else. It's starting to look more like G-J wants to keep Seattle in the dark just as she was able to do here. Hopefully the State of Washington's FOIA is more enforceable than the one we have in SC.
Michael Tolley was just one more in a long line of educrats that were employed to do missionary work downtown. Tolley is not a public school graduate; he went to Bishop England. Like another local parochial school graduate, Joe Riley, he has no feel for how main stream public schools are supposed to succeed. He became just another deaf missionary. In spite of his lack of understanding involving the issues downtown, Tolley did have some good ideas. Unfortunately his employers had none of his optimism for downtown public schools. The official view was and is that downtown schools are seen as permanently disfunctional. Forget striving for "excellent" schools. Just talk "average" and expect less. That's the line Tolley was forced to follow. Before this sunk in Tolley, in his one year as its principal, set up the "open enrollment" for Burke to attract students county-wide looking for specialized and challenging academic programs. CCSD officials let him set it up but almost immediately transferred him so he couldn't oversee it. They had no intention of setting up the academic programs needed to attract those students. CCSD quickly turned "open enrollment" at Burke into an alternative "dumping ground" for students that other schools didn't want, including those with conduct and academic issues that could be taken off their books. Tolley was just a tool who knew the limits of the political games he was allowed to play within CCSD. He played the game as instructed and advanced accordingly.
In this age of Tevo and instant replays, the best view of the recent YouTube/CNN debate was at home and not from the rafters of The Citadel's McAlister Field House. Of course, the objective of some local hack politicians was just to "see and be seen" and not really to hear the Democratic candidates debate.
I don't get what allows Hillery Douglas, Gregg Meyers, and Toya Hampton-Green to qualify as "good Democrats" when they are so totally unavailable to the people they claim to represent. Toya has even been caught making comments that show her complete distain for the public.
If Toya is studying the politics of Hillery and Gregg, then I hope she has noticed that her mentors are unable to advance beyond the county school board. And if Toya's husband, Dwayne Green, has any political aspirations, Toya's conduct on the school board probably isn't helping him very much.
Of course Toya could try making sincere attempts at constituent service and broaden her education by rubbing elbows with the masses. Both actions might go a long way toward helping to defrost her icy personality. She absolutely needs to replace that aura of contempt for her neighbors for one that reflects at least some capacity of humility and compassion for others.
In light of her public record so far, that might be a tall order for Toya. She should still consider the potential costs for not trying. Her husband's future political success will very likely depend on her ability to begin communicating with her constituents now.
Dwayne Green has no political future. He is ALMOST everything he CLAIMS to be against.
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