Indignation continues to mount over CCSD's bare-knuckled attempt to knock out the new Charter High School for Math and Science by charging unreasonable rent to a public school desiring to use a public school building. However, lost in the heat of battle is a proper focus on the escalating estimation of the cost of renovating the Rivers building for its use.Renovation costs pegged at $10 million only months ago are now estimated at $24 million! Why this sinkhole??? No use proposed by charter high school proponents has brought about this unconscionable increase.
Is it a case of Bill Lewis's inability to add and subtract, the contractor's being given a blank check, or CCSD's attempt to show that the charter high will be too expensive?
The Post and Courier routinely treats outrageously high building costs in CCSD as ordinary. Now we even have relatively new buildings, such as the "Taj Mahal" and West Ashley High School, requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs.
No wonder residents complain about school taxes: they suspect that money is going down the sinkhole. Meanwhile, schools like Charleston Progressive suffer and beg for library books.
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16 comments:
If a totally brand new Orange Grove School will cost the district $24 million, how can CCSD justify a similar cost for a mere renovation of Rivers. Yes, this is just an excuse to block the charter school and so are Toya Green's veiled attempt to use race and income (free lunch) to kill its appeal. What if Buist had the same quotas...or better still if her husband as a trustee at Porter-Gaud were to put similar quotas in place for that school? Downtown is being taken to the cleaners once again. If the charter school is truly parent driven then it needs to put this back seat driver in its place. CCSD should shut up or get out of the car.
Would Gregg Meyers, Toya Green and all those other school board memebers with children at Buist expect those illegal quotas at any of their untouchable magnet schools? Would they find Buist so appealing for their families and political cronies?
How quickly we forget. It was CCSD and the county board with many of the present members voting in support of abandoning a defense of the racial quotas for Buist. That was years before the recent Supreme Court decision when it could still be argued to have merit. They blamed it on the plaintiff who brought the case, but it was Gregg Meyers and others who voted to not let it go to trial. Toya Green was on their legal staff about that time, too. They just gave up. So I'm really curious, how do they propose to defend placing an illegal quota on a charter school? BTW, did they attempt to put a quota on the other charter schools? The quotas won't fly and if Nancy McGinley pushes them anyway, then she's showing that she is a politician and not an educator. The honeymoon is over, honey.
Were Toya Green and Gregg Meyers in the same law firm as Alice Paylor? What is the contract with Rosen Rosen and Hagood worth to tax payers?
Toya Green worked for the same firm as Alice Paylor (Rosen, Rosen and Hagood) when she was a fresh out of law school lawyer. She did legal work for CCSD at that time. She later left RR&H and joined her husband to hang out their shingle as a stand alone law firm in a storefront building on Rutledge renovated with a handful of city sponsored rehab loans.
Rosen, Rosen & Hagood pulled in more than $1 million per year in billable hours doing CCSD's legal work between 2003 & 2006. When you add the legal fees CCSD paid to other law firms for bond work and PR damage control it was closer to $1.4 million per year.
Gregg Meyers was never associated with RR&H. He was a US Justice Dept. lawyer who lost its case with CCSD in the 1980's over the resegregation of D20 schools. RR&H represented CCSD. The Buist/AMHS models with other schools to follow was RR&H's offer as a settlement. Meyers/DOJ said "No, see you in court" and they lost. CCSD was then off the hook to replicate Buist since it won the case against DOJ without the compromise. Meyer's kids then discovered Buist & AMHS were in vogue and he changed his tune. He helped to spearhead removing AMHS from Burke. He argued against keeping 2 disparate programs in the same school (Burke & AM) and is genuinely contemptuous of anything related to D20.
Gregg Meyers is in private practice and is generally considered to be a defense attorney (in other words he represents corporations against consumers). When the Porter-Gaud abuse case came along he morphed into a plaintiff's attorney. He's still a defense attorney at heart. He prefers to step on plaintiffs and has more in common with the vision of corporate defense attorneys like RR&D than is healthy.
Gregg Meyers is in the peculiar position of playing mentor to Toya Green. At his direction they play tandem off issues like the Buist Lite proposal at Memminger and placing race quotas in the Rivers lease offer to the charter school. As illegal as these proposals are it's revealing to hear Hillery Douglas say "They must be right, they're both lawyers." It's almost like a ventriloquist and his dummy. Gregg's relationship as Toya's mentor must now make him feel like a "righteous dude". Right On, Gregg! With Toya on your knee, it's almost a legal step show, if Toya even knows what a step show is. Keep working at it, Gregg, you're almost accepted…even though you and Toya both are selling out the entire black community on the peninsula.
It's very interesting that so many know what's truly going on, yet voters keep returning the board members in question to the board. You guys need to find somebody to run for the city and North Charleston seats, or this is just another game of "Ain't it awful."
Why wait until November 2008? It's clear now that Mayor Riley has been pulling the strings at CCSD for years. It's about time Charleston city voters held Joe Riley accountable for the demise of city schools. He's used the excuse that the city isn't involved, yet he was deeply involved in the election of Toya Green, Gregg Meyers and Ruth Jordan in 2006. Riley sent out 6,000 letters which he signed as mayor to solicit funds for the B-Team. He was encouraged other candidates, including at least one black candidate, to withdraw in order to not compete against his preferences or risk splitting the black block vote. It's now believed he is behind the restrictive Rivers lease proposal specifically designed to make the charter school unworkable. Joe Riley is deeply involved in school politics. It seems only fair that his campaign should finally begin to answer for so many school failures within the city he's unquestionably led for 32 years.
Toya Green and her Uncle Tom husband did not get loans for the renovation of their office building. Instead they got far more lucrative tax credits from a poorly-publicized federal program basically controled by Mayor Riley.
Toya Green does not work for Rosen, Rosen, and Hagood because--if you ever heard her speak you would know this--she is not a trial lawyer. She is a real estate lawyer out of neccessity.
Mayor Riley's opponent in the upcoming Mayoral race ran the Neighborhood Renewal program on behalf of the federal government. At one time he gave Mayor Riley carte blanche to do as he pleased, but apparently had a recent falling out with Hizzoner
Mayor Riley is, of course, good at spreading the tax payer bacon to his friends. Homeland Security money was used--not for firetrucks or firefighting equipment--but to renovate the Dock Street Theater to the tune of $3 Million. Nine dead firemen later, we are being told they could have used more training and money.
Of course, Rusty Thomas is, and has been, a political hack who gave some of those firemen jobs to his friends. Louis Mulkey might be alive today had he not dated Rusty's sister and gone into teaching instead of taking a job he was never properly trained to do.
Homeland Security money went into the Dock Street Theatre project! If that's true it's outrageous. I don't want to make a joke out of this but what did some idiot in Washington think, "Well the application was to fund renovations to 'Dock St.', so it must have something to do with port security!" Seriously if that's true, heads should roll in November, if not sooner. I'd like someone to explain exactly where the DST funds are coming from. I already know where too much of the original building is going...into a landfill.
Retired teacher: Log on to http://histreg.com/hrsnews/2006_11_19_hrsnewbak.php for information about the Dock Street Theater renovation. This is not a secret.
You're right. Here's the quote. I'm appalled.
"The restoration of the Dock Street Theater in Charleson South Carolina is being funded in part by both a Save America's Treasures Grant and a Homeland Security Grant." - as quoted from the web-site.
Retired teacher:
There's more on the Dock Street Theater funding in yesterday's Post and Courier. Interestingly, minority business owners are complaining about being shut out of the bidding process. I wonder why Dot Scott and Reverend Darby are not complaining about being shut out of Busit.
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