Hope you're ready to pay more in legal fees for the Charleston County Board of Trustees. The Board is moving full steam ahead to confront the Charter High School Committee's appeal to the State Board of Education over the rent issue, now scheduled for hearing on December 11.
Apparently, Charter School organizers, who must come equipped with the patience of Job, have been waiting since early October to get together with a committee from the CCSD Board to talk over differences. When no such meeting occured they had to fish or cut bait at Tuesday's deadline for its appeal.
Hillery Douglas, new Board Chairman, said that, well, they were supposed to meet. His solution is that he might "try this week to set up a meeting." That, of course, would be after the filing deadline. But then, what naif believed that the Board's committee planned negotiation in good faith with the Charter School proponents?
Douglas pouts that the "school is relying on legal arguments" that the "board hasn't had the opportunity to address"! He plans that opportunity for when hell freezes over, or at least the last possible moment on his delay-linger-and-wait agenda. That apparently is the next board meeting.
Meanwhile, CCSD's lawyers continue to rack up legal fees. Too bad we can't spend the money on education.
Which do you think the CCSD Board prefer: new charter schools or vouchers? They seem to believe that they can go on forever without either.
For a look at the Charter School's plans visit charlestonmathand science.org
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
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15 comments:
Has the school hired a principal to lead the change? I know they were actively seeking candidates.
Hillery has made an a$$ out of himself on this one. If that's not enough he makes it worse and does it again on Octavia Michell's report on Chanel 2 tonight. So how are they going to spin themselves out of this mess without costing the taxpayers more money? That's right, they assume we're to stupid to call them on this.
Hillery has a super majority on the county board. He can have anything he wants. So when he blames failures on others...he's trying to divert our gaze toward him. He's the reason for no choice except for a few and failing schools for all the rest. Too bad Gregg Meyers isn't up for voter approval along with Hillery next year. You can fool all the people some of the time...time is running out...and looks like hell isn't freezing over anytime soon.
If not charter school choices and things continue as they are, then even hard core Democrats might start calling for vouchers, too. If they wait too long to lead this school board may just loose it all.
Alice Paylor will not give good legal advice if it saves the district money.
Yeah, she needs someone to pay for those European cruises she loves to take...
CCSD reportedly has a new RFP (request for proposals) for a new 5-year legal services contract. Alice Paylor may or may not be sweating this because if the services go to another law firm it will be a BIG hit on her firm's income stream. Whatever happens, CCSD is foolish to pay for legal services on a "billable hours" basis. Their attorney has no incentive to seek resolutions or to mediate disputes if the "billable hours" would be reduced. Right now it's to the direct financial benefit of the lawyers involved to ligitgate everything. After all, it's only taxpayer's money and there's a lot more of it where that came from. Maybe not.
This kind of reminds me of how they "forgot" to finish Sallie Ballard's appeal against Dist. 20 residents receiving priority to Buist. Meanwhile, the CCSD board ignored the Dist. 20 ruling... hoping it would go away, I guess.
Alice has had some tough times lately, so you should lay off and go after the people who hire her and tell her to take a certain approach. When everyone thought she was on a cruise she was actually dealing with some personal matters.
How would you like to have to go into Court and defend the decisions of the CCSD Board? And that bunch of buffoons on the Dorchester School District Two Board may be worse.
I would never want to defend the CCSD Board, that's for sure. But in my opinion, Alice has made a choice to sacrifice her integrity. Give her a break? Show us some integrity and humanistic qualities and then I can consider it. To be perfectly honest, I wonder how she still has a license to practice law.
I'm aware she's had some tough personal problems and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. But she needs to get her priorities straight.
give us a "brief", get it brief on Paylor's personal problems. No one can have sympathy for something they know nothing about.Give
She has an out of control teenager.
Lawyers do not always get to choose either their clients or their battles. Alice has been working for the Rosen Firm for over twenty-five years. Sometimes she has to make the best of a very bad situation. And, the sad thing is that she can't even publicly defend herself by identifying who formulated the stupid plan of attack. She's a passenger on a ship of fools contolled by an ever changing crew of bigger fools. And the captain is lost as sea.
All you folks who think Alice has committed some unethical act, turn her into the Bar or shut up about it. Larry Kobrowsky has dealt with her in any number of capacities and he apparently does not think she has done anything wrong.
OK, let's say we go along with this take and give Alice Paylor the benefit of doubt.
Gregg Meyers (an attorney who specializes in corporate defense work) has been on board and very close to the helm since 1996. Don't forget, he was the attorney that LOST the Dept. of Justice Civil Rights case in 1981 against CCSD. CCSD was represented by Robt. Rosen, then of the Rosen firm. Could it be that Meyers became Captain of this Ship of Fools ten years ago? As a limousine liberal he gets to play tugboat tyrant in the wading pool as he decides what's best for the masses. He's never bothered to understand the depth or location of the problems ordinary parents face.
He'll also never admit that he LOST the original case because of the same arrogance and his lack of understanding of ordinary issues. Instead of taking an innovative settlement crafted by CCSD's legal counsel at the time, he blew it all.
It would have been a settlement that would have put magnet schools all over Charleston County, not just a few with only one Buist downtown. It would have also required that the state pick up the tab. CCSD's board didn't really understand it but went along with it, as did the state. If Meyers had taken the settlement, the judge would have signed off and ORDERED all parties to comply. Buist & AMHS were offered up as a dress parade for a fleet of similar schools to follow. Meyers said "No, I'll see you in court!"...and then LOST it all. Now we're now stuck with the half baked results of litigation that nobody predicted...and no one understands.
This Voyage of the Damned is rudderless and without power. Remember also that Superintendent Chip Zellinger, who was all about grassroots public engagement, was thrown overboard with a mutiny that had Gregg Meyers's fingerprints all over it. If current Superintendent Nancy McGinley steps forward to do what's right, will she suffer the same fate?
If this is correct then Alice Paylor is just another deckhand on someone else's boat. The Rosen firm (now sans Robert), however, isn't exactly a bit player among those seated at the high stakes game table. This is after all CCSD's annual HALF BILLION DOLLAR cruise ship to nowhere.
I must go down to the sea again and paylor supporter both have some valid points.
Alice does not get to pick and choose her cases. But, she is the one who elects to be so antagonistic, hateful, and mean-spirited in the process. She is not unlike Robert Rosen in many ways--only without the talent.
And Alice does have some family problems that are, quite frankly, no one's business.
As to how much influence the Rosen Firm now has over CCSD, that is certainly debatable. Morris was "the man" and then Robert became "the man." Richard and Alice together wield nowhere near the influence over CCSD that Morris and Robert once wielded.
As to Myer's being a "limousine liberal" that is nonsense. He's not a liberal of any stripe. He's self-serving, egostistical, and barely competant. He should not be setting policy.
I'll buy that.
I agree with the poster above. Mr. Meyers is incompetent and should not be setting policy. Yet, he does just that. I attended the Buist policy meeting and watched him in action. He's manipulative and it's scary. Mr. Mario White, the SIC President of Buist Academy, asked him if the Dist. 20 board could legally require students who entered Buist as Dist. 20 residents to maintain their Dist. 20 residency throughout their tenure at Buist. Mr. Meyers' response was "people have a constitutional right to travel."
I just hope this blog will ultimately educate the public on who Gregg Meyers really is.
And I find it disgusting that we're kicking kids out of St. Andrews Math and Science for not living in the attendance zones, but we're doing nothing about Buist...where the REAL problem lies.
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