CCSD labors mightily and brings forth . . . a mouse.Saturday's P & C reveals the results of its new policy on enforcing attendance zones. [See Board allows 6 outside zone to stay at school].
Whom should we feel sorrier for: Nancy Cook, who voted to enforce the residency policy approved on her watch and was voted down 8 to 1 by the rest of the CCSD board members; or the St. Andrews District 10 constituent board, which naively assumed that enforcing that policy was what it was expected to do? Perhaps its members have now discovered they have more in common with the District 20 constituent board than once they thought!
According to the constituent board's chairman, Russell Johnson, "no one on the constituent board wanted to move children mid-year, but they were trying to uphold the county board's rules."'I'm not real fond of (the county board) making rules that they don't enforce themselves,' Johnson said. 'What is the point of the residency verification if they are not going to enforce the results?'"[italics mine]
Exactly. So the plan is, drag your feet verifying addresses for the first semester; then allow the miscreants to keep the children where they should not be because they've been in the school for a semester. I'm not talking about hardship cases here, but it's hard to believe that all six exceptions fall into that category. Let the parents explain to Johnny Joe why he has to change schools mid-year. It reminds me of the criminal who murders his parents and then begs for mercy because he's an orphan.
If CCSD is not willing to enforce its attendance zone policy now, there is no reason to believe it will do so in the future. The school board passed this policy to placate those who believe (and still do) that the lists for Buist Academy have been "cooked" and bypassed for favored children of the well-connected. Nothing has changed at Buist with this policy. Community concerns have not been answered. Only St. Andrews was impacted by Goodloe-Johnson's assigning multiple unhappy Buist applicants to the school as a sop. The uproar began when the school became overcrowded and added mobile classrooms as a result.
At Buist, which claims to be the only magnet school to have completed the process of verification, the process was never truly started. No enrollees were checked to see which of the four lists they were supposed to be fulfilling. Does anyone believe that all of them actually live in Charleston County? Why should anyone when downtown addresses have been proved false in the past and NOTHING happened?
Gepford should not allow himself to be used as a figurehead for this ethically-challenged group, not if he has any self-respect.
[By the way, is this the same Doug Gepford who is a supporter of Charleston Collegiate School?]
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4 comments:
It will be truly interesting to see how Doug Gepford handles this. He has stepped into quite a political mess. What will he choose? His integrity or his job? Let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's anything less.
Gregg Meyers knew exactly what he was doing when he created this pseduo residency policy. He's continuing to protect his buddies...
Shame on the rest of the CCSD board for not caring enough to do anything about it.
Way to go, Russ Johnson, for calling it like it is.
One can't help but wonder if "they" are hiding more at Buist than anyone has ever brought up here or even the Charleston Shame blog. "They" are certainly coming up with elaborate scenarios to protect the status quo.
I strongly feel that what the public knows about Buist is only the tip of the ice berg. Wasn't Watergate just a "third rate break in?" I believe that there is panic in some quarters that the public will find out just what has really been done with our tax dollars in Charleston.
Watch the school board carefully. Both the Republicans and Democrats on the board want Buist "off the table." For such a highly partisan group their agreement about Buist should give us pause. No doubt members of both sides on the board have passed out slots to friends, family, and political cronies. However, I sense that the story is much worse than that.
Ghostryder here,
As long as we continue to elect politicians and bureaucrats who pay lip service to things that really matter to the whole community and not just a small segment of the community. We will always have poor representations from both the democratic and republican parties. Neither side is innocent. They are both guilty of hurting this community, this state, and this country. The left and the right arms of these parties are destroying American and they do not care as long as they win. They could care less if the community is worse off. They won! They could care less if the community struggles due to their polices. They won! They seem to not care about the consequences of their policy on the community. They won! Those things will be fodder for their next fight against the opposition party. It does not matter to them if what they are fighting for harms the community as a whole because it served them and a special interest within that community.
You see an organization like the Heritage Community Service organization for abstinence and what they are doing and you have to say,"That isn't right and everyone knows it." The message of this organization is lost because the folks who run it are greedy, and they are greedy. How can anyone defend them, but they do. I mean. You have a non-profit organization which pays you very well and you have a for-profit company and the for-profit does work and is paid very well for its work for the non-profit and no one thinks there is a problem. Yet, the supporters of these people say that their salary for the non-profit falls inline with the normal non-profits of this country. OK, but what about the fact that the company that does their printing is for-profit and they own it too and you don't have a problem with that. This mentality is what I am frustrated with in this country. It's ok if my guy does it, although I will always condemn this practices if someone or some organization I disagree with is doing it. This is why both parties are guilty of hurting this country. They support policies which they condemn the other side for doing and then turn around and do it themselves and defend their actions by saying the other guy is doing it so I must do it too. Show some character, show some morality by not doing those things that you condemn in others. Will we every have common sense when it comes to public policy! It's time we find leaders who lead by example and not by words. We need men and women who show us by their actions what they believe in and not just by words. We need true leaders and not intellectual babble theories. The hypocrisies that is in the left and right side of the political parties disgust me and is why more people do not get involve because they do not trust either side.
I want to be clear. I am not against the Heritage organization. It's not the message that this organization preaches that bothers me. I think it is a bit simplest in it's thought, but they have a right to exist; yet this organization should stand on its own two legs with the majority of it's money coming from for-profit corporations and individuals and very little from the taxpayers of this state and country and if it cannot get most of it's support from the private sector, then the private sector and the public have spoken.
Disgusted by Charleston politics said, "'They' are certainly coming up with elaborate scenarios to protect the status quo." The status quo has always done what it can to keep it the way it is. We had a Revolution over the status quo. We fought a Civil War over the status quo. We had a Civil Rights movement to fight the status quo.
The status quo will always do what it will to maintain what they have and they will not go quietly into the night. They do not believe in sharing or they think the rest of us are not as deserving of what they have. The status quo of the left and right political parties and the status quo of the black and white leadership in this community are responsible for the failing schools of Charleston County. Their policies over the years have destroyed the schools and broken some of their communities by design.
The individuals who work within the schools do a remarkable job considering the conditions that the status quo keeps them in and one must remember that some of those folks who are in the schools are apart of the status quo and they do their part to keep the status quo by grinding things out. By putting road blocks up so that it is harder to achieve and when things don't measure up. The status quo can point out the failures of the policy without revealing the fact that there were those who were sabotaging the process from within the school. We need to recognize the status quo in both the black and white communities and throw them out so that we can have the dynamic community that is within reach of Charleston County.
How can one defend the policies at Buist, but they do! How can one allow the schools downtown to fail for so long and not do something about it. But they do. Sanders-Clyde is a start. But why did it take so long. Look how Charleston Progressive has been done. And those who don't think it can't happen to them. Look at St. Andrews as your example as it can happen outside of District 20. The board there followed the residency rules, recommended those who were not compliant per se the County Boards rules, and the County Board slapped them in the face by reinstating the students by stating the fact that they could not move the kids mid-year. The parents in the situation knew they were not compliant with the rules. They should have moved their children voluntarily. They knew what could happen. But rules are rules. One group has to follow them, then all most follow them.
If the school that you child has to go to is not doing well, help improve it. But it should have been done a long time ago before your child got old enough to go there. The problem is that we have selfish people who have tunnel vision. We should be demanding excellence from all our schools and not just from the one that our kid goes too. We all pay taxes. And if that is the only way to motive people to action so be it.
When schools fail it should be the School Board Members and Downtown administrators who should be forced to resign and not the teachers and principals of the schools. They are only caring out the failed policy or policies of the Board and Downtown administration. And if the Board and Downtown Administrators cannot do the honorable thing of stepping down,then the voters of Charleston County should vote for board members who are willing to fire Downtown administrators. Success is guided from the top and not from bottom. If the bottom is not successful then the top is responsible and if the top does not like this kind of pressure. It's time to go and find those individuals who do so that all our children and students can succeed.
Ciao
Ahhh, so it would only be a matter of time...days (minutes, even?!)...for people to compare notes and find the cheats that CCSD and Sallie Ballard at Buist seem to think the public is too stupid to figure out. Do they think they are the only ones in on how this works?
An unnamed family with a child at Buist built a house in Dorchester County and moved in two years ago with the full knowledge of Principal Ballard and others at Buist. Now that the heat has been turned on at Buist, the parents have been called in and told that they can stay for the remainder of this school year but they won't be allowed to continue beyond the spring semester.
As this story goes, it's all handled very neatly from Sallie Ballard's office...no publicity... no public admission of any irregularities at Buist... no county school board appeal is required and certainly NO INVOLVEMENT with the Dist. 20 Board.
Meanwhile, thinking it must follow through with CCSD and County School Board policies, albeit applied late in the year, St. Andrews Math & Science ferrets out students who weren't properly enrolled. The school sends notices to the violators, gives them the right to appeal to the Dist. 10 Board, then the Dist. 10 Board gives them the right to appeal to the County School Board (of course the county board reverses the Dist. 10 Board & thereby reverses its own policies) which eventually allows all to stay until the end of the school year anyway.
But the jewel of this story is that we, the public, are supposed to believe that Buist has no problems...no appeals...no cheaters...no irregularities. Get real! How long will CCSD take Charleston taxpayers, parents and the public in general as that foolish. Sallie Ballard sat on this Dorchester County resident attending Buist for 2 years. Goodloe-Johnson, Jerry Adams, Janet Rose and now Nancy McGinley, Doug Gepford and Elliot Smalley all actively participated in a coverup.
Why was this one family given an administrative pass by Sallie Ballard rather than be required to follow the same process that the St. Andrews parents had to follow? The end result would have been the same. The reason is simple. No one wants to admit there is a problem at Buist and CCSD officials will do whatever is necessary to maintain that myth. That includes making false statements to the press and lying outright to the public.
Too many people are part of this cover up. What I can't understand is what makes protecting a generally mediocre elementary school principal worth sacrificing the professional integrity of so many others. She has demonstrated serious shortcomings in dealing with middle school student issues and is the target of at least one law suit that is costing CCSD more than a few bucks when it could have settled the issues at no cost years ago.
Several investigations into civil rights violations are ongoing... all involve thoughtless unilateral decisions made by Sallie Ballard that were designed to intimidate parents and appear to have violated written CCSD policies. Still no one within CCSD will pin the tail on this donkey.
Applications to Buist are down and indications are that details within the school's annual report card will be making a smiliar downward turn...unless Prinicipal Ballard's attempts to manipulate vacancies can stop the inevitable.
Sallie Ballard has to go. Others should probably follow her out the door. But if she doesn't go soon, many of those who have covered for her should be exposed when she is finally forced to leave. It's only a matter of time.
Oh, by the way, who's paying CCSD for that Dorchester County kid attending Buist Academy? Better still, what was the cost to the legal resident who was ultimately denied a place at Buist because Sallie Ballard decided that an out of county student should remain in the seat that might have been theirs?
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