Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Education Non-Profits: Profitable for Some!


Politics and money and sex.

Wow! Can you imagine a more volatile mixture? Yet that's exactly what we have with the Heritage Keepers program being used statewide and in Charleston County schools.

It's NOT new. It wasn't just adopted this year. Questions have been raised about the selection of this particular nonprofit for YEARS. Questions have been raised about how the program presents itself and who benefits from its contracts. Questions have been raised about its political protectors.

In fact, every red flag you could think of has been raised in regard to this "non-profit" that receives millions of dollars from the taxpayers of South Carolina and seems to have local political links.

Apparently, the P & C has finally decided that the issue merits newsprint in Tuesday's edition.

[See Character Program Questioned].

Let's see. So the SC House is poised to approve a five-member oversight committee for "abstinence-based programs." Why stop there? What about oversight of the rest of the non-profits in the education blob that are swilling at the public trough?

And CCSD's response to questions about the program? "The school district also has asked the state Department of Education for guidance, said Tamara Kirshstein, the district's science and health curriculum coordinator." Now, we don't know how long Ms. Kirshstein has held that position, but after years of using the program, isn't asking for guidance NOW a bit late?

Pathetic, isn't it? Or it would be if it weren't our tax dollars being wasted.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Clelia,
Why cry foul at the Newsless Courier for "finally deciding the issue merits newsprint."
You leveled the same criticism when the paper wrote about the nonprofit in January.

Babbie said...

Well, you are correct. What I should have said is that the P&C doesn't pay attention to the issue other than reporting what the House is doing. Why isn't it more interested in digging into the details?

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're the one not paying attention, Clelia.

Anonymous said...

Plenty of people are paying attention.

Heritage is going down hard.

Don't kid yourself, it's just a matter of who saves themselves first and throws the others under the bus.

Anonymous said...

I do not know why anyone thinks Heritage is "going down." The company has someone on the committee that decides what outside curricula can be taught in Charleston County, several well-connected people are on its Board, and legislation pending before the South Carolina Legislature would allow Heritage to continue to receive funding without accounting for past expenditures. And if the proposed legislation does not pass there will be no State or federal constraints on where Heritage does business, what it teaches, or how it spends state grants. This is whose idea of "going down?"