Once upon a time a Chief Academic Officer named Nancy McGinley, probably following the lead of her mentors at the Broad Foundation, suggested that problem students in CCSD could be best handled by a for-profit company named Community Education Partners (CEP). The CCSD Board of Trustees, under the reign of Maria Johnson-Goodloe, undertook to build an appropriate building, as directed by CEP, once the decision was made. CEP then came to Charleston and ran the new school under its proposed guidelines.Flash forward to the 2007-08 school year. CEP cannot keep qualified staff at the new Murray Hill Academy. Principals flee, one after another. Polite accusations fly between CEP and CCSD. In order to save money CCSD renegotiates its contract with CEP and plans to take over running the school.
Now note Sunday's lead for the article, Discipline School Plan Readied: "Charleston County School District's experiment with a private, for-profit company running its discipline school ended early and with little to no academic results."[italics added]
How many millions went to this "experiment"? The building cost $9 million. CEP charged about $3 million a year to run it. Now CCSD begins another experiment.
While smaller class sizes sound great, cycling students through faster does not. Given the multitude of discipline problems in CCSD's failing schools, only the 240 most recalcitrant are likely to be there at any one time. Will a semester (or less) with "an hour-long daily life skills class" taught by a counselor fix a problem that's taken years to create? Will "chang[ing] the atmosphere to feel more like other schools" make Murray Hill more effective, as new principal Myrna Caldwell wants to do? Why?
Is CCSD now embarking on another unproved experiment doomed to failure because it hasn't been fully thought out? That's what happened last time.
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7 comments:
As taxpayers we should be outraged. We need to hold our school board accountable. Unfortunately, too many of our board members seemed to be interested in the "perks" that come with their position as opposed to actually improving our educational system. Check out 98-CP-10-004166. Evidently, Nancy Cook isn't the only one who has enjoyed Ms. Paylor's attorney services.
OK, that's obviously a court case number. Please tell me how to search for it or download a copy.
Go to www.charlestoncounty.org. Under on-line services, click on Clerk of Court, then click on-line court cases.
Douglas? I hope our tax dollars didn't pay for that!
Hillery Douglas needs a good course in anger management. A good candidate for the discipline school, he has problems with a lot more than just using bad words. More billable hours for Alice Paylor, too.
The new principal (Ms. Caldwell) has spent the past few years as an AP at School of the Arts. I'm wondering...how did that experience prepare her for Murray Hill? Good luck with your "PTA."
CEP could have and would have worked if Goodloe then McGinley would have kept their noses, Brenda Nelson and Denise Nusome out of their business. Doesn't anyone wonder why they work in every other city they are in. They guarantee their work everywhere but here because those 4 constantly broke the original contract. Goodloe and McGinley loaded it up before it opened with their assignments of students. John Raffele couldn't run the school because Nelson was always there undermining him with his teachers by telling them they were the ones they needed to listen to. But, isn't it strange that CEP was once again McGinley's baby (reference) along with the A Plus Program and many others. It is easy to see why we were failing and are failing Goodloe was lazy and McGinley is incompetent. As Goodloe's parting shot says, "You folks deserve what you are getting", and she was no prize either. I hope the next superintendent hired by the board never walked through The Broad Foundations door. That is where they went wrong!
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