Want an item on the CCSD School Board's agenda? Find four members to support it. Want an item taken off the agenda? One will do. Well, that's only fair, isn't it?
That's the gist of Friday's P & C story on disagreements expressed by board members on its "gag" rule. [SeeAgenda Policy Under Review.] Apparently this cockeyed system was introduced solely to silence John Graham Altman, presumably some time between 1984, when he served as chairman, and 1996, when he left the board.
Let's take a hypothetical example. Suppose you, as a board member, managed to get three other members to support putting the leasing agreement for the Charter School for Math and Science on the agenda. Unbenownst to you a fifth board member comes along and takes it off the agenda.
Maddening, isn't it? After all that work getting four members to agree?
Of course, you understand this example is only hypothetical, right?
Friday, August 08, 2008
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2 comments:
The glorious thing about a democracy is that the majority rules while the minority is guaranteed a voice. Somehow an elitist group of self serving jerks became a majority of the county school board and decided to forget how the balance is supposed to work. More like it, they decided they didn't want to work at all.
How is a member of the county board going to get 4 members to agree without violating state ethics rules against a majority meeting behind closed doors? Say one member has to approach 4 other members just to get 3 to agree to sign on, then the ethics rules have been broken. Five members of a nine member board will have met, even if separately, meaning a quorum had conducted business without proper public notification.
The voters of Charleston County have been push overs to these abusive politicians. A smaller county in a less affluent part of SC would have reported these people long before now. Time's up. They got to go.
Being reasonable, whatever happened to one person making a motion and a second person seconding it? Two people agreeing to placing something on an agenda is logical; requiring four is not.
And since when is a superintendent authorized to set an agenda without the approval of at least the chairman or vice-chairman of the board? A superintendent is just an employee of the board. She does not have final say on what business the board considers. Only the board itself has that responsibility.
Any particular reason all references to the new math and science charter school have been removed from the CCSD web site?
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