At the parent Open House Tuesday, September 2, the Drayton Hall Elementary administration announced that 100% of its teachers have voted to go charter. Parents will vote next week.Drayton Hall is a K-5 school enrolling over 600 students that is located west of the Ashley near Shadowmoss. In 2007 roughly half of its students scored Advanced or Proficient in all four areas of the PACT. The school is four years old.
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It will be interesting to see if Nancy McGinley and the county school board will work for or against this development. If the past record is any indication, the administration will speak for it publicly and then work against it when no one is looking. It's all about the numbers (not children). CCSD promotes charter schools for "at risk" students because they will be "off the books" as long as they are enrolled in a charter school. But when a successful school wants to convert or a new charter will potentially draw high achievers, CCSD goes to war against them. It's those higher test scores CCSD wants and it will do whatever it takes to keep those numbers on their books. It's sort of funny how none of this is really about the children.
The Post and Courier took 2 additional days to report this. The news broke during the school's open house on Tuesday and the newspaper is just now getting it out in their Thursday lead up to Friday's edition. From the looks of the lead on the story to be published tomorrow, it looks like the story will be missing a lot of substance.
The Drayton Hall faculty has already voted 100% to go charter. That's a major milestone in this process. Does the reporter know that? Will the reporter look hard at the administration's reactions? Or will she just cut and paste their canned responses while they undercut the Drayton community's charter efforts?
It would be interesting to compare what were almost fawning comments made by Nancy McGinley and Gregg Meyers recently about the "public-private" Carolina Academy. That group initially began as a charter start up. How will their gushingly supportive comments measure up to what will almost certainly be attempts by CCSD to scuttle Drayton's charter conversion?
As a supporter of the Math and Science Charter School, I wish the Drayton Hall community much success. The more choices for truly neighborhood based schools throughout Charleston County, the better the chances are for more of our children getting access to a quality public education. After 40 years of not getting it right, CCSD has proven once and for all that big isn't necessarily better.
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