CCSD Progress in Senior Staff Salaries

As CCSD continues under the present "crisis" to contemplate closing neighborhood schools, we need a little perspective on CCSD's spending:

• Under Superintendent Nancy McGinley, in January of this year a teacher at Burke High School was told supplies of paper had run out and no funds remained to purchase more.
• Under Superintendent Nancy McGinley, teachers at Goodwin Elementary have already received their "paper for the year." They trek it to the copier, then hoard what remains in hopes it will last the school year, since no funds remain for more (it's still October, folks!).

Now, the background to this penny-pinching, thanks to CCSD's finally responding to FOIA requests (it took CCSD three full months to arrive at the following list):

• Superintendent McGinley has created four new senior staff positions during her year as superintendent: Director of Volunteer Services and Public Affairs; Executive Director for Planning, Partnerships, and Communication; Director of Community Outreach; and Director of School Choice, Staff Allocations, and Accreditation.
• Three of these new positions have a salaries in the $100,000 range. One is "only" about $80,000.

The district's carefully worded explanation for this tax-dollar mushroom is that "in many respects these are simply new job titles covering responsibilities previously undertaken by another employee with a different job title. For example, Mr. Smalley's job includes the work previously done by the Director of Communications, but also includes numerous other responsibilities."

So the salaries are also the same? Of course not. And McGinley herself is one of the highest paid district superintendents in South Carolina.

No wonder there's a budget crisis. How did McGinley word it? Oh, yes--"doing better than ever--more with less." That's one way to put it.

Please ask the CCSD cheerleaders running for the school board about these expenditures. Their answers should be illuminating.