CCSD's Underutilized Schools: Why?

While Sunday's editorial in the P & C [see School Pride, Tough Choices] seeks to be the voice of reason in an emotional climate, the writer glosses over both the qualities of and reasons for the proposed closings of schools such as St. Johns and Lincoln High Schools as well as elementary schools both downtown and on the islands.

Not one of these schools is in an area of declining population. In fact, the opposite is true. Logic tells us that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Can we cut to the chase? Hundreds of students in these attendance areas have been allowed to transfer to schools in other constituent districts, most recently under NCLB, but most for years under various cooked-up personal reasons. These are the mostly apartheid schools, resegregated through artifice with the full cooperation of the School Board. These facts explain why CCSD refuses to provide numbers to the public on students attending schools other than in their attendance area.

Faced with sanctions under NCLB for years of failing [read "loss of federal funds"], Superintendent Nancy McGinley and the Charleston County School Board coterie urge these closures. After all, how would NCLB sanctions look on McGinley's record when she interviews for her next position?

This analysis holds no water for Lincoln High School, which is not failing. McGinley must be really annoyed at how bad this small, community-supported school makes her ideas of mega-high-schools look. Could it be that smaller high schools can be more successful?

And what about the closings of Charlestown Academy in North Charleston and Charleston Progressive Academy downtown? Close down the schools that are succeeding so that scores will rise at other schools?

Under cover of a bad recession McGinley and Gregg Meyers mean to remake CCSD in their own image. That means mega-schools instead of neighborhood ones. That means using earthquake scares to tear down every building not built by Bill Lewis.

When they get through with the Charleston County School District, it will have no history or traditions, this in an area settled in 1670.