Tuesday, May 19, 2009

What CCSD Does Well: Public Relations

It's true. That's why CCSD has five Red Carpet schools [Five Local Schools Get State Education Awards].

In fact, public relations takes up most of Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley's time. Take, for example, the latest public relations meetings on the school budget. Now, we know that they aren't named for their purpose, but what would be the fun in that?

Except that, strangely enough, this time out of the box McGinley seems to see these meetings as useless. She's not showing up. One interested constituent writes,
"I've attended the county's budget "hearings" so far at North Charleston Elementary, Baptist Hill HS, St. Johns HS and James Island Charter, [. . .] missing only Mt. Pleasant and McClellanville. All are carefully scripted dog and pony shows with Mike Bobby in the center ring. It seems odd that the CFO is being left to address everything from how increased class sizes won't hurt academic achievement to the value of seismic studies to be performed by "experts" from California."

"Superintendent McGinley attended only [one of the four]--the St. Johns meeting [. . .]. Even then she arrived late and left early, staying less than an hour of the hour and a half allotted. Her most memorable comment was to reassure those in attendance (half of whom were CCSD employees) the new programs proposed to address illiteracy in the schools would be as successful as other CCSD programs like MGAP. She didn't say anything about the A-Plus or CEP programs."

"[Here's] a well-intended but misdirected welcome sign that appeared at Baptist Hill. The Superintendent didn't see it. She wasn't there."
In other words, let CFO Mike Bobby take the heat. I'd like to think she's busy applying for other jobs, but probably she's just hiding in her bunker.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

read the story again. CCSD had only one Red Carpet school -- James Island Middle. The others were in the area but other districts

Babbie said...

My bad, as my students would say. And here I thought CCSD had accomplished something.

Anonymous said...

while i breathe i hope

Anonymous said...

hey babbie ... i'm baaaack. email me if you wanna get back channel stuff

Anonymous said...

As always, thanks for the laughs, Babbie.
I've decided to find the humor as much as possible. It's much better than crying.
Maybe she is looking for another job, but I'll never trust this board with a replacement.
We've had kids unable to read receiving diplomas for decades. Charter schools and school choice are our only chance at improving education in this state.