These people--Eliot Smalley and Audrey Lane--are so central to the Charleston County School District's success that they deserve raises to the six-figure bracket when teachers are being let go and class sizes are rising. That's how educrats like Superintendent Nancy McGinley think.
What ever happened to "victory begins in the classroom"? Just a slogan.
So points out Carol M. Peecksen, a retired CCSD English teacher, in a Letter to the Editor published Wednesday and titled "Raises Wrong." [See Letters to the Editor.] Peecksen was responding to an earlier editorial in the P & C that pointed out that CCSD now has 20 members in its "six-figure club." Not one of those is "in the classroom." Instead, those "in the classroom" have their salaries reduced with "furlough days."
As the prior editorial pointed out, "The raises should make those two employees happy. The district's other 5,374 employees are probably wondering what happened to theirs." Right. Especially since they too have been asked to perform additional duties.
Who on the School Board looks out for the little guy? Not Green, Jordan, Oplinger, Collins, Meyers, or Fraser! Those members were only too happy to go along with this idiocy. I wonder if those teachers and staff who voted for them are happy now?
Note: In one of those strange coincidences, Peecksen and I were classmates at St. Andrews Parish High School many years ago. No collaboration here--I haven't seen or talked to her in 23 years and didn't know she had retired.
Friday, July 31, 2009
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4 comments:
Yeah, I guess McGinley's dollars are being well spent. She made sure, Lane, Smalley, and Nelson were at the OCR meeting on Wed. night.
So they cry wolf when it's time to fund the budget. Then after they get as much as they are going to get, McGinley rewards her palace guard with a raise. McGinley has never been very good at balancing what's on her plate. To make matters worse, she has no sense of timing. Just like her car allowance that was doubled in response to $4.00 a gallon gas just as gas prices were heading down again. Did anyone notice her fuel kitty now equals the salery of some CCSD line employees?
Smalley's stealth comments on the blogs match the excuses he gave the press after the parent's meeting with the OCR investigators. Like McGinley, he has no real feel for this community. He has even less concern for the people. His claim that the school closures were designed to save money and done only after extensive public input can only be characterized as either deeply disrespectful or terrribly shallow. Once again, Charleston County taxpayers are paying for goldplated con artists. "Victory in the Classroom" is a nice way of saying, "Yep, these yahoos will believe anything we tell them as long as they think it's coming from a six figure expert."
At least we can bet the educational system we now have in Charleston won't give us anyone like McGinley, Smalley or Green for the next generation. Most will be doing well to make minimum wage. We'll hire the teachers Berkeley and Dorchester don't accept. The 650 or so bright ones (out of the 41,000 students in CCSD) will move on to more progressive lives elsewhere (since minimum wages won't pay their bills). That leaves CCSD to continue to import more rip off artists like the ones who run our public schools...a great training ground for Charleston's future of low expectations.
I've got news for Smalley. It is a "race thing" when someone like him gets a raise while thousands of minority kids get to take a bus just to attend overcrowded classrooms in schools that have already written them off. Yes, and Brenda Nelson, another administrative favorite with no classroom qualifications, is just another cooperative overseer on this plantation.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars thrown out for "community relations" everywhere but no real victory in the classroom will be found here.
I pray for these people...it is so wrong how they treat our children! The thing about it is the people are genuinely concerned about making a difference in children's lives are the ones who are pushed out of the system...I know first hand!
How ironic the Post and Courier makes their front page story about the 30 plus million dollars we're spending on Moultrie Middle 2 days after the OCR was here investigating the closing of our black schools. Seeing Bill Lewis made me want to vomit. He's so crooked, he can't even stand up straight for a front page photo.
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