A Berkeley County parent believes that her child should attend CCSD's Academic Magnet, tuition-free, and the district should be glad to have her. The parent deliberately purchased property in Charleston County so that her child could "qualify." However, attorney Gayla McSwain must not have the correct political connections, for CCSD told her that she could not pick which school in Charleston County her child could attend. Months ago, a Circuit Court judge agreed with McSwain.
Why did the P&C sit on this story? Good question, having everything to do with nefarious practices going on in the Charleston County School District for decades. Perhaps now that Janet Rose has retired she can be the goat.
Should we laugh at CCSD's attorney John Emerson when he says, "school leaders were aware before the start of this school year" that non-county residents attended magnet schools? How long before that, John? We could drag up Buist Academy and those residency shenanigans, I suppose.
Does the Academic Magnet turn away qualified students who live in Charleston County? Yes.
There is the answer to McSwain's suit. If her daughter wants to go to North Charleston High School in the district where the property is located, so be it. Meanwhile, magnets should be for Charleston County residents only. Period. This excludes all residents of Hanahan, Goose Creek, and Daniel Island, who all live in Berkeley County. Any students now in the magnet high schools from other counties who own property in the district should be charged full tuition. Future non-residents should not be accepted. If attendees move out of the district while at the magnet, they should be charged tuition.
You could almost be sympathetic with these no-good parents if they were poor, or even lower middle-class. Such is not the case. They're rich (i.e., McSwain) and well-connected (well, not McSwain!). They give money to the campaigns of Board of Trustee members who will see to their interests.
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6 comments:
I agree with your sentiment, but after reading the state law, it wouldn't really surprise me if the Supreme Court upholds the Circuit Court decision.
Charleston County's school district has left a large loop hole in their policies. By operating magnet schools with waiting lists they allow actual residents to be displaced by applicants who don't live in the county. If district administrators and elected school board members were serious about protecting the rights of true Charleston County residents they would do what's necessary.
First, if they really want magnet schools with reputations that encourage more applications than they have spaces, open another SOA, AMHS or Buist until all qualified applicants are enrolled.
Second, stop accepting applications from people who aren't legal Charleston County residents at the time of their application.
Third, establish a real cost per student for each school, or at least each grade level, in Charleston County. Barring the parents paying a tuition fee in lieu of local residency, the sending county should pay because its for an educational service they are unwilling or unable to offer to one of their students. If the county of the applicant's legal residence (in this case it's Berkeley) releases the student to attend a Charleston County school, then that county school should have to transfer to Charleston schools whatever local funding would have been expended, less the state contribution. CCSD will get the state money with its official head count.
Finally, for every magnet school space occupied by a non-resident, the Charleston school board should expand the magnet program by a corresponding space to accommodate a Charleston County resident on the waiting list who would otherwise be prevented from attending the magnet program.
The school board should fix this problem or be faced with the possibility of burdening Charleston County taxpayers with educating a whole lot more students from outside the county. I think Clisby is right. The courts may uphold the parents in this case and others like it that.
The public can't seriously be expected to believe district officials will be honest about the results by this coming Friday. Not likely. Even if they do expose some cross county line enrollees, then what? Are they going to put the gate crashers out? It's the end of the 6th week of the new school year. Why did they wait to do this now if as the school district's attorney said they knew about this before school started? Sounds like the district got caught and now they are being forced to investigate, again.
I'm really curious about this audit. My daughter is a sophomore at AMHS, and both years I've registered her, I've had to provide a tax bill showing where our primary home is; a utility bill at that address; and a notarized affidavit saying we live in Charleston County. What are these other people turning in? And what exactly is the school district doing that's more thorough than this procedure? As far as I know, they haven't secretly followed my daughter home from the bus stop to see where she ends up.
The report in the P&C and the column in today's paper is about just one student. The district obviously knows about more transfers from Berkely County. They just aren't talking about them. There were two more at SOA and another at Buist that came in this year. Again no one within the administration is fessing up to what they know about the other complaints. By keeping these under the rug implies they wouldn't have admitted this one without someone forcing their hand by blowing the whistle on the others. So what about the rest of them Mr. Emerson?
If CCSD requires Charleston County residents who are legit to jump through hoops but gives others a pass, then it looks like the greater bad guy in this story is CCSD.
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