Imagine! Those pesky residents of Sullivans Island don't want to go in lockstep with Superintendent McGinley and the Charleston County School District Board of Trustees. It seems that its former mayor and more than 200 petition-signing residents think that one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter schools don't fit the island.
Never mind that CCSD plans to build a 500-student school on a barrier island prone to hurricanes, or that the island is served by a swing bridge that will interrupt the busses traveling daily bringing more than half of the student body onto the island. The major complaint is that the school will be out of scale for island life and change the character of its surroundings.
Funny. That's exactly what Superintendent McGinley has planned for all of Charleston County, and, thanks to her toady majority on the Board of Trustees, she's well on her way to accomplishing it.
The petition drive for a referendum of island residents is well meant but too late. Better to focus on the next school board election and getting the sycophants off the Board. Better yet to contact your legislative delegation this week and tell them that they should appoint someone to fill Mary Ann Taylor's vacant seat who will not be a rubber stamp.
That's what caused this problem in the first place.
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
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3 comments:
The school district is too big to care about neighborhood schools or the communities they are supposed to serve. This rubber stamp school board doesn't represent the interests of the public. How many of these rubber stamper actually answer calls from their constituents? Try calling one to express your concerns. The published phone number of Ms. Green is really the school district office. Ms. Oplinger brags about deleting constituent e-mails. Ms. Cotes will call you names as she defends the administration. It's anyone's guess about what the others will do. Rubber stampers will do whatever the administration tells them to do.
Who made it a policy that all schools must have 500 students? No such policy existed until the administration said it was so and the rubber stampers then said it must be so, too. No such policy exists, but who can question it now? Like so much with CCSD, it's a done deal.
A $27,000,000 school the size of the USS Yorktown on Sullivan's Island front beach? That's crazy. No, that's the superintendent's ego run amock and out of control with other people's money.
The earlier petition of a thousand names that the superintendent's toady, Loren Ziff, refers to was simply a public statement designed call for retaining a school on the island. Many of the signers turned out to be restaurant patrons anyway. That petition said nothing about size or design which later involved almost no public input. McGinley misused the original petition as a wedge to get what she and Bill Lewis wanted. That has turned out to be nothing more than a very expensive monument to themselves.
The 500 student school size minimum is a red herring. Forget the conservation claims being made by Michael Bobby, Bill Lewis and Nancy McGinley. Building so much in a V-flood zone and the transportation costs that are to come for moving over 80% of the students twice a day make a mockery of CCSD as a "green" school district. There is no conservation factor of any kind associated with this plan.
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