By its own admission, the Charleston County School District has neglected to fill 70 seats at the Academic Magnet High School, causing a vacancy rate of 10 percent in the district's flagship school, the one with the waiting lists. The one with the waiting lists?
Superintendent McGinley can make all the excuses that she wants (and she will), but this uncontested fact reeks of mismanagement. Are there waiting lists or not?
Apologists will argue that attrition caused these vacancies, that students drop out of the AMHS program when they find it too demanding. Wow! And, miraculously, it was hot last summer, too. Also, snowballs melt in hell (although not too close to Dante's Satan).
All classes suffer attrition from the first day of high school. Planning wisely prevents seats that could benefit county residents' children from going begging. A simple expansion of the AMHS ninth grade by about 35 students this coming year would go a long way in reducing the vacancy rate in following years.
Don't you wonder why no one on the administrative end of CCSD has figured that out? Parents of ninth-grade applicants who were placed on the AMHS waiting list should sue the district. Maybe that would get someone's attention.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
9 comments:
Your suggestion for solving this makes total sense which is exactly why the school district won't be doing anything like it.
How many vacancies remain at the others magnet schools?
What's the grade-level distribution of the vacancies?
Realistically, if you don't get into AMHS by the start of junior year, you're going to have a really hard time meeting requirements. It's not like there's any point in admitting new seniors.
Very true. That was my point in expanding the ninth grade instead of higher levels. It makes sense to begin with a larger base since attrition occurs each succeeding year. The situation begs the question, should there even be waiting lists for grades 10-12?
The lack of providing detailed information and the failure to appropriately plan for normal attrition demonstrate that the district's leadership is failing to lead properly.
What makes no sense (oh, but it does) is that the most successful parent-driven charter schools in Charleston County appear to be more efficient, have lower vacancy rates, operate lotteries that work and are far more transparent than any of CCSD's magnet schools. On the face of it, CCSD is completely unconcerned with meeting individual student needs. Charter schools have laws to follow and plenty of people to see to it the laws are followed.
No similar oversight applies to CCSD. Because of that, magnet schools will continue to be seen as arbitrarily exclusive and inherently unfair.
I think they are keeping the vacancies by grade to themselves. Too much information might make the natives restless.
Seriously, the state department of education gets this information on a regular basis from school districts. CCSD should already have it only it looks like they are choosing not to make it part of the school capacity report.
Just having such a high vacancy rate in its magnet schools should say something is wrong.
Buist Academy is supposed to have 410 students but CCSD is reporting they only have 386 enrolled this year. They have two classes per grade with 20 students per class in K thru 3rd grade and 25 per class in grades 4 thru 8. That's a no brainer at 410 students. This isn't AMHS, so transfers to Buist for qualified students all the way up to and including 7th grade shouldn't be a problem. Ask our "Victory in the classroom" superintendent why there is no access to certain classrooms. Or maybe this about all classrooms being equal, only some are more equal than others. These really aren't nice people.
"The situation begs the question, should there even be waiting lists for grades 10-12?"
I don't see any problem with a waiting list for grade 10. Grade 11 is iffy, although I suppose it could be predicated on the students' having completed certain courses. Grade 12? Completely useless.
Oh, and for those not familiar with all the AMHS requirements: students have to do a senior thesis, which takes a LOT of junior-year work; basically they're through with it by first semester of senior year. I really don't see how anyone could enter the school as a new senior and accomplish much. Now, if you entered as a junior; were at least ready for calculus and 3rd-year foreign language; and were prepared to take a couple of AP courses in junior year - you could probably do fine.
Knowing this you would think those who manage the school would plan accordingly. Right now it just looks like district officials are clueless with 70 vacancies at AMHS and another 160 at SOA.
I agree that a transfer into either school after grade 10 makes no sense because of the reasons given. Then CCSD should have adjusted their program capacity numbers accordingly. After so many years of being on the receiving end of complaints the superintendent should have figured out how to resolve this 3 years ago.
The magnet school waiting lists are not transparent, meaning the district keeps them secret. Hidden waiting lists are open to abuse. Just the suspicion of abuse undermines the public’s trust of the superintendent. Unlike charter schools which must make their waiting lists available for public inspection, the waiting lists for CCSD's magnet schools are confidential to all but a few. That leaves the few open to charges of corruption whenever inconsistencies occur. The buck stops with the superintendent. She should fix the problem or take the fall for having failed.
These are problems easily fixed, but not with district leadership that comes across as indifferent toward parents and unwilling to respond honestly to changing conditions.
Post a Comment