While Charleston County School District Superintendent Nancy McGinley promises great future enhancements ("global studies") to the District 20 Memminger Elementary campus now being adjusted to earthquake standards, the district's chief financial officer, Michael Bobby, is preparing the School Board to sell off part of the property.
Do these people talk to each other? Or is something more underhanded going on. You know developers would love to get their hands on this property situated in a prime real estate area not far from King and Broad.
Why would these non-natives in charge of CCSD care if a school named Memminger has been present on that site for over 100 years? Or that the gift of the property to the school district specifically provides for a school on the site? (see below)
CCSD has already allowed the sale of the original Memminger School auditorium after its "benign neglect" over several decades; now it will sell off the property on Wentworth that contains elementary classrooms.
Dectect a pattern?
And construction is moving so slowly. Why isn't the same construction moving slowly at Buist?
20 Beaufain St.
-- Memminger school, The first parsonage of St. Philip's Episcopal Church was built on this site about 1698. It was part of the Glebe Lands, 17 acres given to the minister of the Church of England in Charles Town and his successors in office "forever," by Mrs. Affra Coming, in 1698. The Rev. Alexander Garden, rector of St. Philip's and Commissary of the Bishop of London, opened school for black and Indian children on the GlebeGlebe St.). ln the division of the Glebe Lands between St. Philip's and St. Michael's in 1797, the southern portion, including the old parsonage, was conveyed to St. Michae's. In 1858, the Normal School, for the training of female teachers, was built on the site of the old parsonage. Charleston architect Edward C. Jones designed the large and impressive building which had an arcaded front portico and a high mansard dome. It was built by contractor Benjamin Lucas. The school was later named for Christopher C. Memminger, a leader in establishing Charleston's public school system in the 1850's, and Confederate Secretary of the Treasury in the 1860's. The City Board of School Commissioners bought the property in 1899. Memminger School remained a high school for girls until 1950, when it became an elementary school. This building was built in 1953.
(Smith & Smith, Dwelling Houses , p. 311-313; Wallace, p. 184, 464; Ravenel, Architects , p. 218; Rogers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys , p. 91-92; McCrady, 2:245-247; Williams, St. Michael's , p. 48; Stockton, News & Courier , Aug. 5, 1972; Stockton, unpub. M.S.; Mazyck & Waddell, illus. 21)
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The Memminger Auditorium deal signed a few years ago was a 75 year lease, not a sale. It was a "pass through" lease to the Spoleto Festival organization with the City of Charleston acting in the middle. CCSD took almost no active part in putting the deal together.
In much the same way, CCSD isn't looking at the big picture. The board is being told only part of the story. Don't expect any real taxpayer relief with this sale if it goes through, either.
Board members should be looking hard at those numbers before just rubber stamping what the district is just now calling "surplus". A private sale without first offering it publicly first raises additional questions.
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