Saturday, May 23, 2015

CCSD's Constituent Boards Victims of Central Planning

Elizabeth Moffly's op-ed correctly points out that a 2007 law supported by our legislative delegation made the Charleston County School District's constituent boards into toothless wonders. This policy change negated traditional powers of what were originally independent school districts, a structure approved under district consolidation. CCSD touted the change as necessary to hold the superintendent responsible for her job.

Well, that worked, didn't it? 

Apart from playing musical chairs with principals, ex-superintendent McGinley appointed layers of bureaucracy to take that responsibility, writing her own evaluation form to guarantee her success. Centralized planning is always the refuge of liberals. Think of the school district in terms of the federal government (the Taj Mahal) versus the states (constituent districts). Does one size fit all?

If you are a liberal, the one-size-fits-all philosophy is self evident. Heaven forbid that local districts might have differing ideas about the worth of personnel or disciplining students.

Critics suggest that local power leads to cronyism.

Please, give me local cronyism over cronyism at the Taj Mahal!



1 comment:

Tony Geinzer said...

I think with Charleston County, is there differences in discipline and academics from heavyhanded to too nice between school to school and subsystem to subsystem? I think with South Carolina State could reach in on Charleston County's System because even though it is not Michigan, but, the Glorification of Emergency Managers like it is Michigan with the same old fixation of Cake and Ice Cream and
nothing more smacks of a fishing expedition trying to privately fund public defense with public dollars. I would think the problems with the Palmetto State must lionize in Charleston worse than anywhere else.