Wednesday, June 15, 2016

CCSD Literacy Article Buries Bombshell on Audits

No matter how you whitewash it, money for literacy improvement in the Charleston County School District has been slashed in the budget the School Board recently adopted. As I suggested previously, a new approach may be good, not bad. Even new Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait intimated that "there were some inefficiencies" in the McGinley-initiated program. How many overseers does it take to teach a child to read? Cutting "reading intervention specialists" may not be all bad.

For those hardy few who persevered to the article's end, a surprise awaited.  Upon the insistence of Board member Todd Garrett, Audit and Finance Committee Chairman, a possible forensic audit of the Capital Projects Program is in the works. Garrett believes that "one single deep dive" s. warrented after "the events of the last nine months." Um, yeah.

The board will vote on whether to go forward at its next meeting, June 27. 

Go for it! Who knows what lies beneath.






1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Babbie There are reading interventionists that CCSD setup as FGA and PGA first and second grade who worked directly with small groups in reading recovery or other programs.

Reading Coaches were forced on all schools under the read to succeed act and do NOT work directly with children but instead observe and tell teachers what to do or offer ideas. Usually those ideas mean hours of meaningless paperwork for the reading coaches to prove they are helping.

After the cuts we are down to .5 at most schools for reading interventionist. We are forced to keep all reading coaches. In most cases the interventionists did a great job with the bottom students helping them raise up two grade levels. The issue is that they are up to 4 years behind their peers.

So now teachers will have tons of extra testing and paperwork and no help teaching those without an IEP. Many of which were in the bottom 15% nationally.

Instead the district cut these and suddenly is hiring more at district level. go figure