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The following letter is reprinted from Lowcountry Source of September 19.
"I am writing in response to Lowcountry Source’s recent article, CCSD’s Priorities Are with the Powerful, describing the recent state of affairs with CCSD rebuilding Stono Park Elementary.
"The district has set Stono Park up to fail from the beginning. Once their arm was twisted to rebuild due to the outcry of the community, they still showed no support in promoting or respecting the Stono Park community. One CCSD member was quoted the ground breaking ceremony saying, “It is important for each of you to advocate for the parents of this zone to now go to this school that you asked for.” So here I am advocating!
"CCSD, please do YOUR part in supporting and promoting Stono Park. Instead, one of our amazing leaders, Principal Michelle Simmons, was offered a new administrative position at 75 Calhoun Street around the time of the rebuild decision. This leader developed a nurturing yet accountable environment for her students. Someone this valuable should remain to lead the new school and the new students recently rezoned to attend Stono. This shows a blatant disregard for the ordinary people who need leaders like Ms. Simmons in their lives. I put her on a pedestal.
"I am a 40-year-old white male who has a second and fourth grader attending Stono Park. Both girls are excelling, regardless of being different on the surface (the school is 83% black and 8% white.) Yet, this is as black and white as it gets, and I am fed up! It’s time that resources and respect are given to those who benefit from them the most. I have read article after article about charter and magnet schools that are segregating our children nationwide.
"This is not an isolated incident. As a community, we need to make our bubble smaller and look out for each other. CCSD needs to do more to help neighborhood schools which are not in high income areas.
Concerned Citizen
West Ashley
Charleston, SC"
Stung by damning facts, the Charleston County School District has hired an "outside" lawyer to review how it handled the case of a district "employee who was caught with child pornography on his work-issued laptop computer in 2014."
The lamest excuse so far is that there was turnover in personnel when the previous superintendent, she-who-cannot-be-named, left, and present superintendent Postlewait took over. The timeline of events looks bad for everyone. Pesky details have suddenly seen the light of day on Live 5 WCSC.
A district IT specialist discovered the porn in January of 2014.
Next, the district "briefly" placed the employee, a "student concern" specialist, on administrative leave.
Then the district allowed him to resume working at Dunston Elementary in North Charleston.
Eight months after the original discovery, the district promoted the employee and increased his salary, even though the case was unresolved. He was made a "parent advocate," whatever that means, at Dunston. He continued to work in this new position for over a year.
Fully two years after the IT department's original finding, North Charleston police arrested the employee. The timing of the district's handing the case over to the police is still unclear.
"After the employee's arrest in January 2016, North Charleston police heard complaints from two children who said he had molested them in his office at the school in 2015. His ’case never went to trial. He died in July 2017 of heart failure."
Talk about "justice delayed is justice denied"! That's a year and a half after his arrest.
The children's families appear to have been compensated in executive session by the present CCSD Board of Trustees earlier this year.
Heads should roll!
Want to live downtown on the peninsula of Charleston but don't like the public schools?
No problem--if you're rich.
That's the upshot of a recent Circuit Court ruling on a lawsuit brought by well-heeled parents of a Charleston County elementary student. "Parents residing in downtown Charleston sued the school district to admit their daughter to kindergarten at Mount Pleasant Academy. They argued that their daughter was eligible to attend there because she was a 1-percent owner of property in the attendance zone." Taxes on that ownership meet the criterion set by a "1962 state law that says a child 'shall be entitled to attend the public schools of any school district' as long as the child owns property in that district with a tax assessed value of at least $300."
The parents rejected sending their child to Memminger Elementary. "The ruling appears to open a new avenue for parents to send their children to any public school they choose — if they have the money to buy land."
Well, there you have it. The sole purpose of existing attendance zone remains to keep the poor (read "black") corralled in pockets of high-poverty schools.
Is Charleston County School District so desperate for math teachers that it's hiring the mentally ill?
That would seem to be the upshot of the latest scandalous lawsuit brought against the district by the family of a Burke High School student. What twenty-something teacher with a ten-month-old baby wants to have sex with a 17-year-old boy? And where is the baby's father? [Oh, I forgot. We're not supposed to ask that question!]
At least she had to surrender her teaching certificate after her arrest last December. She's out on bail and the case is still pending nine months later.
"The teacher, Jennifer Danielle Olajire-Aro, 27, of Devlin Road on Johns Island, was arrested in December 2017 and charged with one count of sexual battery with a student 16 or 17 years of age, according to court records. She taught pre-calculus and algebra and worked as a tennis coach at Burke and had no prior criminal record".
"In August 2017, while the student was enrolled in Aro’s math class, she began flirting with him and having conversations about sex with him before, during and after class, according to the lawsuit. The complaint goes on to say that she “encouraged and coerced” John Doe to engage in sexual intercourse with her at the school, in her personal vehicle, at her home and, on at least one occasion, in the presence of her 10-month-old baby. She also sent him inappropriate messages via phone and a social media text application, according to the complaint."
Don't you wonder about that classroom's atmosphere?
“Each time Plaintiff John Doe would dismiss Aro’s advances and requests to perform sexual intercourse with her, Aro would remind Plaintiff John Doe that she alone controlled what grade he would receive in her class,” the lawsuit states. The student said he began skipping math class to avoid his peers after the teacher made “public, direct and obvious advances.”
"In December 2017, after the student resisted her sexual advances, Aro 'acted on her threat and changed Plaintiff John Doe’s math grade from a 98 to an 89,” according to the lawsuit. The student told his mother about the alleged multiple instances of sexual intercourse after his final grade had been entered for the fall 2017 semester. Aro was arrested on Dec. 19, three days before school let out for the winter holiday."
"'If the district won’t fix the problem, the courts will,' said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Mark A. Peper."
How about a psychiatric evaluation too? What ever happened to the idea that teachers should be of good character?
Another example of "All the news that fits"?
I've been waiting to see if our local rag picked up a story carried by Live 5 News and Lowcountry Source. Evidently, it was a non-news event. Our paper is following its usual practice of telling us as little as possible about these potential elected officials. Perhaps Charleston Coalition for Kids killed the report.
On September 6 six candidates met under the auspices of the Quality Education Project and Flip the Board (whatever that is) in an unnamed location. What follow are excerpts from the report of John Steinberger;
"Six challengers for the Charleston County School Board agreed that the Charleston County School District’s (CCSD) current top-down management practices will not help improve student achievement. The candidates, Paul Padron, Vivian Pettigrew, Jake Rambo, Sarah Johnson, Herbert Fielding, and Linda Lucas all participated in a forum for school board challengers"
"Here is a summary of the six challengers who participated:
"Paul Padron. Padron is one of three candidates running for the open West Ashley seat. He served as a principal in three different schools in CCSD and also as an Associate Superintendent. He noted that as principal, he often got directives from bureaucrats who never visited his school. He was critical of how CCSD handled a 2014 incident in which child pornography was discovered on a school employee’s computer. The employee wound up getting a promotion and was later charged with child molestation. Padron said, “More heads should have rolled a long time ago.”
"Herbert Fielding. Fielding is also running for the West Ashley seat. He is a retired state employee. One of his assignments was job placement for veterans. He observed that few South Carolina natives were qualified for the jobs at Boeing and other manufacturing companies. Fielding wants to see technology brought into the classroom to facilitate individual learning plans, based on student aptitude.
"Jake Rambo. Rambo is running for one of the two East Cooper seats. He is the former principal at James B. Edwards Elementary. Rambo spoke out against the CCSD practice of issuing sole-source contracts and hiring too many high-priced consultants. He asked, “How does that benefit the students?” He said low-income students need greater access to pre-school and after school programs. He advocated for bringing back reading and math intervention programs that were eliminated after an $18 million shortfall was discovered in the CCSD budget several years ago.
"Sarah Johnson. Johnson is also running for the East Cooper seats. She is currently the Chairwoman for the District 2 constituent school board, which handles suspension and expulsion hearings for students in East Cooper schools. Johnson cites her financial management expertise as one of her strengths. As a financial paralegal, Johnson reviewed bankruptcy cases and made criminal referrals to the U.S. Department of Justice when potential fraud was uncovered. She said, “I’m good at finding suspicious expenditures.” She also chided the CCSD disciplinary manual as a “secret plan” that had no input from the teachers, principals, parents or the community. She wants to have an inclusive process to re-write the manual.
"Vivian Pettigrew. Pettigrew is running for the open North Area seat. She is a retired CCSD teacher and currently volunteers in multiple North Charleston schools. Pettigrew operates a tax service and has expertise in financial management. She once trained principals in financial accountability and currently advises small businesses and non-profits on budgeting and accounting. While supporting school choice, Pettigrew says the district’s top priority should be improving and meeting the needs of the neighborhood schools.
"Linda Lucas. Lucas is also running for the North Area seat. She is a retired guidance counselor who has served gifted-and-talented and at-risk students. She spoke of the opportunity gap for low-income students and the fact that first-year teachers are often assigned to high-poverty schools. The teachers often don’t have connections to the neighborhoods they serve or understand the culture and speech patterns of their students. Lucas was the only challenger who spoke favorably about Superintendent Gerrita Postlewait.
"None of the candidates referred to the recently released SC Ready test scores, which revealed that only 11.5% of CCSD black students in the 7th grade met or exceeded grade level standards. The scores also revealed that only seven neighborhood schools outside of East Cooper had more than half of their students scoring at or above grade level in English or math."
Such information is key to electing the right candidates.
Charleston Coalition For Kids, chaired by Josh Bell, plans to hijack the Charleston County School Board. This scenario has been produced by our impossible system of nonpartisan, countywide voting for candidates. School board candidates are self-selected and unknown to all but a small circle of friends and relatives except for those encouraged to run by the superintendent, NAACP, or Chamber of Commerce. Everyone can see the results.
Now with a founding membership composed largely of the biggest movers and shakers in the county--mostly Democrats, including Joe Riley, by the way--Josh Bell's organization plans a coup.
According to Bell,
"We believe that the status quo is unacceptable: Only 20 percent of African American third-graders are reading on grade level, and 38 percent of all Charleston County eighth-graders are proficient in math. More than 10,000 students attend a school that is failing to educate the majority of its students at or above grade level."
All can agree that is unacceptable.
"The dysfunction on the school board is evident to anyone paying attention: Small-minded turf wars, arbitrary decision-making driven by the self-interests of board members, painfully protracted board meetings characterized by in-fighting, and micromanagement of the district with an absence of focus on student outcomes."
We need a lock-step board that kowtows to the superintendent's every wish?
"Recently, a letter to the editor called into question the values and motives of Charleston Coalition For Kids. It questioned our partnership with parent advocates in Charleston RISE and my background as executive director of Teach For America-South Carolina."
Bell hopes that Charleston will follow the lead of school boards in Indianapolis, Denver, and Baton Rouge. His two years teaching in Charlotte with his history degree from Clemson showed him what works. Hmm.
Earlier this summer Bell promised to name the candidates supported by the Coalition in August.
It's mid-September. Have I been asleep?
The South Carolina legislature failed to raise literacy rates by throwing millions at the problem. While school systems burned money, fourth-grade literacy rates dropped the state from 39th to 47th.
Another case of "thank God for Mississippi," no doubt.
It's enough to make you cry.
The four years of Read to Succeed were doomed from the start. In order to get the legislation passed, its teeth were removed:
"This year saw the final, most controversial part of the law take effect: Schools must now hold back certain students who fail a state reading test in third grade, keeping them behind for another year to receive special intervention before they pass to fourth grade."
"But because of a long list of exemptions and a low bar for failure compared to similar laws in other states, only about one-half of 1 percent of the state’s third-graders — 354, by last count — were actually retained this fall."
In other words, we really didn't mean it.
The usual whiners claim that's okay because, according to some studies, retention in third grade hurts rather than helps. Brainwashed "Paul Thomas, a Furman University professor of education, said the legislation solved a political problem, not an educational one. Third-grade retention policies are popular with Republican lawmakers’ conservative base, Thomas said, even though research shows they disproportionately affect minority students and often do more harm than good. Students who are held back are more likely to drop out of high school and have lower rates of self esteem and school attendance."
Is this man for real? Of course, those who are more likely to drop out of high school and have lower rates of self esteem and school attendance are those who read poorly. Furthermore, if more are minority students, so what? That statistic reflects poverty and lack of education in their homes. I would agree that a one-time intervention in the third grade is not enough, unless the student actually catches up in that one additional year to where he or she failed to achieve in the previous four years!
The worst part of the failed Read to Succeed program is its wrong-headedness concerning where to put the dollars. Why do I believe that actual classroom elementary teachers had no influence on the legislation as written? Do our teachers really need to be taught how to teach reading? If so, why have they been hired in the first place?
The program is edublob run amok. Reading coaches with their "advanced" training were not allowed to teach students who needed help. Yet that's where the bulk of the money went--to this extra layer of bureaucracy. Every teacher knows (and most thinking adults as well) that one-on-one instruction with a student is the most effective remedy for struggling readers.
That's a simple solution. Too bad no one has tried it.
Letter to the Editor: Failing students
Sep 4, 2018
"I was reading the Aug. 24 Post and Courier editorial about third-graders reading when all of a sudden I fell down the rabbit hole and wound up at Alice’s Wonderland Tea Party.
"The partiers were into a dizzying discussion about the fact that 4,000 of South Carolina’s third-graders failed the 2017 mandatory reading test and were not qualified for promotion to fourth grade. But, as it turns out, here in Wonderland, 3,746 of those failing students have “special circumstances” and will be promoted anyway.
"Of course, it wasn’t exactly clear what the guests were talking about, but the tea was flowing, and they were saying things like, “might not be such a bad thing,” “study what works best,” “be open to new and innovative approaches” and “expand on successes.”
"Well, I hope it works for them. South Carolina’s K-12 schools are rated 48th in the nation, and Charleston’s schools are far from the best in the state.
"That puts our kids way deep in the rabbit hole, and that’s pretty much where they’ve been throughout the 31 years I’ve lived in Charleston. Please pass the tea.
Terry W. Ryan
Captiva Row
If you doubt that teachers in the Charleston County School District fear repercussions for speaking up, there's always that Brooklyn Bridge for sale.
As Lowcountry Source reported earlier this month, Elizabeth Reilly, a 20-year veteran of teaching at Angel Oak Elementary on Johns Island, was treated like dirt beginning in 2014 when she resigned as Lead Teacher there and aspired to return to the classroom to teach fourth grade. What teacher doesn't want to teach instead of "administrating"?
The first blow fell when Michael Griggs, now principal at Hunley Park Elementary, told Reilly on the first day of school that she would be teaching first grade, not fourth as she was prepared to do. Reilly had never taught in the early grades before. As a first-year principal Griggs evidently thought, "first grade, fourth grade--what's the difference." Griggs was quick to resent her objections. Then the knives came out.
"Griggs moved Reilly to 5th grade the next year and eventually placed her on formal evaluation status, which meant that school district administrators would do 13 formal evaluations of her lessons and that she would have to fill out additional paperwork and reports. In the midst of a district-wide principal shuffle at the end of the 2016-2017 school year, Griggs was transferred to Hunley Park Elementary in North Charleston, and Judith Condon was brought in to replace him. Condon had previously taught middle school and high school music in the Atlanta area."
Which naturally qualified her to assess elementary school teachers.
"Reilly describes the formal evaluation process as hostile. She said one evaluator came in when there was a school-wide assembly taking place and got mad at her for not being able to observe the lesson. Another evaluator chastised Reilly for teaching a lesson about Christopher Columbus on Columbus Day."
Mention Columbus on Columbus Day? What a horror!
"At the end of the evaluation process, Condon handed Reilly a form stating that she did not meet expectations. She was not awarded a contract to return to Angel Oak for the current school year."
"Reilly is currently teaching 5th grade math at Goose Creek Elementary in the Berkeley County School District. She said, 'Berkeley County administrators and principals are so welcoming. They make me feel wanted. Teaching is my passion, and I am so happy to be back in the classroom!'"
Charleston's loss is Berkeley's gain. No wonder fewer than a third of teachers at Angel Oak have taught for ten years or more. Prepare for more turnover in the future!
What if you knew that a parent advocate at Dunston Elementary School in North Charleston had child pornography images on his computer? Would you leave him in place while the sheriff investigated? That's what the Human Resources Office of CCSD did.
Then a year and a half later this same individual was reported to the police for child molestation.
Finally, nearly two years after the original pornography finding, CCSD fired him a day after he was arrested by the North Charleston Police Department. Long-time CCSD employee Marvin Gethers died the following year while awaiting trial.
To see all the details of this disgusting story, go to https://www.fitsnews.com/2018/08/30/child-molestation-scandal-rocks-charleston-sc-school-district/
As Lowcountry Source has pointed out, "no personnel action was take against Gethers and he was even promoted from student concern specialist to parent advocate at Dunston Elementary School after being flagged by IT. The Chief Human Relations Officer for the district at the time of the incident, Bill Briggman, is still serving in that capacity."
The Charleston County School District has reacted to the allegations by ignoring their import. Last April the district paid out $300,000 in a settlement to a Dunston Elementary family.
Why do administratively top-heavy school districts hire consultants? Don't they have enough administrators handy to do the job?
Easy answer: Consultants can state what the district wants to hear but fears to say. Then they can slink away.
Such is the case with the diversity consultant hired by the Charleston County School District. The result is so far-reaching that only a major commitment by the Charleston County legislative delegation will resolve it. The delegation would need to propose legislation that would destroy the agreement made decades ago when independent county school districts were consolidated, before the City of North Charleston existed, before Mt. Pleasant became a monster-sized suburb.
Changing attendance zones is the third rail of school district policies. Combine that outrage with dissolving all constituent school boards in the district so that attendance zones can be drawn to minimize differences in poverty levels.
Let's imagine the explosion when the attendance zone for Mt. Pleasant's Old Village slops over the Cooper River into the peninsula's downtown neighborhoods.
Prediction? Not going to happen.
Diversity consultant = wasted taxpayer dollars.
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