Gasp! Reporters Discover CCSD's Segregated Schools!

If you really want a quick run-down of de facto segregation in the Charleston County School District, I recommend the left-hand subject column of this blog. What you will discover is that, silly me, for my first five years back in Charleston after more than 40 living in various parts of the country, I actually thought CCSD's schools were integrated! It's a subject that our local paper has chosen not to explore--until now.

The Jonathan Green mural at Sanders-Clyde and the school's curriculum specializing in the history of slavery are a case in point. The mural greets children as they enter--but only black children, since no white faces appear. This message seems appropriate for a segregated school. Well, Sanders-Clyde does have one white student; evidently, CCSD administration never planned for any more. Meanwhile, fully 40 percent of its 720 students have transferred in from other schools. You can't insinuate, as Parker and Hawes do, that only white and not black parents request voluntary transfers based on race. They aren't making these choices based on the school's performance.

Learning of these statistics, what conclusion can you reach except that many black parents want a segregated school? If you know of some other reason, please comment. "Convenience" is the buzz-word for voluntary transfers, and CCSD does not provide transportation.

Let's not forget that federal government policies after World War II started the move from the peninsula to the suburbs as it granted returning veterans VA loans only on new construction. Talk about unintended consequences! But it's ridiculous to suggest that white movement off the peninsula in the seventies and eighties caused downtown schools to re-segregate: the population on the peninsula has remained (and increased) as majority white since the sixties.

It is remarkable to think that the only high school in this majority-white downtown has merely one white student; it's even more remarkable to realize that nearly 30 percent of Burke's students have transferred from other zones. Again, what gives? It's not the lure of its football team!

Parker and Hawes also try to make the case that Berkeley and Dorchester counties lack these fully segregated schools. They cite that Dorchester District 2 "doesn't have a single school lacking in diversity." Of course not: it has Dorchester District 4 to take that position!

Berkeley County is a different story. Traditionally a rural and black population, only in the past 30 years has it developed as a suburb--and new construction disperses whites from Ohio into the diverse mix. The Charleston peninsula has an entirely different, and much older, history.

CCSD: Forced to Repeat the Past with $8 Million School?

Sometimes I wonder how long the collective memory of the Charleston County School District really is. Can it be true that those now proposing a "new vision for alternative education" in a nearly $8 million dollar building have any passing knowledge of past attempts at such a program? Spokesman for the proposal is Jennifer Coker, whom the paper neglects to identify as principal of Daniel Jenkins. She certainly knows (or should know) how CCSD reached this point. It isn't a Turning Point!

What purpose is served by constructing a multi-million-dollar building when at least two present (and fully renovated) high schools--Burke and North Charleston--have more than enough room for the proposed 200 students it would serve?

Put that way, the answer seems obvious: CCSD must deliver new projects to keep its building contractors in the money. No wonder Michael Bobby approves.

Get a grip, folks!

Analysis of CCSD's Rating Shows How Statistics Can Lie

I haven't always agreed with Jon Butzon, but his analysis of the statistics being touted by the Charleston County School District should be read by all.

Job One: Find the right superintendent
BY JON BUTZON
Nov 19 2014 12:01
An old Navy friend of mine is fond of saying, "Experience is the best teacher. Considering what it costs, it ought to be." Now that there is a big "Help Wanted" sign out at 75 Calhoun Street, I thought it might be useful for the new school board to consider how our most recent experience could inform the search for the next superintendent.

Some great slogans have come out of CCSD. My personal favorites are "All Means All," "The Victory is in the Classroom," and the lesser known "A Tale of Two Districts."

Let's start with "All Means All." Even just a cursory review of student achievement data suggests it's really more like "All Means Some." Here are a few examples.


On the 2014 ACT (unlike school ratings, this is an actual measure of students' college readiness) the five lowest performing high schools in all of South Carolina are in Charleston County. The bottom five in our state!

They are Lincoln (the state's lowest at 12.7), Burke (13.1), North Charleston (13.4), St. Johns (14.0) and Garrett (14.1). The vast majority of students in these schools are economically disadvantaged and minority.

Let's be clear - these embarrassingly low ACT scores aren't the students' fault. They are the result of a systemic achievement gap that still defines CCSD, despite a ton of spending, new ideas and interventions. The ACT folks determine a 21 and above to be "college ready." Last year, the 1,099 white seniors who took the ACT earned an impressive 22.8, compared to the 692 black students whose average score was only 14.9, and the 127 Hispanic students who scored 18.7. Seniors at CCSD's suburban and competitive magnet schools far exceeded national averages. These are the same exact trends we were seeing 10 years ago.

So, we need a superintendent who can accomplish more than great slogans. We need a superintendent who can not only close, but can eliminate the achievement gap.

Let's look at another popular saying: "The Victory is in the Classroom." Unfortunately, over the last six years, this victory has been defined by race and income. The black/white achievement gap on the PASS tests has widened over the last six years in English language arts in grades 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8, and in math in grades 4, 5, 6 and 7. The gap for low-income children as measured by comparing free lunch children with full-pay children has also widened in both English language arts and math in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. The widening gap means the district has lost ground for these, our most vulnerable children.

If the victory is in the classroom, we need a superintendent who can do more than just claim victory. We need a superintendent who will reject the status quo and truly win on behalf of every child.

Which leads us to "A Tale of Two Districts." White middle class and affluent students in Charleston County outperform their white peers across the state. The opposite is true for their black peers. On many measures, black students do better in other S.C. districts. Remember those ACT scores. "The Tale of Two Districts" - the same sad tale told 10 years ago, five years ago, and still today - means that in Charleston County we manage to teach white children better than white children in the rest of S.C., but for some reason we continue to teach black children worse. That sounds closer to the state of education we'd expect to see in 1860 than in 2014.

Over the last 10 years, Charleston County has changed significantly. People are flocking here from all around the country. While the white and comparatively affluent population in CCSD has grown, the black population has shrunk. Improvements hailed by CCSD - for example, the percentage of students attending "excellent" schools - reflect demographic trends and enrollment shifts as much as any improvement to the quality of education. Now there may be fewer buildings labeled "at risk" - easily accomplished by simply turning out the lights and locking the door - but just look at actual measures of learning, and the quality of education has not improved for our children.

Taking all of this into account, we need a superintendent who can do more than add chapters to Charleston's historical inequities and "A Tale of Two Districts." We need someone who can provide real solutions, make excellence a reality for every child, and close this shameful book altogether.

I may be in the minority, but my hat is off to the school board for making a difficult change. The story may be unpopular, but the truth is, progress hasn't been made. We may have new shiny buildings and catchy slogans, but we're failing the same students we have always failed.

To the school board: Take a hard look at the data yourself.

Make this not about watermelons, but about the enduring tragedy of youngsters like Ridge Smith and the thousands of Ridge Smiths remaining in our system. [Editor's note: Ridge Smith, featured in a 2009 Post and Courier series on low literacy rates in the district, was shot to death in North Charleston on Oct. 31.]

Make it about the continued erasing of whole generations of children from the economic map, and the irreducible fact that after ten years of bold promises and new visions, race and income still define the quality of education in CCSD.

I trust you'll see that CCSD needs a leader who will bring a new set of skills and a true sense of urgency and humility to this work. At the end of the day, the buck stops with you, and this is the most important task you will undertake.

Get it right!

Jon Butzon is the former executive director of the Charleston Education Network.

Editors' Campaign to Rehire CCSD's McGinley Falters on Moffly's Facts

Saturday's op-ed by outgoing Charleston County School Board member Elizabeth Moffly sums up the former superintendent's disdain for what communities want:

Building program at heart of district-board dispute
BY ELIZABETH MOFFLY
Nov 15 2014 12:01 am
I want to share with my community lessons learned as your representative over the past four years serving as a Charleston County School Board trustee. This position allowed me a greater perspective to understand how decisions were made.

The elected school board employs the superintendent. The superintendent is accountable to the board and responsible for day-to-day decisions and upholding policy.

One would think that the board's and the district's primary focus would be student achievement, instructional quality and graduation rates. With the passage of the one-cent sales tax referendum in 2010, however, we functioned more like a "Board of Construction" rather than a "Board of Education," overseeing a $500 million building program.

This action is where the problems began. Whole communities were divided and thousands of students displaced.

The first divide started when the district told the Sullivan's Island community, with only 268 students in its attendance zone, that it had to accept a 500-student school or nothing.

All the while the district was building smaller schools on the peninsula. James Simons Elementary had 110 students, but the district built a 400-student school. Memminger Elementary had only 70 students from its attendance zone, but its new building was designed for 400 as well.

The island remains divided on the issue.

While Sullivan's Island was getting more than it needed, we knew North Mount Pleasant was bursting at the seams with over 2,200 students in its K-5 elementary schools. I thought the $27 million should be spent to address a more pressing issue of overcrowding. Sullivan's Island Elementary enrollment was secured in the old Whitesides campus, with plenty of room for enrollment expansion. A front-beach school, elevated 10 feet on stilts and the size of the Yorktown, just didn't seem like a smart decision when real overcrowding in north Mount Pleasant was being ignored.

Then there was the second East Cooper high school debacle. Wando had grown past capacity with over 3,600 students in a building designed for only 3,100 students. The town and the citizens had expected another stand-alone high school since 2005. The district hired a consultant and held a community engagement where three district options were presented and voted on by the community.

Option A, a middle college aka center for advanced studies (a longtime vision of the superintendent), received 25 percent. Option B, a ninth grade academy, received 24 percent. Option C, a second East Cooper high school, received 49 percent, the highest score.

The district decided this community would get the center for advanced studies, overriding the community's will. Wando is now the largest (and only) high school in the state's fourth largest city.

The most recent fiasco, Lowcountry Tech (LCT), has created more community division. The district hired a consultant in 2007 to a hold a community engagement at Burke High School. Approximately 300 citizens from downtown participated.

There were five options. The overall majority voted for the new Charleston Charter School for Math and Science (CCSMS) to occupy the entire Rivers facility.

Incidentally, in 2010 with the first sales tax referendum, voters countywide approved LCT (now called Lowcountry Tech Academy) to be constructed on the Burke High School campus. The superintendent then wrote a column for The Post and Courier in 2012 telling the public the community voted for her vision in 2007, with LTA and CCSMS sharing the Rivers campus.

The board has since directed the district to allow Charleston Math and Science to have complete occupancy of the Rivers campus so 260 children can move out of existing trailers. Lowcountry Tech would be expanded and moved to Burke where there is plenty of room. That campus was built for 1,700 students, yet it now has fewer than 400.

The district has continued to push back on this decision leaving perpetual discontent in the community. District 20's board is in complete support of the county board's decision. The administration needs to complete the directive and not subvert it.

The public recently questioned the board's integrity for holding an 11th-hour special called board vote last August to add Lincoln to the 2014 referendum. That was necessary to honor the board's original commitment to this rural community.

The board voted 5-2 on Feb. 24, 2014, to identify funding for a new Lincoln facility. The district failed to include this school on the referendum despite the board's directive.

The board was exposed to public humiliation for seemingly having acted rashly on Lincoln's behalf. Other communities were told that if the board included this project, the referendum would fail and their special projects would be lost. That was completely unfounded and disregarded the county board's explicit promise to this community.

At the superintendent's request, the district simply closed several failing schools. This policy allowed her to claim to have reduced the number of low-performing schools.

Students have been shuffled, but the achievement gap for low-performing students has grown. By closing or renaming failing schools, the district fostered an illusion that failing schools were fixed.

In reality, that posture only reset the scorecard with a clean, new start, a free pass for three years. These schools and children have not made appropriate progress.

These are just a few of the issues that the Charleston County School Board dealt with over the last four years.

I know there have been lingering questions, but I hope I have answered a few of them here.

Elizabeth Moffly is a former member of the Charleston County School Board.

CCSD Disconcerted by Its Own Policies Regarding School Transfers

I'm not sure anyone has counted how many programs Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has instituted to entice students to attend school outside their attendance zones, but those programs are legion.

So it's all the more puzzling why CCSD administration last month claimed to be "disconcerted" over this trend. Maybe it thinks the "wrong" students are heeding the siren call of magnet and partial-magnet schools or petitioning for curriculum offered only at the other end of the county?

Actually, one reason for concern is that, while North Charleston's elementary and middle schools are full, numbers are exiting North Charleston for high school, perhaps to avoid ninth-grade classes where up to 40 percent are reading at the fourth-grade level or below. Another concern is falling enrollment at de-facto all-black Burke, the only high school on a majority-white peninsula. Could Burke's celebration of its all-black hsitory have anything to do with white flight?

Seriously, does anyone wonder why students who can choose to go elsewhere do so, even opting sometimes for "gasp" private schools?

Board Vice-Chairman Ducker worries that too much parental choice will send some schools "into a death spiral." Some parents, on the other hand, think a death spiral might be the solution for the ones with dismal records.

CCSD has decided to throw another edublob consultant at their perceived problem: for $16,500 he or she will "study school choice trends using a two-pronged approach--an online survey and focus groups." With all the fine administrators already on board at 75 Calhoun, you'd think this could be an in-house job. Apparently not.

Let's at least hope that McGinley resists tinkering with the focus groups.

Burke High/Middle's Numbers Don't Add Up

Sunday's article on lack of integration in the Charleston County School District muddled the overall picture in several ways, not the least of which was its discussion of Burke High/Middle School. First of all, Burke has a long, proud history as an all black school which most natives of Charleston have been unwilling to change--just ask the NAACP. When the all-white High School of Charleston was closed, it was almost, if not certainly, inevitable that Burke would remain for all intents and purposes segregated. Of course, other principals' recommending difficult students into Burke that went on during the last 20 years (and may still be!) didn't help matters. 

What really bears analysis, however, are the puzzling numbers cited in the article. For example, the reporter states that 13,245 students ages 15 to 19 live downtown. Where? Is "downtown" the same as the zoning to attend Burke? What is the source of this number? If it comes from the Census Bureau that also means it includes 18- and 19-year-olds enrolled in the College of Charleston as well as other high-school graduates.

Even if we cut the number in half, and claim that 6600 students are zoned for Burke, if 466 students is 45 percent of public school students zoned to attend, then the number still makes no sense. 

What the reporter inarticulately tried to state is that only 45 percent of students who are zoned for Burke and are enrolled in the Charleston County School District actually attend Burke. What the school board since its inception has accomplished through its own policies is for 55 percent of students from downtown to be bused elsewhere in the district. Now, the other statistic of which the reporter makes no mention is how many students are bused into Burke from other parts of the district. And don't tell me there aren't any.

In fact, wouldn't those numbers be interesting for all the schools in the district, but especially CCSD's high schools? Don't hold your breath.

CCSD Officially Crosses Insanity Line with Expanding APs

You know the definition: doing something over and over again and expecting different results.

How do you know when Charleston County School Superintendent McGinley is lying? Yes, when her lips are moving. She claims that spending another $900,000 to place 14 AP teachers in low-performing high schools is important because "we have to address the very capable students and make sure they're not being forgotten in some of our schools." Not.

No, the problem presents itself when capable students in areas served by low-performing schools petition the School Board to transfer to schools that have more AP courses. McGinley is attempting to keep more capable students in their own designated schools, thereby raising the academic climate in those schools. Nevermind that many years ago CCSD made the decision to skim off the academic cream and put it into the Academic Magnet and School of the Arts at the urging of "haves" such as Gregg Myers, thus leaving only middle-to-poor performing students in the rest of the high schools, with the exception of gigantic Wando. (CCSD could put all 300 of Burke's students into Wando with the effect of an elephant's swallowing a gnat.)

AP courses are great--for those students who have the background to succeed in them. AP preparation needs to begin as early as sixth grade for students from low-income and low-educational background to succeed. Burke's AP Academy is a case in point. Prior to AP, students need "Pre-AP," or Honors-level courses for at least three years. The accepted wisdom of the edublob is that would be discriminatory, so students who might have been otherwise capable will not qualify on the AP exam, which cannot be fudged, as with so many other measures of academic merit. No doubt Burke's AP teachers are competent and motivated and take their charges as far as possible, but spending $1.2 million over a four-year period to get a result of 10 "passes" out of 376 exams taken is wasteful. The students would be better off if the district gave each of them the $120,000 that their scores represent. Don't forget that most of the testing fees for these 366 students who did not pass were paid by the taxpayers of South Carolina. 

CCSD needs to get real about enriching programs in the lower grades feeding these high schools if it is to avoid throwing good money after bad. 

Oh, that's right. It's OPM.

Quagmire for CCSD's Downtown Middle Schools

Keep Burke Middle School at Burke High in order to keep the building full?

Move Burke Middle to the Rhett Building?

Add middle grades at Sanders-Clyde?

Add middle grades at Memminger?

Create an entirely new middle school on the Fraser campus?

What is going on with multiple proposals from Superintendent McGinley to mend the community's dislike of downtown middle schools (with the exception of the Charter School for Math and Science)?

She's trying to get enough projects going in District 20 that its voters will approve of the next referendum on the one-percent sales tax for a new district-wide building program.

Hence, James Simons third floor remains unfinished, even though the school was listed on the last referendum.

Meeting Tuesday night will reveal what is really the Superintendent's choice, despite being labeled for community input.

What Would MLK, Jr., Say About CCSD?

If Martin Luther King, Jr., knew of the de facto segregation endemic in the Charleston County School District, what would he believe? Would he think it was deliberate? What would he say about the dismal records of students in downtown elementary and middle schools? Burke High/Middle? North Charleston High School?

The rich and powerful (including some minorities) have their good schools. What about the rest of Charleston County's residents?

It's not the buildings, earthquake-proof or not.

Councilman Gilliard Stokes Mean-Spirited Rumors About Burke's Closing

Wendell Gilliard has the floor, or at least the op-ed page, Saturday to respond to ideas proposed by the District 20 (downtown) constituent board. Most of his ideas mimic the usual platitudes emanating from Superintendent McGinley. However, one vitriolic section reads as though NAACP President Dot Scott thought it up. 

"My constituents are saying that there is a faction in the community that wants Burke closed so that it can be reopened as an exclusive academic magnet school for a select few. This group has already suggested the name of “Academic Magnet-South.” Group meetings are being held with handpicked special interest groups that want to close the school, change the school’s name and re-open anew. 

"The general community feels that the school is being neglected — that so-called advocates appear to be involved, but that movement on any real plans is running at a snail’s pace. This actually would allow for a further drop in enrollment and therefore the school’s closing.

"Such actions are unfair and cater to those who wish to exclude children who have every right to be at Burke.

Conspiracy theories, anyone? Gilliard uses the classic "straw man" strategy: set up a false premise and then demolish it.

• "so-called advocates" are unnamed because Gilliard didn't want to publicize Arthur Lawrence's support;
• "exclusive magnet school" and "select few" suggest that any change is meant to exclude the present students;
• "handpicked special interest groups" translates as community members not selected by Superintendent McGinley
• "change the school's name" slops over into the "red herring" category, since no one has suggested doing that.

The "snail's pace" Gilliard complains about can be laid squarely at the doorstep of the very administration he claims is doing so well for the school as it is.

Nowhere does Gilliard state what he really wants: an all-black high school. 

Shock & Awe in CCSD: Close Burke; Put in 2nd Mt. Pleasant HS

It's brilliant! Whoever came up with this outside-of-the-box idea should be running the Charleston County School District instead of Nancy McGinley!

Over the last 40 or so years, Burke High/Middle School has become a buzzword for failure. In hindsight, the die was cast when the powers-that-be determined under consolidation that the white High School of Charleston would close, and the black Burke High would take both black and white students, a tactic destroying any loyalty that white parents as graduates of the former would have for the new school district. Burke not only became the lone high school on the peninsula; it retained its name and loyal following. Probably this agreement was worked out between the fed's attorney, Gregg Meyers(later an influential member of the CCSD School Board), and the NAACP.

Superintendent McGinley's box of tricks that she learned at the Broad Institute have failed her and failed her. No one has confidence that Burke can become an integrated school under the present circumstances. By petitioning the constituent board for transfers, droves of parents have made the choice to send their children to high schools that have the advanced and career programs that all students deserve. As a result, about half of eligible students living on the peninsula attend Burke. It's easy to accuse these parents of racism, but the cause is one of district mismanagement after a stupid initial decision.

No one has confidence that Burke can even retain its recent standing as "average," a rating based largely on better record keeping and last-minute cramming. Other signs point towards the inevitable downward slide. The current principal, Maurice Cannon, does not sound as though he is a solution but actually part of the problem. His perception that Burke's students do not pay attention in class nor do their work because they don't like some of their teachers is asinine. The school clearly lacks good leadership; we all know who controls that variable: Superintendent McGinley.

When you have Arthur Lawrence, a Burke graduate and long-time community supporter of Burke, calling for the shut-down of the school, you know the situation has reached a nadir. Lawrence wants to close Burke and all its programs and take the overflow from Mt. Pleasant's overcrowded Wando High School into the building as a new Mt. Pleasant High School while the district builds the new facility for Mt. Pleasant. Why, look! That means that "Burke" will have an integrated student body and the programs that are impossible to sustain under the present structure.

Now, the NAACP won't like this because Dot Scott doesn't want an integrated high school; she clearly wants a de facto black high school on the peninsula. Of course, she lives in West Ashley.

PRIME at Wando? Why Not at Burke?

Them that has gets! Isn't that the old song?  It rings true when comparing Wando High School, the largest in the state located in the affluent community of Mt. Pleasant, with Burke High/Middle School, a  2AA school located on the peninsula of Charleston that is de facto all black.

Sunday's edition pointed out that Wando "has been named a PRIME model school by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Education  Foundation, one of 11 schools from across the country to be selected this year". According to the reporter, who sees no irony in the report, "PRIME model schools also have strong partnerships with local manufacturing businesses that offer students opportunities such as mentoring, tours, job shadowing and internships."

Isn't this what the Burke community has demanded for years? What about the so-called "high-tech high" that has morphed into low-tech Lowcountry Tech, not at Burke where the community wanted it but at Rivers to forestall the Charter School for Math and Science.

Taking her talking points straight from CCSD, no doubt, the reporter goes on to provide PR for Superintendent McGinley: 

"STEM education is growing in prominence in the Charleston County School District. The school district has been working with a high-profile group of partners, from federal labs to HBCUs to businesses, to make the district a national model for preparing students from kindergarten through college for STEM-related jobs.
"Wando High’s STEM programs have been nationally recognized in the past. The school has been part of Project Lead the Way for more than a decade, and that program offers hands-on, project-based, biomedical and pre-engineering courses. Project Lead the Way has named Wando High a model school twice.

Probably motivated students who live in Burke's neighborhood are taking the bus to Wando to take part in those programs. Superintendent McGinley has done everything possible to strip Burke of students. As usual, the reporter has no curiosity regarding how many non-Mount Pleasant residents are being bused to Wando. 

Sometimes it seems that McGinley's long-term goal is to strip Burke of students, close the school, sell its prime location to private developers, and leave District 20 with no high school. Couldn't be, could it?

CCSD's McGinley Unprepared for Board's Challenges on Burke Recommendation

She's getting soft.

Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has controlled the membership of its Board of Trustees for so long that neither she nor any of her henchmen can support their assertions when questioned by independent board members. Monday night's meeting is a prime example.

On the Executive Session agenda McGinley put a request to move Child Development programs to the Rhett Building at Burke High/Middle. [See previous column for my take on this proposal.] According to reports, McGinley was unprepared and disorganized when several board members peppered her with questions.

That was not the worst of it, however. The superintendent and her lackeys made several statements that have been shown to be outright lies and others that seemed to be wishful thinking. Board members are not amused.

For example, McGinley claimed that a waiting list exists at Garrett for the early childhood Career Technical Education (CTE) program, but when a board member checked, he found that no waiting list exists. Michael Miller also discovered that McGinley's claim that students want such a program at Burke was wishful thinking.

Showdowns also occurred between member Todd Garrett and Chief Finance Officer Michael Bobby regarding enrollment and vacancy figures in downtown schools. What Bobby didn't know was that Garrett was using the numbers from the seven-day count that Bobby himself supplied to the board earlier this month. Using an EXCEL spreadsheet with the numbers, Garrett reached conclusions that Bobby had tried to avoid.

In a move that long-time watchers of the McGinley administration find typical, Associate Superintendent for Secondary Schools Lou Martin implied to board members that a list of  CTE programs were already in place at Burke and Lowcountry Tech. They aren't. Currently, Burke offers a lackluster culinary arts CTE course. McGinley probably assumes it need not be rigorous for future hamburger flippers! In fact, the courses and "majors" enumerated by Martin are a wish list presented for the board's approval in 2010.

Hoisted by his own petard, Chief Operating Officer for Capital Programs Bill Lewis claimed that the unused Fraser building could not be used for Child Development programs because it has an elevated first floor. Maybe he meant there are steps going in? In any event, only three years ago Bobby pushed for a CD center at Fraser for the exclusive use of MUSC, C of C, and CCSD employees. Prior to that he had told Fraser parents that the school was unsafe. So which is it, Bill?

Well, McGinley was probably prescient in her request for Executive Session on this item. Imagine the uproar that would have occurred if members of the community had heard this discussion.

We hope someone watching CCSD has filed a lawsuit regarding the Open Meetings Act, which McGinley seems to scorn at will. Meanwhile, the Board did table the request for later action.

Gee, I wonder why.

CCSD's McGinley Tone Deaf on Burke's Heritage

Burke High/Middle School, under cover of Executive Session, when its community cannot hear or comment, will be turned into a training center for daycare workers under the guise of "tech" classes.

We can't make this idiotic stuff up! The Charleston County School Superintendent and her lackeys on the CCSD Board of Trustees are so out of touch with the history of education in the county that they think this is a good idea!

The Burke community has begged for years for high-tech classes to be offered at the facility. McGinley instead shuffles a few students over to the Rivers campus so that she can justify forbidding the Charter School for Math and Science from using most of Rivers building. Now she wants to renovate unused space in a pre-"earthquake-proof" building for a massive daycare center so that Burke students can be on the spot to train for low-wage careers as daycare workers. Can anyone say "maids"? Plenty of space for these Pre-K programs already exists in fully renovated buildings.

And she calls this "tech." This is what we get with a Broad graduate from Philadelphia.

How long will it take the community to stop listening to her NAACP lackeys (presumably supporting this development) and demand the superintendent's resignation?

And who's going to call her on the legality of discussing this policy in secret session?

CCSD's Using On-Line Charters to Improve Dropout Statistics

Remember when the Charleston County School District was caught transferring students slated for expulsion elsewhere to Burke High/Middle? Some of us have long memories. We can also remember the hoops Superintendent McGinley has gone through to make district statistics look good, such as claiming a lower percentage of failing schools after closing five of them.

So it should come as no surprise that CCSD's administration has found a new way to improve its stats: recommending to students who are failing mid-year or about to be expelled that they enroll in on-line charter schools. To be fair, CCSD is not the only district that has caught onto this ploy. If a student transfers midyear to an on-line school and then fails to graduate or fails even to take any classes, that student's failure or dropping out is charged to the on-line school!

What a marvelous way to improve graduation rates! We now know that CCSD followed this policy as early as 2011. Of course, this information was not aired by our local paper but emerged in a story from  Columbia's The State. A CCSD letter from an unnamed associate superintendent was cited by the state charter school district in evidence that dumping of students was a problem: the associate superintendent "writes to a parent to say that a division of that county's board of trustees would allow a student to withdraw from high school and enroll in an on-line school 'in lieu of expulsion.'"

Caught red-handed, district spokesman Jason Sakran insisted that this was an "isolated incident" and that the district "has an intervention program" for such students.

How about some statistics from the district, then, Jason. What percentage of failing students transferred to on-line schools in the last two years? What percentage of students faced with expulsion chose to enroll in on-line schools instead of participating in the intervention program? The district is required to keep track of its students, so those figures should be readily available.

What educator in his or her right mind believes that students who cannot pass or behave in a typical school setting will be successful in an on-line charter school where no one is watching?

Don't hold your breath on getting these statistics from Jason, either.

Puzzle of CCSD's Transfers and Redistricting Mt. Pleasant Attendance Zones

Everyone knows that Mt. Pleasant's elementary and middle schools are overcrowded. At a meeting to discuss redrawing of attendance lines, one parent asked why the Charleston County School District didn't plan in advance for these students as the housing was developed. 

Heavens! She must come from a place where school boards actually plan for the future. I thought tales of such places were apocryphal!

More mysteriously, two parents say that they have already transferred their children out of their attendance zones: one from Whitesides and Laing to Mt. Pleasant Academy and Moultrie; the other from Park West schools to Jennie Moore and Laing. These aren't magnet or even semi-magnet schools, so why the transfers? How many other parents in Mt. Pleasant have behaved similarly?

The whole transfer business in CCSD opens a can of worms. For example, why do the majority of students attending Memminger not live in its attendance area? Parents wanted in to a failing school? Why do so many students attending Burke High/Middle live outside of its attendance zone? It's a failing school also. 

Uneven Dispersal of Poor Readers Worsens CCSD's High School Problems

Having spent and touted the effects of tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of dollars on its literacy initiatives, the Charleston County School District now proudly announces that only one out of eight of its entering ninth graders reads below the fourth-grade level.

I'm not making this up.

Well, in a class of 24 that would mean that three students could barely read--IF those students were dispersed evenly throughout the classes. They aren't.

How about CCSD's sharing with us the percentage that applies at North Charleston and Burke High Schools? Too scary? Imagine how the teachers feel!

It's pathetic enough that CCSD uses a benchmark (fourth-grade reading level) meant for elementary school. For full transparency, the district should publish statistics for those reading at least the sixth-grade level (for which some textbooks and materials are available) and those reading on grade level.

Maybe only one out of eight is reading on the ninth-grade level as well. Not a good thought.

Same Old Problems Surface in School Report Cards

No more TV for you. I'm taking that cell phone. Furthermore, you're grounded until those grades improve!

Don't we wish we could enforce those penalties with our local school districts?

Take Dorchester 2 and 4, for example. A cursory glance at the graphs in Friday's paper says it all: how did Dorchester County get away with dividing itself up that way?  Why not divide Charleston East and Charleston West and create similar results!

Let's all recall that the PASS was designed several years ago to replace the more stringent standards causing all the state's districts to look bad. It was aptly named for its goal: everybody should pass; unfortunately, its designers still put the bar too high to accomplish.

Really, for Charleston County the headline should read,"Burke High scores sink once again!" This result despite special contracts and bonuses and incentives to its administration. CCSD's attempts at North Charleston High didn't fare any better. Remember, the state poised for takeover of these two schools but trusted Superintendent McGinley with making improvements. An inconvenient truth. Parents at both schools should be up in arms.

School Improvement Grants Nor Taxes the Answer to CCSD's Failing Schools

Friday's lead editorial asks the right questions:

"The district should be able to explain how [federal] money helped Morningside Middle and St. John's High schools improve, but failed to have a similar impact on Burke, North Charleston and Stall."

"And how could Hursey have made significant progress without the money?"

With these results, how is Superintendent McGinley to convince the CCSD Board of Trustees that her proposed tax hike will make a difference? Well?

There's more at work than money here.

Deja Vu on CCSD's Failing Schools

Burke. North Charleston HS. Stall HS. Sanders-Clyde. Burns.

"No Berkeley or Dorchester County schools were in this group," according to today's newspaper. Really? Don't you wonder why CCSD has the honor of five schools located on the peninsula and in North Charleston that have achieved the notoriety of the Palmetto Priority List? (Why, the list doesn't even include all of the failing schools that district administration has shuttered instead of improving over the last few years!)

Despite her training at and assistance from the Broad Institute, Superintendent McGinley has now proved she doesn't have the qualities and wisdom to "fix" the problem. Who else remembers the glory days when Sanders-Clyde made great strides in its test scores? Why, McGinley was so impressed that she made its principal head of two schools simultaneously. She supposedly had no clue regarding the scandal that finally came out of the closet--organized changing of answers on the tests. And the principal was allowed to escape to a district in North Carolina. Isn't it lucky?

What McGinley has managed to accomplish is new and/or expensively remodeled buildings that should be showplaces for learning. The building program has also been a boon to construction firms. Not to teachers.  Not to students. If a state-of-the-art building could fix these schools' problems, we would not be talking about them now.