CCSD's Planning for Parking Fees a Joke

Evidently the reporter can't remember that part of the Memminger School property was sold off to the College of Charleston on a no-bid basis in April of 2012. Geeze, that's less than a year ago. What short memories we have.

Just think, that piece of property could have been used for parking. Instead, together with those from Buist, the Charleston County School District will spend almost $100,000 per year in parking fees for employees.

Speaking of Buist, district administrators, including Superintendent McGinley, wax poetic over the need for a gym and other spaces, expansion of the old footprint to bring the school amenities provided to other schools. That's the excuse for paying parking fees for Buist employees.

The reporter has also neglected to mention that parents in District 20 (downtown schools) proposed combining Buist and Charleston Progressive, another school being rebuilt at the old Courtenay campus only two blocks away. Several lower grades could have been assigned to the CPA campus and upper grades to the Buist campus, with the existing gym shared by both levels.

Oh, duh. That was just too logical, not to speak of putting a higher percentage of black students into the merged schools.

Here's one of those mathematical word problems:

The proceeds from the sale of the Memminger property went into the operating budget. The fees for parking come out of the operating budget. How many years will pass before the money gained from the sale will be exhausted by parking fees?

And another capital asset will have disappeared.

Architect's Dream Building Misplaced, Citizens' Nightmare

According to well-connected local architect Dinos Liollio, nothing could be better for the Charleston landscape than the "pierced concrete" monstrosity Clemson wishes to build near Marion Square. To quote the "expert," "There is no question that with the continued evolution of its design, the Paolozzi Center will become a modern masterpiece, in the same context as our U.S. Custom House and Old Exchange Building are historical masterpieces. . . .The Paolozzi Center is a great concept, the detailing will make it a great building, and the dialogue will continue to make us a healthy community."

Good. Then let Clemson build it next to your house, Mr. Liollio. Did the U.S. Custom House and Old Exchange Building disrupt the character of their communities? No. Context is everything.

BTW, the Liollio firm has hidden the Courtney School building, a well-known landmark, behind the more generic facades of Charleston Progressive Academy on King Street. 
At least it's not made of "pierced concrete."

CCSD's McGinley's Tunnel-Vision Diversity

Really, it's a hoot to see our local rag touting the push for diversity within Charleston County's magnet schools. Under the leadership of Superintendent McGinley the district has become almost as segregated as it was prior to consolidation and desegregation. Someone needs to confront her with the facts, but apparently the reporter is unwilling to do so.

The reality is that Buist Academy, with 21 percent non-white, is the most integrated school on the peninsula barring the Charter School for Math and Science, of course! And the School of the Arts with its 23 percent nonwhite is more integrated than any other high school in the district.

You might say McGinley's putting the emphasis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.

How about considering upping diversity at the Military Magnet? What about Charleston Progressive?

The district remains silent on integrating these magnet programs, and the reporter follows suit.

One point made about the School of the Arts is that students at Corcoran Elementary, another de facto segregated school, didn't know about its programs. McGinley has been in a position for years, first as chief academic officer and then as superintendent, to tell them, so she's responsible for their ignorance.

Someday the newspaper will stop shilling for the district. Someday.

"Charlestowne Academy" Building Example of CCSD's Failures

It's not Charlestowne Academy on Rivers Avenue that may become a homeless shelter if the Charleston County School District's agreement for a land swap with Mayor Keith Summey goes through.

No, it's the Charlestowne Academy--Charleston County Discipline School--Bethune Arts and Community Center--Bethune Elementary School campus. The building's construction date seems lost in the mists of time. Perhaps a reader has a long memory and can fill in the blanks. What is certain is mismanagement of this CCSD asset by multiple superintendents and School Boards.

What happened to Bethune Elementary School's use of 5841 Rivers Avenue is unclear, but probably the (black?) school was a victim of integration and consolidation in Charleston County. It was vacant. By 1982 this albatross was rented for $1 per year to the city of North Charleston for use as an arts and community center, an agreement that lasted for at least 10 years. How's that for a great return on investment? One would hope that CCSD got something else in return!

Before 1996, CCSD decided to use the building for its first "discipline" school during times in the nineties when students were actually expelled from CCSD's other schools in large numbers. That lasted until CCSD built a special campus as a discipline school, an idea that was ultimately rejected as non-PC.

Notice, none of these decades involved an entity named Charlestowne Academy.

1996 was a banner year for formation of magnet schools in the district. Not only Charleston Progressive but also Military Magnet and Montessori schools were approved, with some opposition, by the district. Charlestowne Academy was formed as a magnet school with no academic entrance requirements that would focus on "back to basics," starting as K through 10. The school focused on academics (no athletic programs) including the Spalding Method (http://www.spalding.org/) and Core Knowledge ( http://www.coreknowledge.org/) in its lower grades.

In its first years, this school was more successful in the results in its lower grades than any of the other magnets, with the exception of Buist Academy. Parental involvement was required; the school had an effective discipline system; and, of course, its curriculum was parent-driven, not district-driven. It was so successful that the lower grades used a lottery system to select only one-third of applicants. And, it was more integrated than almost any other school in the district.

What happened? It's true that the high school portion never really got off the ground. In hindsight, the plan should have started with perhaps kindergarten through fourth and add-a-grade per year, as many new schools have done. Sticking students in trailers at the Bonds-Wilson campus apparently was not a turn off, but in 1999 the school moved into the old discipline campus.

No, the school's success was its death sentence. As new superintendents and new school board members arrived, they saw that the school made the other non-magnet schools look bad by comparison, so one by one they stole away the details that made it successful. One of the first to go was required parental involvement. Next, the school was informed it must use the same ineffective discipline program as the rest of CCSD. Maria Goodloe-Johnson pulled the rug all the way out when she decreed that all CCSD schools must use the same curriculum. These developments should serve as a warning to the folks at Meeting Street Academy that hope for a deal with the district!

Since 2009 the campus has been for sale with apparently no takers except for member Chris Collins's lease agreement that was finally dissolved this year. So of the thirty or forty years that the school has existed, how many were utilized with full use of the property by the district?

How many other properties also lie fallow?

Prepare for Tax Hikes in CCSD

Surely the reason that incumbent CCSD Board of Trustees up for reelection this fall are en masse not running for reelection, not even eminence grise Gregg Meyers, also occurred to you.

Oh, yes. They all gave differing reasons, just not the real one: thanks to their votes during this last year, taxes in the district will rise. [See Schools Work on Seismic Solutions if you don't believe me.]

And for what? This Board has approved the hiring of five, count 'em, five architectural firms to design "new buildings for the five schools with seismic deficiencies," that list being the schools examined by the district for deficiencies in event of the San Francisco Earthquake.

Have you ever seen the old elementary school campus of the School of the Arts where Charleston Progressive is moving? Did anyone check to find out if it is "seismically deficient"?

What happened to some sensible plan to start with the building identified as MOST deficient and proceed in that order at a reasonable speed year by year to fix the rest as money is available?

No, instead it must be done all at once during the tenure of McGinley and, most particularly, her penny-pinching (not) Manager Bill Lewis.

Five firms? What is this, spread the wealth around? Would not there be some economy in hiring ONE firm?

The sales tax will be voted down. Then the new Board will raise property taxes. Gregg Meyers doesn't want to be on the Board when it does. Someone must pay for five architectural firms, readying five more buildings for temporary occupancy, and the accompanying costs for massive busing.

It's just OPM.

Another CCSD Dog-and-Pony Show

In regard to the five CCSD schools that "would begin to fail" in a 5.0 earthquake, we bring you the earth-shattering (pun intended) news that

• parents of children who are attending their neighborhood school are against busing their children all over creation, while
  
• parents of magnet school students are happy to bus their children to another school since the children are already being bused.
  

There.

That encapsulates all the hot air being expended in CCSD's "seismic deficiencies" meetings. [See Parents Split over Possible Moves in Thursday's P&C.]

Unreported Stories About CCSD's Machinations

Call it loss of staff, or call it loss of interest. Whatever deserves the blame, the Post and Courier has ignored at least three stories making the rounds in the Charleston County School District:

• Students now at Fraser will be forced to move three times (from Fraser to Archer to the new Sanders-Clyde) because the City of Charleston wants the current Fraser Elementary for use as a police academy. True or not true?

• District 20 constituent board members are being railroaded to accept new district attendance lines without input from the communities they serve or the information they need for informed opinions. And the changes to boundaries are top secret, right?

• While promising an explanation to District 20 residents over the removal of grades 7 and 8 from Charleston Progressive, Superintendent McGinley continues to be as absent from class as, well, a truant. Would you place money on District 20's ever getting an explanation? Not me.

'Splaining to Do over Stuffing Archer Building

Maybe it's a mathematical deficiency. After all, not everyone really absorbs the meaning of numbers. Nevertheless, Charleston County Superintendent of Schools McGinley had months to figure out how many students could be stuffed into the Archer campus that Sanders-Clyde is using while it awaits completion of its new facility.

First, in her initial School Redesign proposal McGinley seemed to believe that somehow all of the Charter School for Math and Science students would fit into the building. Now, she seems to think that all of the students at Fraser can join the Sanders-Clyde throng at Archer next fall, even though the total exceeds building capacity. But wait--

She wants to crush some of the students displaced from the seventh and eighth grades at Charleston Progressive Academy into the mix.

What is this? Is she trying to see how many students she can stuff into a phone booth?

Put the Edublob on a Diet in CCSD!

The Post and Courier finally caught up with this blog on Wednesday regarding CCSD's payments to outside consultants, i.e., the edublob. [See District Paid $25K to Consulting Firm] The discovery concerns money paid to the hapless consultant who bore the brunt of McClellanville's fury--over its inability to be heard at one of Superintendent McGinley's so-called public input meetings. Not that I'm sorry for the consultant. Or McGinley either.

A commenter on the on-line version of the article sums up the situation quite nicely:

Nearly every "public hearing" I attend these days is being run by some group of hired consultants. They pay some people to talk. They hand out forms, which we fill out. We almost never see the tabulated results. We sit down at little tables in "focus groups" to fill out more forms. We don't see the other group's forms. The one thing that never happens is that we get to stand up and say what we think and our neighbors get to hear it. There isn't going to be a "Give me liberty or give me death" oratorical moment where a leader emerges from the community. They don't want new leaders, they want to stay in control.

The entire purpose of all of this is to keep representative democracy, free speech and republican government from working. It insulates the decision makers and eventually wears the public down. It is a corrosive attack on the First Amendment, free speech, peaceful assembly and the right to petition the government, the core function of our public process.

I'm all for lectures, discussions, focus groups and surveys, but in the end the rubber needs to hit the road where the public is heard. Those people in McClellanville were right to rebel. We owe them a lot for derailing the process. We should rebel more often.

Being Broad-trained urban superintendents, McGinley and her predecessor Goodloe-Johnson learned this process well. In fact, in Seattle right now, the process is mucking up Seattle's problems in much the same way, closing schools without a clear plan for quality in sight.

Oh, I know: "Excellence is our standard." Explain how that dovetails to the seventh-and-eighth graders at Charlestowne Academy who are forced into failing schools from a successful one or to seventh-and-eighth graders at Charleston Progressive Academy who must proceed from a building (Courtenay) that accommodates middle-schoolers to one that doesn't or, again, to a failing school, or both.

Yikes.

Questions from Downtown for CCSD's McGinley

Recent meetings of downtown constituents (District 20) of the Charleston County School District have yielded a tentative Option 4 (reported in Tuesday's P & C--see A New Plan for Schools). More about that later.

But downtown community members have also raised some unanswered troubling questions concerning Superintendent McGinley's recommended three options. Following are some of them:

Questions about Superintendent McGinley's Three options for D20

1. According to the CCSD School Redesign Criteria on which options are based, Charleston Progressive has the best ranking of any other neighborhood school in District 20. Why is it slated for closure?

2. According to CCSD's Redesign proposal, the K-8 grade configuration is associated with "improved student outcomes" and is one of the Redesign's target configurations. Yet the proposal splits up the best performing school on the peninsula, Buist Academy, into a K-5 and a 6-8, and terminates the second best performing one, Charleston Progressive.

3. Charleston Montessori requested the Berry campus. None of the options assign any particular school to Berry. Why wasn't its request to go to Berry honored? Why is the only option for Charleston Montessori to go to the Courtenay Building, where Charleston Progressive now resides?

4. All three options send the Charleston Charter School for Math & Science (CCSMS) a middle high to an elementary school campus (Archer) whose building has room for 283 smaller children, no science labs and no gymnasium. By 2012 CCSMS will have 480 teenagers. Does anything about this idea make sense?

5. The 2009 budget was balanced by a $7 million loan from the fund balance, with the understanding that the loan will be paid back with proceeds from the sale of property. Later, CCSD learned that its operations in Fiscal Year 2008 had yielded an $18 million surplus. Why doesn't CCSD pay off the $7 million loan with some of that surplus, apply the remaining $11 million to the 2009 deficit and forget about selling schools into the jaws of a real estate recession?

6. The Redesign calls for destruction and replacement of three buildings: Buist, Memminger and Rivers. At the big meeting before Christmas, the executive director of the Preservation Society raised many questions as to the viability of that plan. On December 18th, Historic Charleston followed suit with a letter to the same effect (attached,) to Dr. McGinley. Until questions on this major component of the plan are resolved, how can CCSD make final recommendations? Will that happen before January 26?

7. What would destroying and replacing three buildings cost? $100 million? Is this a fiscally prudent plan in the current economic environment? Wouldn't it make more sense to limit the capital expenditures at this time to work that is absolutely necessary?

None of us are foolish enough to hold our breath waiting for answers.

CCSD's Underutilized Schools: Why?

While Sunday's editorial in the P & C [see School Pride, Tough Choices] seeks to be the voice of reason in an emotional climate, the writer glosses over both the qualities of and reasons for the proposed closings of schools such as St. Johns and Lincoln High Schools as well as elementary schools both downtown and on the islands.

Not one of these schools is in an area of declining population. In fact, the opposite is true. Logic tells us that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark."

Can we cut to the chase? Hundreds of students in these attendance areas have been allowed to transfer to schools in other constituent districts, most recently under NCLB, but most for years under various cooked-up personal reasons. These are the mostly apartheid schools, resegregated through artifice with the full cooperation of the School Board. These facts explain why CCSD refuses to provide numbers to the public on students attending schools other than in their attendance area.

Faced with sanctions under NCLB for years of failing [read "loss of federal funds"], Superintendent Nancy McGinley and the Charleston County School Board coterie urge these closures. After all, how would NCLB sanctions look on McGinley's record when she interviews for her next position?

This analysis holds no water for Lincoln High School, which is not failing. McGinley must be really annoyed at how bad this small, community-supported school makes her ideas of mega-high-schools look. Could it be that smaller high schools can be more successful?

And what about the closings of Charlestown Academy in North Charleston and Charleston Progressive Academy downtown? Close down the schools that are succeeding so that scores will rise at other schools?

Under cover of a bad recession McGinley and Gregg Meyers mean to remake CCSD in their own image. That means mega-schools instead of neighborhood ones. That means using earthquake scares to tear down every building not built by Bill Lewis.

When they get through with the Charleston County School District, it will have no history or traditions, this in an area settled in 1670.

Option 4 for CCSD's District 20: An IED

Now that the District 20 public venting has ended, CCSD Superintendent of Schools Nancy McGinley hopes that all will just dissipate their energies complaining to each other so that she can get on with closing schools. Let's not let that happen.

District 20 needs its own IED (yes, Improvised Explosive Device) to give CCSD School Board members reasons to vote against the McGinley-Meyers-Green guided missiles. Improvised, of course, because 75 Calhoun has guaranteed that dissenters do not have the proper data concerning school capacities, school expenses, and potential student bodies. That means that they will respond (as McGinley has already) that District 20 residents simply do not understand the problem and are reacting emotionally to a "data-driven" inevitability. In fact, if you view Mr. Bobby's economic explanation to public audiences, he believes not only are you economically ignorant, you are also simple-minded.

Allow me to quote from Core Knowledge what one respected educator has observed about being "data driven":

"Gone are the days when educators dismissed data as having only a limited utility for improving schools and school systems. What’s taken its place, argues Rick Hess, is 'The New Stupid' — where data-based decision making and research-based practice 'stand in for careful thought, serve as dressed-up rationales for the same old fads, or [are] used to justify incoherent proposals.'”

"The key is not to retreat from data, Hess counsels, 'but to truly embrace the data by asking hard questions, considering organizational realities, and contemplating unintended consequences. Absent sensible restraint, it is not difficult to envision a raft of poor judgments governing staffing, operations, and instruction—all in the name of 'data-driven decision making.’”

Wow! Did he just describe CCSD or what? Trendy poor judgment and lack of sensible restraint.

Start from the assumption that any suggestion deviating from CCSD's plans will be met with sniggering and belittling. McGinley et al fervently hope that any plan put forward will compromise enough schools that you will have signed on for your own punishment. Don't let that happen. Whatever plan you put forward must be outrageously bold and sensible; there is no way to propose dollar savings with no reliable information, so don't waste time trying.

What to do?

• Announce that most dollar savings must be found in Mt. Pleasant, James Island, and West Ashley.
  
• Immediately move to structure Charleston Progressive as a charter school. (Yes, I know they said they won't consider more charters; call their bluff).
• File a lawsuit in federal court claiming that the School Board is attempting to resegregate the schools;
• Call the bluff of the NAACP and Ministerial Alliance, both of whom have remained strangely silent on McGinley's proposals.
• Ask for what you really want and have wanted for decades; don't bend to seismic or economic threats.

My suggestions:

• Forget the seismic upgrades and the costs associated with moving students around to do them;
  
• Combine all grade-level-performing students from Charleston Progressive and Buist into one magnet school that is K-8 (let's call it Courtenay Magnet, maybe);
• Put CSMS in the Rivers building and let its board decide about upgrades;
• Make all downtown elementary schools K-7, planning that in better times they will become Pre-K through 7;
• Make Burke High School grades 8 - 12, for reasons enumerated previously on this blog;
• Put the so-called Career Center / technical high school in Burke as a magnet;
• Redraw district lines to include nearby parts of Mt. Pleasant, West Ashley, and North Charleston to fill any remaining spaces and bring down per-pupil costs.

There. That should be bold enough.

CCSD's Sham Redesigns in District 20: Sue

Some people are so accustomed to deception they don't know any other way. This statement clearly is true for Charleston County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley and her henchmen.

The removal of Wilmot Fraser fils from Tuesday night's School Redesign meeting at Burke High School only proves the point. He wanted to change the preapproved agenda. How dare actual members of the community challenge the fly-by-night plans of outsiders (McGinley--Philadelphia; Meyers--New Orleans; Green--Germany & various army posts, etc.) telling them what's best for their community! [See 350 Jam Schools Meeting, Demand to Be Heard.] Fortunately, they didn't just fall off the turnip truck, as the School Redesigners seem to believe.

What McGinley and School Board members have received is the frustrated, pent-up anger of those who have been prevented from engaging in true dialogue for too long. True, these sham community imput meetings weren't started by McGinley, but she has been only too content to follow in her predecessors' footsteps.

Say, what ever happened to the OLD plans for downtown schools? You know, the ones gathering dust on some CCSD shelf, for which a facilitator was paid $70,000 not too long ago?

The proper derision met talk of "seismic upgrades"(TV coverage reported laughter and catcalls; the P & C quoted Sandra Perry, a supporter of Fraser, as saying, "'I've been there 50 years, and I haven't seen an earthquake knock down Fraser yet,' . . . in response to the district's position.") The community knows full well that these are an excuse to close some schools and destroy others.

Too much disinformation passed by CCSD and the media goes unchallenged. On Channel 5 Wednesday morning, viewers were blithely told that Charleston "lies on a major fault line."

No, it doesn't.

No one yet knows with any certainty why the area suffered a major earthquake about 120 years ago: not announcers, not geologists, not even Bill Lewis of CCSD! Charleston is no San Francisco; it's not even a New Madrid. No one has found a fault line; the county is in an intraplate area. To quote the experts:

Nobody is exactly sure what causes these earthquakes [in intraplate areas]. In many cases, the causative fault is deeply buried, and sometimes cannot even be found. Under these circumstances it is difficult to calculate the exact seismic hazard for a given city, especially if there was only one earthquake in historical times.

So what's the big rush now? The bond issues for these upgrades haven't even been voted on yet, have they? If we've waited 50 years, why not a couple more?

We know the answer. Those in control of CCSD have seized the opportunity of weak school funding (brought on by our state legislature, I might add) combined with so-called necessary upgrades for earthquakes and a now reeling economy plus new School Board members who don't yet realize what's going on in the dog-and-pony show to ensure that no integrated school other than Buist exists downtown and to show the Feds next time they look at NCLB results that CCSD has no failing schools. They'll simply move the schools across the street, create sham mini-magnets, and give them new names, get rid of that pesky CPA magnet that keeps asking for a magnet's assets (that might take resources away from Buist) and squash CSMS in the embryo stage so that everyone can see that an integrated school downtown is impossible. Oh, yes, and sell off Fraser and Archer to developers.

Now that's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in a nutshell.

Apart from lobbying School Board members to, at the very least, postpone voting on these very complex proposals in January, and, at most, to vote against the whole package at any time it comes up, residents of District 20 need to band together, pool resources, and hire a lawyer. Sue in federal court. Point out that CCSD plans to resegregate the district.

We may not be able to stop them, but at least we can slow them down. And time is valuable.

CCSD: Shaft District 20 and CSMS in One Blow

An elephant never forgets. Nor do Superintendent Nancy McGinley of the Charleston County Schools and her supporters on the Board of Trustees. They had the Charter School for Math and Science rammed down their throats (so to speak) and, despite their machinations, finally situated on the Rivers campus.

Even as you read this blog, CCSD is paying its lawyer to protest CSMS's right to reside on space owned by CCSD. And these so-called charter-loving folks have declared themselves above the law when it comes to considering future charters.

So it should hardly come as a surprise that all three options under the School Redesign proposals include putting CSMS into the Archer building, thus giving an elementary school building to what will become a 6-12 school. Furthermore, Archer will hold only 280 students; CSMS plans to enroll 480. That should be a good fit. The extra 200 can sit on the grass outside.

Let's face it: if the new Board members go along with the majority of the old (and so far they show no signs--other than Kandrac--of being other than cheerleaders for McGinley), they can ram this travesty through. They have the votes. All supporters of CSMS can do is make as much noise as possible and round up its own lawyers. What ever happened to the Office of Civil Rights, anyway?

It must be galling for McGinley and friends to see an integrated and successful downtown school arise after CCSD has managed to gut all previous ones.

Even beyond that travesty, after treating Charleston Progressive Academy, an erstwhile magnet school now in the Courtenay building, as the poor stepchild for years, McGinley et al will close it. That, my friends, is another piece of the pattern revealed in District 1 and District 4. CPA isn't McGinley's child, so why not jettison it willy-nilly, even though it is one of the most successful elementary schools downtown. As I stated previously, it's all about the numbers (and I don't mean financial ones).

"Seismic upgrade"for Courtenay, indeed. Does that make sense for new buildings? Yes. For the old ones? No. It's just another way to spend taxpayer dollars and keep cronies employed. Furthermore, let the Montessori school find space in Mt. Pleasant or West Ashley. Or how about on John's Island? I understand it has some excess capacity.

No, here's a better plan.

MERGE CPA with Buist!

• Any child now attending either school who is on grade level will remain; others will return to the schools in their attendance districts. Brilliant, isn't it?
  
• That way, CCSD will have kept its promise to CPA's parents when it designated it a magnet school.
  
• Kept its promise. Its promise.
  
• This merger should be much less expensive than the options proposed by CCSD.
  

Redraw attendance lines for Burke High School!

• Include those parts of Mt. Pleasant and West Ashley that are closer to Burke than to Wando or West Ashley High Schools;
• Keep the eighth grade at Burke so that eighth-graders will make a smoother transition into high school; those prepared can take world languages and algebra at the high-school level;
• Add the technological and vocational classes to Burke that its parents so highly desire.
  

Make all elementary schools K-7!

• Redraw lines where necessary to include students from Mt. Pleasant and West Ashley to keep buildings full;
• Keep Fraser and James Simons open; their space will be needed for the downtown students who will return once CCSD gets serious about improvement; otherwise, Bill Lewis will come hat in hand to ask for more millions to build schools before these students are out of high school.

Look what can be accomplished with a minimum of fuss and money. Oh, I forgot. That's not what McGinley and Meyers have in mind.

CCSD Tosses Charleston Progressive a Hot Potato

What do you do with a hot potato? Drop it? Hand it off to someone else to deal with? Well, Superintendent McGinley has chosen the latter course. [See New Position Creates Concern in Saturday's P & C.]

The hot potato, of course, is the former principal of Jane Edwards Elementary, Christy Thompson. Thompson has created controversy from her first days at the school, with 11 of its 15 teachers leaving after her first year as principal (but continued backing from McGinley) culminating in a lawsuit brought by a teacher this last year that has not yet been resolved.

For background, readers may see past postings on this blog, but the lead in the P & C's story sums up the latest controversy nicely: "The principal accused of grabbing a teacher's arm during an argument has been moved to an assistant principal position [at Charleston Progressive Academy], and that decision has frustrated some who say peninsula schools should not be treated as a 'dumping ground.'"

Gee, those people downtown have some nerve objecting to a policy that's been in effect for the last 30 years or so! Who do they think they are? Taxpayers? Marvin Stewart needs to get a life. . . Can you imagine what will happen if he replaces Toya on the School Board? We'll have to deal with those people all the time!

[Sorry, I was just channeling Gregg Meyers, . . . or was it McGinley? Whatever.]

Actually McGinley's hand-off sparkles in its brilliancy. Kill two birds with one stone. Get Thompson away from Jane Edwards before the school implodes. Foist her on Charleston Progressive so that as the feds continue looking into CCSD's failure to provide magnet resources to its so-called [black] magnet school, she can point to its having an assistant principal that CCSD's "formula" doesn't call for.

Then, McGinley won't have to live with Thompson's apparently bristly personality at 75 Calhoun, and, if later developments force McGinley to fire Thompson, her position won't need to be filled.

I told you it was brilliant.

Who cares what happens at CPA anyway! Whatever it is, they deserve it for filing a complaint with the OCR!

[Sorry, channeling again. I'd better get off this topic.]

How About That CCSD Budget, Folks!

Raid the contingency fund! What's a contingency anyway?

Sell that old real estate that's just hanging around! Next year's budget will be harder? Sell the Fraser campus for next year's budget. Sell the Rivers campus to balance the budget the following year. Sell the Charleston Progressive campus. Sell, sell, sell--cover those operating costs with sales of capital until. . .

Stoke Gregg Meyers's ego with *Meyers* provisions to the budget; he needs more self confidence!

Up those taxes on businesses! It was a forgone conclusion when the new state funding rules went into effect! Why do businesses matter anyway?

Get used to it, folks. Charleston County School District gets funded from the state sales tax on the same basis as every other school district.

Not fair, you say? There's nothing fair about a sales tax.

Why did CCSD get the short end of the stick while other districts' finances actually improved? It doesn't take a rocket scientist or accountant to figure out that CCSD was spending more per pupil than the others--and getting less in results. Now it's on a forced diet, except the Board is raiding the refrigerator.

Last Gasp of a "Failing Mindset": NAACP & Ravenel

Dot Scott has lied to Nelson Rivers III, whose speech can be seen on the P & C's website. At least, I assume that Rivers wasn't being ironic when he said that the organizers of CSMS "want a segregated, or almost segregated, school" at Rivers. Maybe that was a joke? Or maybe a school that is all-black, such as virtually every school in District 20 except Buist Academy, isn't considered segregated by Scott and Rivers? Frankly, given the circumstances, Rivers's comments are bizarre.

Dot Scott is worried. Oh, not about the de facto segregated schools on the peninsula--about getting an integrated one. This is the most logical explanation for the illogical line that Scott, as Chairman of the Charleston NAACP, draws between Arthur Ravenel, Jr.,'s now famous blow up at 75 Calhoun Street and the Charter School for Math and Science's use of the Rivers campus. Scott hopes to use those remarks to drive an old man from office and prevent the election of another one who just might oppose the 5 - 4 majority of the present Board. See Friday's P & C for Meeting AddressesInequities in Schools.

Given that headline, didn't you assume that finally the NAACP and the phantom Interdenominational Alliance (that exists only for public meetings like this one) were going to demand that Charleston Progressive Academy, an almost all-black magnet school only two blocks from Buist Academy, get the resources it needs to be truly a magnet? Or that Fraser Elementary get its very own principal? Nary a mention. Instead we get more of the same from Scott and her cronies.

Let's all keep in mind that Ravenel, who certainly has his flaws, has been one vocal and mostly effective opponent of the majority of CCSD Board members led by erstwhile civil-rights attorney Gregg Meyers and Board Chairman Hillery Douglas, who can't even get control of the Board's agenda (if McGinley has been writing it, as the circumstances of the brouhaha suggest).

This meeting kicks off the election campaign to make sure that November's replacements for Board members follow the racist agenda set up by the NAACP. Despite who shows up at Monday's CCSD Board meeting, it is a "failing mindset." Thank God.

Let's Hear NAACP's Scott on Sea Islands Failure

Would you believe that Charleston's chapter of the NAACP is now calling for Governor Sanford to remove Arthur Ravenel, Jr., from the CCSD Board of Trustees over Ravenel's use of language? As reported by local TV stations, Dot Scott is at it again.

Some things that don't bother Scott and the other officers of the NAACP:

• de facto segregated schools in District 20 (on the peninsula);
  
• under-the-radar busing of white students out of District 20 and black students in to make segregation possible;
  
• the CCSD Superintendent's foray into charter schools as part of changing Murray Hill Academy represented by the monumental and expensive failure of Sea Islands YouthBuild;
  
• the failure of CCSD to provide programs at Burke High School desired by its parents;
• overloading of resources on Buist Academy as a magnet school while withholding same from Charleston Progressive Academy, an almost all-black magnet school only two blocks away; etc.

How could Ravenel's remarks possibly be as damaging to CCSD as these failures? It's all politics, folks. As long as the majority on the CCSD board aligns itself with Dot Scott, we can expect more of the same.

CCSD: Themes as Sleight of Word

To wax philosophical--what is a "magnet" school?

While it might seem a silly question to those of you unfamiliar with the sleight of word performed regularly by CCSD, it's no small matter to the thousands of students who must attend CCSD's failing schools. CCSD prides itself on never having defined what it means by "magnet"--just ask Board member Gregg Meyers or supporters of Charleston Progressive Academy! A definition might actually force the district to admit that some of its "magnets" are more equal than others. According to Public School Review [see What Is a Magnet School], magnet schools receive extra funding. As Charleston Progressive knows only too well, one can be a magnet in CCSD without any such promise or follow through. Then there's Buist.

Now Superintendent Nancy McGinley plans to muddy the murky waters even further by encouraging "themes" to create "mini-magnets" in 11 failing elementary schools. McGinley and her mouthpiece, Diette Courrege, the reporter who wrote about the themed schools in Friday's P & C, suggest that somehow the situation of these 11 themed schools is analogous to that of the St. Andrews School of Math and Science. [See 11 Schools to Pursue Themes ]

Only to someone who doesn't know Charleston all that well!

According to native Pennsylvanian McGinley, "St. Andrews was a struggling, traditional neighborhood school, but it has been in high demand since it began accepting students from across the county and added the math and science focus." Struggling? Does she really think that the student population of that school's attendance area resembles the 11 schools she has in mind to emulate it? What planet is she on? Furthermore, St. Andrews has suffered an attendance "surplus" ever since previous Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson threw a sop to vociferious parents whose children did not get into Buist by dumping them wholesale at St. Andrews [hence last year's trailer fiasco].

Also, "each school will have a district staff member assigned to them [sic] to provide support." Yes, we can imagine what that will consist of. How about "watchdog"?

Sometimes it seems as though CCSD won't be happy until every student in the county is bused to a school in another attendance zone. Can themes alone work here to improve these schools academically and INTEGRATE them? Of course not. Is McGinley hoping that parents who live in the failing schools' attendance zones but send their children elsewhere will return? Let's not kid ourselves that a theme will convince them.

How about discipline?

Why, Thank You, P & C! How Kind of You

I wonder when the editors of the P & C realized that their investigation into disparities in discipline between black and white students would force them to publish a list of the CCSD schools that are de facto segregated. My guess is, too far into the process to turn back.

[See Statistical Analysis for Sunday's article.]

Manigault must be on his way to the hospital with a heart attack after seeing CCSD's List of Shame published, especially as the comparable lists for Berkeley and Dorchester 2 were so short.

Statistics. In the course of the investigation, schools that had fewer than 40 black or 40 white students were eliminated from analysis. According to a companion article on the statistical methods used,

"The sample size eliminated nearly half, or 37 of 82, of the schools or programs from analysis in Charleston County. Students in three programs — the Special Day School, Septima P. Clark Corporate Academy and Montessori Community School — were counted separate from any school, which led to Charleston having 82 different schools rather than 79.

Politano said [. . . ] In Charleston, 30 of the schools had fewer than 20 students who were in the school's racial minority, and 22 of the excluded schools had fewer than 10 students in the racial minority." [italics mine]

No surprise to frequent readers of this blog. Did any schools in District 20 (besides Buist) make the cut? See for yourself.

The List of Shame: SCHOOLS ELIMINATED FROM ANALYSIS

Berkeley:

Cainhoy Elementary/Middle, J.K. Gourdin Elementary, St. Stephen Middle

Charleston:

Baptist Hill High, C.C. Blaney Elementary, Brentwood Middle, Burke High, Edmund A. Burns Elementary, Charleston Development Academy, Charleston Progressive Academy, Chicora Elementary, Septima P. Clark Corporate Academy, Matilda F. Dunston Elementary, East Cooper Montessori Charter, Wilmot J. Fraser Elementary, Edith Frierson Elementary, Garrett Academy, Haut Gap Middle, Malcolm Hursey Elementary, James Simons Elementary, Jane Edwards Elementary, Lincoln High, Mary Ford Elementary, McClellanville Middle, Memminger Elementary, Military Magnet Academy, Minnie Hughes Elementary, Julian Mitchell Elementary, Montessori Community, Mount Pleasant Academy, Mt. Zion Elementary, Murray-LaSaine Elementary, R.D. Schroder Middle, Sanders-Clyde Elementary, Special Day School, St. James-Santee Elementary, St. Johns High, Sullivan's Island Elementary, Susan G. Boykin Academy, Greg Mathis Charter High

Dorchester District 2: None

If housing patterns in Charleston County really were this segregated, the list wouldn't be so shameful. Contemplate where Memminger Elementary is located, for example.