McGinley-Meyers Candidates for CCSD Seat

Pay attention.

The P&C has not only put forward the obvious candidates--Seabrook, Moody, Miller, Copeland--for the recently-vacated seat on the Charleston County School Board. It has leaked the plans of the McGinley-Meyers nexus.

The long arm of former Board member Gregg Meyers has reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out the name of William L. "Sam" Hiott, who the reporter mentions formerly served on the District 23 constituent board.

And now the rest of the story.

Meyers recruited Hiott to run against Sandi Engelman in the 2006 school board elections. After all, Hiott thought Engelman was "too divisive."

We all know those code words.

He had difficulty finding enough signatures for his petition to be valid, so the Taj Mahal found some more for him. Despite Meyers's plans, Ruth Jordan won that election.

No doubt Hiott has the common touch, since he made over $18 million dollars in 2009 in his last year as executive vice president of the Bank of South Carolina. He won't need to worry about this "salary" business. Now that he's semi-retired, he can mingle with the hoi polloi.

At least he's from the Low Country's "front porch."

Such cannot be said for McGinley's choice, Rew A. "Skip" Godow, whose Facebook page sports a 25-year-old picture, reveals no family, and states his interest in women.

The College of Charleston and Trident Technical Center employ this native of Chicago (well, Oak Brook, its tony suburb) in various administrative capacities. Who better to take McGinley's side than another member of the edublob? His Ph.D. in the Psychology of Philosophy (or is it the Philosophy of Psychology?) should come in handy on the Board.

Godow has served and continues to serve on multiple boards of directors--the Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, the Charleston Education Network, the Education Foundation, and even the Community Advisory Committee to CCSD.

You get the picture. Just the type of bureaucrat McGinley wants--can be counted on to show up for meetings and not ask too many questions.

Let's see if the Charleston legislative delegation has any common sense.

One Win for Jordan in CCSD

Don't you wonder how many other problems lurk in the Charleston County School District's procurement process?

CCSD Board member Ruth Jordan asked a simple question--why did one tree service receive all the district's business without a bidding process. She was assured that municipalities required its use.

What? Not true.

See District Gave Contracts Without Bids in Friday's edition of the P&C.

And they want to raise our taxes.

Tomfoolery Behind CCSD's Scenes

At its last meeting the Charleston County School Board voted to place on November's ballot a sales tax for the next eight years. It changed the number of years from five to eight, at the suggestion of member Arthur Ravenel, Jr., so that the replacement or super-outfitting of every structure in the district could be completed during Bill Lewis's tenure.

Now it appears that the Board is backtracking because the Chamber of Commerce and its ilk have objected to the lengthening of the five-year tax they agreed to prior to the official vote. [See Little Enthusiasm for 8-year Tax in Tuesday's edition.]

"The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce and Charleston Trident Association of Realtors had given the district their endorsement for putting a five-year, one-penny sales tax increase on the November ballot, but neither group has decided what it thinks about the longer-term sales- tax increase.

"'I don't know what the chamber leadership will decide on this issue,' said Mary Graham, the chamber's senior vice president of public policy. 'We had sound reasons for supporting the five-year over the eight.'"

Really? What were they? They're probably planning at the end of the period to support some other tax to replace it--and now that tax must wait an additional three years.

Who's running CCSD--the School Board or the Chamber of Commerce, the Realtors' Association, and the Trident CEO Council? All of these organizations hope to sock you with at least a five-year sales tax.

But if we vote it down, doesn't the Board have to vote to raise property taxes every year? And run for re-election?

Hmmm.

Shakeup at CCSD's Sixth-Grade Academy

Paint it any way you wish, Dr. McGinley, but this year's Sixth-Grade Academy fell short of its promise. [See Literacy Shake-up Planned in Wednesday's P&C.]

Nevertheless, the District will forge ahead with more academies in other areas. Is it my imagination, or is the Superintendent adding yet another level of bureaucracy to these planned academies by making the original principal supervise the others?

I'm with Board member Ruth Jordan: "'I think we need to look at how it's going to roll out,' she said. 'I don't want this to just be another gimmick.'"

Amen.

CCSD's Selling Potential Millions for $350,000

When will the national media pick up on the idiocies perpetrated by the Charleston County School Board? Surely not all school boards can be this dumb, or should I say self-serving?

Such was my reaction to Sunday's article on the potential creation of a special tax zone for the Beach Company to develop a large portion of Johns Island. See the blithely-headlined School District Would See Immediate Gain.

For $350,000 (probably the yearly cost of Superintendent McGinley's transportation) economically-challenged Board members such as Ruth Jordan are willing to forgo forever millions of future tax dollars from property taxes on this major development by one of Charleston's most well-connected development companies. On the other hand, Board member Chris Fraser's remarks are simply disingenuous: he's looking out for his own term on the Board, not the interests of taxpayers.

You can't make this stuff up fast enough to keep pace with its escalating stupidity.

Never mind that such tax zones are supposed to provide incentives to redevelop blighted areas instead of providing an easy way for developers to pay back loans to develop pristine land. Such a zone presupposes that, without tax breaks, a large portion of Johns Island would never be developed. Yeah, right.

It's a sweet deal for the Beach Company. As the reporter explains, "Imagine you're building a house, and the government agrees not only to loan you funding for construction, but allows you to pay it back with money you would have otherwise paid in property taxes." Apparently, Jordan and Fraser find the county's schools to be so well-funded that increased property tax totals are unnecessary.

We can understand why the City Council might be interested in seeing the Beach Company pay for infrastructure, but the position of members of the CCSD hierarchy is untenable.

The rest of the taxpayers of Charleston County should rise up in revolt before the School Board sells its soul for a mere $350,000.

CCSD Board Disdains the Poor--Again

Scurrying around the halls of the Taj Mahal at 75 Calhoun these days are minions planning the Charleston County School District's next building program. Much hand-wringing has ensued over its inability to continue alternative financing, the method for its program reaching its completion in 2010. How to get the millions? How to get the millions? Scylla and Charybdis appear on the radar screen.

In the vernacular, that's a rock and a hard place. The school district actually must put the question to the (gasp!) voters. Let's see, which would the voters prefer? [See School Board Weighs Finance Options in Thursday's P&C.]

That master of understatement, Michael Bobby, the district's chief financial officer is quoted as saying, "'The fact that we have to be on the ballot with the building program presents some real challenges and considerations.'" No kidding! The two options on the table? " a bond referendum or a sales tax increase."

Incredible as it may seem to the sane, the Board leans toward putting a sales tax on the ballot "which would be accompanied by a reduction in property taxes."

See, cynically the educrats and the majority of Board members think that people who don't own property (the poor) also don't vote. Therefore, the way to sugarcoat a tax increase is to promise the most likely voters a decrease in property taxes. Didn't the state of South Carolina just do that? Isn't it in trouble already by attempting to finance through falling sales tax revenues? Where will this madness end?

At least Chris Collins spoke up for the poor, knowing full well that the burden of financing through sales taxes falls most heavily on them. No one else seems to care or understands the issue. Chair Ruth Jordan opened her mouth to prove that she needs to take Economics 101, making the economically-illiterate statement (regarding an increase in the sales tax) that ""We all bear the same burden. . . It's the most fair way.'"

Painful, isn't it?

I need to create a new label: super-idiocies.

CCSD School Board Chair Jordan

She's not a tool of Gregg Meyers, Mayor Riley, the Chamber of Commerce, or the NAACP.

That's the good news. [See School Board Picks New Leader.]

While Ruth Jordan has not always spoken against the Meyers-Green agenda, her voting record and statements over her years on the CCSD School Board do indicate a certain independence. Superintendent Nancy McGinley fondly recites that "everything is for the children," but Jordan's record suggests that she actually believes that to be true.

So it was only fitting that Jordan made her point at Monday night's meeting. After an unapologetic attempt by Gregg Meyers to make the election of a new board chairman all about supporting McGinley, Jordan was quoted as saying, "'Frankly, I was appalled that it would come down to the mandate about the superintendent. I thought it was about the children. ... If we're truly committed to public education, we're going to do what's right for children.'"

You tell'em, Ruth!

If Doug Gepford Said It, It Must Be True?

Talk about a lack of critical thinking!

The Charleston County School District's Chief Academic Officer Doug Gepford stated that "it's been his experience that retaining students doesn't work because nothing different happens when students repeat a grade." [See Policy Panel Grapples with Literacy in Thursday's P & C]

So the Charleston County School Board's committee on literacy policy (when you want nothing done, form a committee) simpered in unison, " Oh, yes, Doug! Of course, Doug. We shouldn't make students repeat a grade." Let's keep doing the same thing we've always done--promoting students who aren't reading on grade level--and hope for different results.

You all know what that constitutes, right? Insanity.

Oh, I know that the committee is trying to dress up the status quo with different language, such as directing the superintendent to identify which literacy programs purchased from the edublob might help individual students (Gregg Meyers's idea), but those same programs could be directed to students who have been retained. It was virtually automatic promotion that caused the severity of the problem in the first place.

Committee Chairwoman Ruth Jordan sincerely wants to see a change from students entering high school unable to read their textbooks. Let's hope Meyers and his ilk don't bamboozle her with their vocabulary on this one.

Why, even Jon Butzon (and what was he doing there?) disagreed with Gepford and Meyers, proving once again that even a stopped clock can be right twice a day: [he] told the committee after the meeting that he wanted them to take a firmer stance on requiring children to be able to read before pushing them through the system." [italics mine]

Holy cow! I just agreed with Butzon?

Top-Heavy CCSD Administration Salaries Hurt District

These people--Eliot Smalley and Audrey Lane--are so central to the Charleston County School District's success that they deserve raises to the six-figure bracket when teachers are being let go and class sizes are rising. That's how educrats like Superintendent Nancy McGinley think.

What ever happened to "victory begins in the classroom"? Just a slogan.

So points out Carol M. Peecksen, a retired CCSD English teacher, in a Letter to the Editor published Wednesday and titled "Raises Wrong." [See Letters to the Editor.] Peecksen was responding to an earlier editorial in the P & C that pointed out that CCSD now has 20 members in its "six-figure club." Not one of those is "in the classroom." Instead, those "in the classroom" have their salaries reduced with "furlough days."

As the prior editorial pointed out, "The raises should make those two employees happy. The district's other 5,374 employees are probably wondering what happened to theirs." Right. Especially since they too have been asked to perform additional duties.

Who on the School Board looks out for the little guy? Not Green, Jordan, Oplinger, Collins, Meyers, or Fraser! Those members were only too happy to go along with this idiocy. I wonder if those teachers and staff who voted for them are happy now?

Note: In one of those strange coincidences, Peecksen and I were classmates at St. Andrews Parish High School many years ago. No collaboration here--I haven't seen or talked to her in 23 years and didn't know she had retired.

Forensic Audit Needed for CCSD Accounts

And the award for Most Misleading Lead for a News Article goes to. . . School Board Avoids 1 Tax Hike in Tuesday's P & C.

Here's the lead: "The fiscally conservative Charleston County School Board succeeded in passing a $318.3 million operating budget that doesn't have a tax increase." The Board was trying to avoid a tax increase? Really? "Fiscally conservative?" Superintendent McGinley must have written that one herself!

A more accurate lead would have been "Board member Ruth Jordan, who normally follows the liberal spending ideas of Gregg Meyers, messed up his and the Superintendent's plans by voting with the fiscally conservative MINORITY of Ravenel-Kandrac-Toler and brought along Chris Collins for the victory." All McGinley could do was to whine "[that] the board's decision begs the question of what kind of school system the community wants. 'I'm sick about what happened,' she said."

It's easy to tell you what the community wants, Superintendent McGinley: transparency in operating expenses and income and in building expenses and contracts. Every year we go through the same shenigans, with people of good will towards the district attempting to understand the items in the budget asking for clearer budget figures. Every year the district reacts as though it has its hand in the cookie jar.

Until McGinley and her cohorts and supporters on the CCSD School Board practice more transparency, the community will continue to believe that its tax dollars are being wasted.

How about a forensic audit of CCSD's books, including the capital accounts. That just might satisfy Charleston County voters that the money has been well spent. Or it might show something else.

Meyers, the Poster Boy for Chutzpah in CCSD

English words have failed me (effrontery, gall, arrogance, brass, nerve, audacity, cheek, hubris--oops, sorry, that last one was Greek), so I must fall back on the little Yiddish I know to describe Charleston County School Board member Gregg Meyers's reactions to CCSD's literacy problems: chutzpah. At least, that was my reaction toThursday's newest article on literacy problems in the district [Literacy Requirements Debated].

How many years has our erstwhile friend served on the School Board?

How many years has the problem existed?

Meyers should be forced to resign in shame.

Think of the major role he played in creating safe-haven magnet schools for his own children (both Buist and Academic Magnet) while allowing deterioration of schools for poorer students downtown (District 20) and elsewhere during his "service." Apparently, Meyers lives by the motto, "Them that has, gets." Imagine the nerve that went into the following Meyers statement: "If we don't stake out what is most important, then this [learning to read] simply becomes one of many important things." If any one person could be held accountable for CCSD's literacy failures, it would be Meyers himself.

On the other hand, Board member Ruth Jordan's remarks reveal that she still doesn't understand the problem. The article quotes her as saying, " it's not acceptable for students to be so far behind when they reach ninth grade, but [. . .] some district teachers are ineffective. Tying promotion to reading ability would penalize students for their teachers' ineptitude."

So, Ms. Jordan, under that politically-correct condition it would be okay to send students "so far behind" that they can't read their textbooks on to high school? Isn't that what caused the problem in the first place? Use some logic here, please!

To top the CCSD's committee meeting off, "community member" (see previous post) Jon Butzon was allowed to sit in deliberations and provide his two cents. When was he elected to the School Board? Why isn't Elizabeth Kandrac on the committee? Isn't she the board member who has the most direct experience in teaching students who can't read on grade level? Where are Butzon's credentials (besides being a friend of the Mayor)?

Nowhere in the article does the reporter mention that the original goal of No Child Left Behind was to make sure that every third grader was reading prior to entering the next grade. Not relevant here, among NCLB-bashers? Or were the reporter and School Board members even more ignorant than we thought?

Buist Again? Let's Take a Step Back

Charleston County School District Board member Ruth Jordan, who lives in West Ashley and is chairman of the Board's Policy Committee, has roiled the waters by suggesting that Buist Academy not be allowed "to become segregated again." Putting her in charge of the Policy Committee is an exercise in chaos now and yet to come! Nevertheless, any suggestion that the "magnet school's admissions procedures could be overhauled to attract more minority students" coming from this quarter should be met with the derision it deserves.

Here is a history lesson that attempts to be purely expository:

• Buist began as an all-black school when Charleston's schools were segregated and not consolidated into one district.
• To meet requirements imposed by desegregation lawsuits, Gregg Meyers (a present Board member) put forward the plan to create a 60-40 school to show the Civil Rights Division that the district was integrated, and the plan was accepted.
• The school's admissions process uses four lists and a lottery to select students, but the results were required to be 40 percent minority.
  
• The school thrived while other schools in what became District 20 of CCSD disappeared or became all-black and failing.
• A lawsuit about five years ago killed the 60-40 race-based requirement.
• Since the ruling, the percentage of minority students attending Buist has declined--CCSD putting the percentage at 25; those in District 20 suggesting that in the lower grades the percentage is more like 15.

Now, the rest of the story.

The present situation couldn't appear more biased and controversial even if it had been put into effect by a White Citizens' Committee operating in cabal. And it's easy to see who is at fault: present and former school board members, their political cronies, and present and former superintendents hired by the school boards. Until the following messes are purified with the daylight of transparency, no one will accept new OR old guidelines.

Before present parents of Buist Academy start jumping down my throat, let me point out that most parents who have sent their children to Buist over its years of operation as a magnet have not played the system in any way! No, Buist's controversies derive from how CCSD has tampered with Buist's admissions to benefit the few and well-connected. The tampering has proceeded under CCSD's "trust us with no verification" policy. There are three aspects to the tampering: implementation of the lottery; verification of the lists; and abuse of "testing" procedures.

1. The potential for abusing who "wins" the lottery is immense, as has been well-documented on this blog and elsewhere. Until the Buist lottery becomes as transparent as the SC Education Lottery, its results will continue to be suspect.
2. Already well-documented here and elsewhere has been CCSD's reluctance to cull from the lists those who do not qualify for them. Due to some well-placed complaints (covered by the mainstream news media), procedures have tightened. However, due to the immense secrecy surrounding who is on what list and where and machinations when vacancies have occured in upper grades (such as allowing seats to go unfilled), no one will trust the process until the lists are public.
3. Buist's potential kindergarteners are NOT taking an "entrance exam" that is an intelligence test; therefore, the school does not select the "best and brightest," as is frequently suggested. The school's results are a combination of motivated parents, self-selection (more likely to be middle-class), and resources that CCSD has poured into the school. In fact, concerning the entering "interview" a previous commenter wrote,

"In the preface to the YCAT, the publisher states that the test is not designed to be used as the sole criteria for assessing a student and the test results should not be used as a single determining factor for directing where a child is placed in school. It further states that the test is to be used only in combination with other measures of a child's abilities, otherwise its results if taken alone may be highly unreliable, especially at the youngest age levels of kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. If that is the recommendation of those who designed the YCAT test, then why is Buist using this test exactly in the manner that the publisher has said it is not to be used?"

If that isn't damning enough for you, how about that the proctors asking the children the questions are not uniform and not qualified, and the reported results are not verifiable by any other human being.

Now, here it comes: District 20 has been such a thorn in the side of the powers-that-be that CCSD will make it a county-wide magnet without a list for District 20. McGinley and Meyers will point out that District 20 now has several "partial magnets" for its population, so why should its residents complain?

Hey, as long as the voters of Mt. Pleasant and James Island can vote District 20 residents like Toya Hampton-Green into office over the objections of residents of downtown, it's deja vu all over again. What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine.

Members Show Colors on Charter Schools

Where was Ann Oplinger Monday night? Somewhere so far into the galaxy that she couldn't even reach a telephone to vote? Maybe the color of her flag was yellow.

So it would appear from the 4- 4 tie vote from the Charleston County School Board on the granting of charter status to Drayton Hall Elementary School at Monday night's meeting. Having failed to get a majority, the Board will meet again on December 1. [See School's Request to Convert to Charter Denied]

Will Oplinger attend? Will she be able to use a telephone?

Following CCSD Superintendent Nancy McGinley's lead to vote against charter status were staunch charter school supporters (not!) Toya Hampton-Green and Ruth Jordan and newly-elected members Chris Collins and Chris Fraser. Golly, what a surprise.

CCSD's McGinley: Surfing as Metaphor

That cream puff I had for breakfast today was so sweet that it nearly made me sick. [See Q&A with Charleston County Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley.] By itself it would have been fairly sweet, but then I just had to have a second helping! [See McGinley Lets Waves Carry Stress Away.] Maybe I should save the P & C for dessert after dinner.

When you think about it, however, perhaps surfing is a fitting metaphor for McGinley's leadership in CCSD during her first (and maybe last) year as superintendent. She's here for the ride. Her "leadership" takes the form of scouting CCSD to see which wave is the strongest (that would be the five-person tag team of Meyers to Douglas to Jordan to Hampton-Green to--usually--Moody), then applying the latest appropriate educational jargon (and sometimes Broad Foundation solutions) to whatever issue is at hand. There's no doubt she means it when she says that she wants to make CCSD an excellent district; that's her career on the line as well.

Under the waves, it seems, a possible rip current is brewing. What happens if, for example, voters replace Douglas with Kandrac and Hampton-Green with Stewart? Of course, that's why she negotiated a three-year contract. Election day will tell, but if McGinley's supporters are elected, prepare yourself for the closure of more than one elementary school in District 20 and continued prevarication over Buist.

P & C Takes Sides in CCSD Dispute

Splashed all over the front of the P & C Friday morning was one of the most important stories to come out of CCSD this year! At least it must have been to receive the place of honor above the fold. So, was this startling information about the school district banner news about its achievements or even its failures?

Of course not. It was about a spat among CCSD school board members facilitated by employees of 75 Calhoun. [See Threats to McGinley's Job Alleged ].

Lost in the explosion about "he said--she said" was the reason for the anger. Found in the detritus was a stick to beat members of the school board (mainly Arthur Ravenel, Jr.) who don't take directives from Gregg Meyers et al. Seizing the chance to overreact in an election year, Douglas and his toadies made noises about changing the policies of the Board so that language might be a cause for public censure: "A board member who violates the code could face public discipline."

Spare us the sanctimonious simpers. No one excuses foul language, not even Arthur Ravenel, Jr., as it seems from his later TV interview today, and his explosion of temper was truly uncalled for, for the person who took the agreement with the Charter School for Math and Science to use the Rivers building off the Board's agenda was not present. In fact, no one has said who took it off, so we must read the tea leaves. Judging from remarks regarding the Superintendent, it must have been McGinley.

Needless to say, the P &C ignored the issue, hoping not to pick at the scab that has formed over the ongoing dispute between organizers of CSMS and the school board, which is seething quietly over its inability to stop CSMS's fulfillment. That continues to be the real story.

Oh, and one other observation. Courrege apparently parrots whatever Meyers et al say to her. How else to explain the statement that, "Cook and Toler frequently vote with Ravenel on controversial issues"? That statement was, of course, made to cast doubt on their neutrality in the dispute. Instead, it reveals the reporter's ignorance about the relationship between Cook and Ravenel.

May we get on to the topic at hand--when IS the CCSD board going to grapple with the CSMS agreement? When hell freezes over?

Harlem Charter School Success?

Let's face it. This is Ruth Jordan's worst nightmare:
Charter School Frenzy in Harlem

Charter School for Math & Science: Elite?

Let's go to the dictionary for this one.

Elite: the choice part; the best of a class ; the socially superior part of society; a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence; a member of such an elite —usually used in plural (Merriam-Webster On-Line).

With CCSD School Board Trustee Ruth Jordan's recent words about the "wealthy elite" desiring a charter school downtown, we need to look at the present demographics of the group of about 170 students enrolling so far. [A previous post has the black-white breakdown]:

• 78% from Charleston County Public Schools
• 19% from private schools
• 3% from home schools
  

Also

• 22% of private school students are African American
• 60% of home school students are African American
  

And

• 34% are eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch

Well, Ruth?

CCSD Nay-Sayers: Keep Segregation Downtown!

No surprises. The vote Monday night at the CCSD Board of Trustees meeting on charging rent to the new Charter School for Math and Science was 6 to 3 in favor of no rent. [See Charter School Vote Breaks Racially] Those voting "no" had already voiced their reasons at previous meetings; they had no new arguments, not even ones challenging Attorney-General McMaster's ruling that rent couldn't be charged.

Chutzpah? Gall? Nerve? Arrogance? Effrontery?

We could exhaust the thesaurus trying to grasp the attitude of Toya Hampton-Green, Ruth Jordan, and Hillery Douglas. The organizers of CSMS have shown considerable forbearance in not responding to the racist attacks hurled their way by these three, who purport to be defending the schoolchildren in District 20.

Ruth Jordan actually "said that [the] vote would show the district has a long way to go to ensuring fairness and equity in education," accusing the organizers of being a wealthy elite who no longer wish to pay private school tuition. What she refuses to acknowledge, thanks to her racist agenda, is that this school is the best step towards "fairness and equity in education" downtown in decades.

Here we have a school in District 20 (not Buist!) that will actually be integrated, and purposely so! Present sign-ups for the school show a population that is 46 % white and 42 % black. That must be what nettles Jordan so much.

Maybe we should call in civil rights leaders to protest the horrible injustice of CCSD's supporting a non-segregated charter school? After all, what other charter schools in CCSD claim a balanced population?

CCSD Superintendent: Now the Buck Stops with Her

Listen! Are those wings? Maybe a cackle or two? I know! The chickens just came home to roost! Superintendent McGinley now has the power to replace principals without consulting constituent boards; that means she also has full responsibility for what happens. And she's ready to roll.

In today's P & C McGinley hints of changes coming in administrative positions due to schools' failing performances on the state's report cards. Although the article points out that 25 schools are now rated "unsatisfactory," as usual the number is not put into context. That would be (roughly) a third of the county's schools.

Never mind that "more than half of the county's schools" have had their principals in place for less than three years, let's shuffle them again! That must mean those who have been in place for three years or more at unsatisfactory schools get to move, since McGinley promises a three-to-five-year window to prove effective leadership.

The dirty little secret is that the district has been preparing for this round of musical chairs. Schools such as Burke and North Charleston High that have been rated failing for six years MUST be restructured. No one expected a miracle to occur this year, and it didn't. The choices left to CCSD under NCLB are:

• replace all administrative professionals or
• bring in an outside agency to run the schools or
• make them into charter schools [yeah, likely] or
• have the state take over the schools [ditto].

Whatever changes McGinley makes, she will be held responsible now for the results. Well, that's assuming that three-to-five years down the road McGinley is still Superintendent.

Jordan's quoted comments pose an interesting dilemma for McGinley: she wants the Superintendent "to put those highly successful teachers [and principals] with students who need it the most," namely, those students in unsatisfactory schools where teacher turnover is high.

McGinley's got the power; does she have the guts?

CCSD School Board: Sweetness and Light?

"Sweetness and light": the state of CCSD's Board of Trustees one year after its acrimonious election, as reported by Diette Courrege in Sunday's Post and Courier.

Board members interviewed use the occasion to bash Sandi Engelman once again, suggesting all is "sweetness and light" now that she is gone from the Board. According to members such as Douglas and Meyers, even Arthur Ravenel, Jr's dissentions scarcely sour the mix because he always behaves as a Southern gentleman should. In fact, his politicking for taking powers away from the constituent boards proves how well the Board gets along. Of course, there's the little matter of the Charter School for Math and Science, but Meyers thinks he's quashed that through other means.

Why, if only those nasty critics Sandi Engelman and, perhaps, Lurleen Fishburne, had left the Board earlier, CCSD's schools would be right on track to excellence! The Board was being held back by its critics, of course! Now that Green and Jordan are in there supporting every thought and facial expression of Meyers and Douglas, the Board can make progress. In fact, critics of CCSD can be blamed for ALL of its problems, even those in District 20. If they would just stop being so negative, or at least keep their opinions to themselves, CCSD could make real progress.

Yeah, right.

What the Board needs now is not "love, sweet love," as the song goes, but elements much more challenging (or, at least, specific)--those well-formulated by Matthew Arnold: that is, "sweetness and light." "'Sweetness' is moral righteousness, and 'light' is intellectual power and truth."[The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Ed. © 2002 Houghton Mifflin]. Arnold believed that civilization could progress if individuals and nations base their actions on that dichotomy.

"Moral righteousness" and "intellectual power and truth"? What percentage of the Board's actions or, for that matter, those of CCSD's bureaucracy, falls into even one of those categories?

Instead we have self-interest, fiefdoms, and ignorance. Or, as Arnold said, we're here "on a darkling plain."