Mentor Eli Broad Reveals McGinley's Goals for CCSD

Let's not recruit another graduate of the Broad Institute!

Charleston County's last two superintendents have been graduates of that organization founded by Eli Broad with the purpose of improving urban school districts. However, Broad recently revealed his true feelings about urban schools.

According to Diane Ravitch,

The truth comes out. Broad has low regard for public education. He thinks it works best when technocratic managers make data-driven decisions, close struggling schools, and open privately managed charter schools. He likes mayoral control, not democratic engagement. He funded a campaign to block a tax increase to support public schools in California. He thinks poverty can be overcome by good management .

Gee, that sounds familiar!

Zucker Skewers ex-Supt. McGinley's "Excellent" Stats

Anita Zucker is no fool, and today's op-ed proves it.

Zucker is fully aware (unlike McGinley hangers-on) that, under the administration of Charleston County's ex-superintendent of schools, the haves prospered and the have-nots suffered. Not content to pat McGinley on the back for her gerrymandered excellent rating, Zucker analyzed the data.

So in CCSD 42 percent of low-income students read below grade level in the eighth grade.

So in CCSD 45 percent of black students read below grade level in the eighth grade.

These are horrendous numbers. Reading on the eighth-grade level is not rocket science.

Exactly what did the NAACP get for its undying support of McGinley? Headlines, perhaps, but no educational improvement for the black community.

Zucker even mentions considering the curriculum used at Buist Academy (International Baccalaureate) and Charleston Development Academy (Core Knowledge) as worthy of consideration for preventing this tragedy in the future.

Meanwhile, McGinley has rolled out her consulting services, no doubt hoping to grab some of those edublob dollars she was so adept at spending previously. Well, every district in the southeast would love to have these numbers, right?

C.C. Blaney: Magnet Status to Lure White Students to CCSD

It's a shame. If the Charleston County School District really wanted diverse elementary schools (read, "integrated"), it would reinstitute tracking!

I know, I know. Tracking has been the third rail of educational philosophy for the last couple of decades. Instead, CCSD is laboriously trying to deal with the problem of white flight by creating magnet schools. Students will end up tracked by school instead of by class.

C.C. Blaney is the case in point. In the early 1990s the school had nearly 400 students enrolled. By the spring of 2014, it had fewer than 200 students and was rated Below Average, with 94 percent of its students on free or reduced lunch. This year the building sat vacant as its students were divided between two other schools; ex-Superintendent McGinley was only too happy to remove it from her stats on failing schools.

Blaney will end up with the same "diversity" problem as Academic Magnet under the present circumstances. CCSD must up its game with the many defacto segregated black schools in the district. Until it does so, no true magnet school will be as diverse as Charleston County citizens would hope.

Will Diversity Ever Come to Burke High School?

Amid all the concerns in the Charleston County School District, ex-Superintendent McGinley decided to move "diversity" closer to the top of the list. Hence, the hiring of a "diversity expert." Evidently, diversity is the new buzz-word for quasi-quota systems (nod to the Oscar furor). 

Diversity spokesmen are now making the case that the admissions process of the Academic Magnet High School prevents diversity. The presumption is that in order to function in a multi-cultural society, students at AMHS must attend classes with a larger percentage of black students.

What about the students at Burke High/Middle? Shouldn't someone be concerned that, in order to function in a multi-cultural society, its students must attend classes with a larger percentage of white students? McGinley threw several half-hearted bandaids at the problem of 99% black enrollment at the school, but she (and the school board) was never really serious. 

Many in the community wish to continue Burke's tradition as a black high school. What would Martin Luther King, Jr., say about that goal?

Take Her Back, Please, Pennsylvania!

Please make ex-Superintendent Nancy McGinley the next Pennsylvania Secretary of Education! She has all the necessary political skills (never mind that our local rag thinks she's not a politician). We would be so happy to not have her eminence grise hanging over our lovely Lowcountry.

Don't let on to Governor-elect Wolf what happened in Seattle to the last superintendent who was hired away from Charleston County School District.

Diversity or Divisiveness in CCSD's Future?

According to some die-hard McGinley supporters in the school district, we need to pay a diversity expert from Ohio what the average family in Charleston County makes in a year--$50,000--to make sure we are diverse.

Trouble is, Kevin Clayton hasn't a clue how "diversity" should be handled in the district. If you don't believe me, all you need do is review what happened when the Academic Magnet football team started smashing watermelons instead of footballs. We need more murky messes like that around here. 

Actually, firing James Winbush along with dropping Clayton's contract would go a long way with quelling animosity in the district, if that's what the Charleston County School Board has in mind.

Let's not throw good money after bad, folks!

Gushing Editorial on Charter Schools Ignores McGinley's Biased Role

Ask anyone about former superintendent Nancy McGinley's support for charter schools, and you should get a tirade. Though the community wholeheartedly supported the Charter School for Math and Science, Superintendent McGinley and her NAACP lackeys were determined to crush it from the beginning. 

Today's editorial welcoming the Allegro School on the peninsula makes the point in the most mealy-mouthed way possible: "Charter schools weren't initially welcome in Charleston County. Educators in traditional schools saw them as a threat to their funding and attendance." Educators? Read "Saint McGinley."

Despite McGinley's doing everything in her power to stomp on it, CSMS enjoys the success predicted when it began as a grass-roots effort. No worries about diversity there. How about the rest of the district?

P & C Ignores Inequities of EdFirstSC Salary Expose

Teachers get less money under the new salary system; educrats get more. P & C, cheerleader for "Bring McGinley Back," chooses to ignore reality that CCSD did not follow recommendations of its expensive salary study.

See the following:

Losing Ground

CCSD's Magnet Parents Sue Over Defamation--Perpetrated by McGinley & Co

The daily dribble of McGinley apologists finds space on the editorial page of the paper almost every day. You would think that the former superintendent of Charleston County Schools walks on water. Even though her upcoming evaluation from the School Board would have shown just how poorly the district was meeting her goals, the paper (not the public at large) continues to whitewash Nancy McGinley's failures.

One such failure highlights the former superintendent's total lack of understanding of race relations in the district, that of the watermelon. Even that last sentence seems ridiculous. However, the students hurt by the racist behavior of CCSD's employees don't find it so funny. Some of them are suing.

Of course, anyone can sue over just about anything if he or she can pay a lawyer. However, this lawsuit may have some teeth:

The parents of three Academic Magnet High School football players have filed a defamation lawsuit claiming characterizations of the team's controversial postgame watermelon ritual damaged their sons' reputations.. . .  

"The students' lawsuit is the result of the students being falsely branded as racists by the defendants," said attorney John Parker, of Hampton County, representing the parents of the three football players.
. . .
At the heart of the lawsuit is the school district's investigation last month into the Academic Magnet High School football team's postgame victory ritual of chanting and smashing watermelons with caricature faces drawn on them. . . . 

The lawsuit lays out a series of events beginning on Oct. 16 when Clayton, a diversity consultant for the school district, and Associate Superintendent Lou Martin, who is not named as a defendant, questioned the members of the football team about the watermelon ritual. 

"Even though they found no evidence of any racial reason for the team's watermelon celebration after a win, and even though all concerned told them there was no racial reason for the celebrations, they falsely published to others that the football team made animal sounds and drew a monkey face on the watermelon during these celebrations," the lawsuit said.

Following the interview of the team, Martin, according to the lawsuit, described the team's watermelon ritual as one where it would "draw a monkey face on a watermelon and after a victory, would smash the fruit and make animal noises." McGinley, according to the lawsuit, later described the team as making noises that sounded like "ooh, ooh, ooh," which she further characterized as "monkey sounds."

Those characterizations, according to the lawsuit, falsely accused the team of drawing monkey faces and making monkey sounds, "which if true would have been racially derogatory actions intended to equate black members of opposing football teams with monkeys." . . . 

Martin's and McGinley's descriptions of the team's ritual, according to the lawsuit, were then published to others and to print and television media, which led to the football team being "falsely depicted" as racists. 

P & C Continues Campaign to Cow Charleston County School Board

Just in case you mistakenly believe that the local paper routinely prints a representative sample of opinion from its readers, please be warned.

Thursday's editorial page does not represent a sample of what Charleston County taxpayers believe. The two letters concerning the Charleston County School District, one telling us how great Nancy McGinley was as superintendent and another supporting Bill Lewis's authoritarian solution to those democratically-elected board members he perceives deficient in understanding, are merely the latest salvos from the Chamber of Commerce.

Hey, editors, what qualifies the Chamber of Commerce to control Charleston County's schools?

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.

Sensitivity Training Overdue in Charleston County School District

Former board member Larry Kobrovsky certainly nailed the problem in the Charleston County School District with his letter to the editor published in Thursday's edition. 

Brian Hicks is a gifted writer and often provides valuable commentary on issues of interest. He also has an obsession with Elizabeth Kandrac. 

Mr. Hicks is entitled to his opinion on Ms. Kandrac, but it's quite a stretch to blame Kandrac for the recent turn of events surrounding the fate of Dr. Nancy McGinley.

Ms. Kandrac has not been on the board for over two years and did not participate in any way, shape or form in the public debate over the treatment of the coach or football team.
Now that Mr. Hicks has brought Kandrac's name into this, I would like to suggest a much more compelling connection.

A federal jury found and a federal judge upheld the verdict that a public school in Charleston County was a racially hostile place to work.

The testimony in federal court was that Ms. Kandrac was subjected to vile and vulgar racial slurs and obscenities on a daily basis. Two 14-year-old students also testified that they went to school every day terrified solely on the basis of their race.

The defense of the district was that the offensive behavior was the culture of the students and that there was nothing they could do about it.

To this day the district has not spent one minute talking to or apologizing to the students who had to attend school while suffering racial slurs on a daily basis.

Nor has a single adult employee of the district been forced to undergo a minute of "sensitivity training" for allowing this to happen. 

Rather than blame Elizabeth Kandrac for the school board's recent action regarding Dr. McGinley, maybe Mr. Hicks could reflect on how the administration failed to show any compassion or concern for the two young men who testified that they went to school every day bullied and harassed solely because of the color of their skin. 

Larry Kobrovsky
Meeting Street
Charleston

Should Charleston County Ban Watermelon from Its Schools?

Surprise, surprise! The members of the Academic Magnet football team, as I pointed out previously, had no idea that their boisterous celebrations could be considered racist. That was the official finding of the school district. Could it be that these teenagers had been growing up in a non-racist atmosphere where no one pointed out stereotypes to them?

Gee, thank goodness the Charleston County School District exists to enforce learning of racist stereotypes. None of these players will ever look at a watermelon again without thinking of racist stereotypes.

Is that progress or regression?

Fed Up with CCSD Shenanigans? Vote These Three for School Board!

 Funny thing! These candidates have been ignored by the newspaper's lackeys sobbing over the demise of Nancy McGinley as Charleston schools superintendent.


Sarah Shad Johnson, 44

Occupation: Educational Advocate, Charleston Area Community Voice for Education

Goals: Give our higher-performing schools more autonomy, and help our lower-performing and rural schools become self-sufficient by recruiting strong leaders and providing additional resources; Bring the voice of parents and teachers to the decision-making table, so the actual needs of the classroom can be addressed.

Kelvin D. Curtis, 31

Occupation: City of Charleston Recreation Supervisor

Goals: Build a professional working relationship with the board members; Improve the communication deliverance between the District to our team-members, parents, students and our community; Demonstrate to our principals and teachers that we truly care by asking them, want I can do for you?

Edward C. Fennell, 64

Occupation: retired Post and Courier reporter

Goals: Reading improvements. I have always believed schools can be better at teaching reading. Reading is absolutely fundamental to education -- and without an ability to read, can not advance to other subjects. Also, it's important to equip our urban schools with the same advanced technology and vocational opportunities the suburban schools are getting.



The P&C's recommended crew will provide more of the same!

Hicks Plays the Race Card for McGinley's Departure

According to our daily newspaper and its spokesman, Brian Hicks, former CCSD Superintendent Nancy McGinley was perfect! How could that awful (elected) school board "let" her go?

It's a syllogism:

Premise 1: Nancy McGinley is the perfect superintendent.

Premise 2: The CCSD school board was very unhappy with Nancy McGinley as superintendent.

Conclusion: The school board must be racist.

Well, that makes sense.

Worst Editorial Ever Laments CCSD's Loss of McGinley

Rambling. Lacks focus. Irrational. Misleading.

Friday's lead editorial over the resignation of Superintendent Nancy McGinley reads as though the writer was in the grip of hysterics or the bottle. Get a grip! McGinley's exit was not about watermelons. Her high-handed tactics in attempting to cow the duly-elected school board into submission finally played out.

Some of our most high-profile politicians have been drinking the Kool-Aid. Dot Scott's lament that McGinley couldn't control the board puts their sobbing in perspective: by law, the school board controls the superintendent, not vice versa.

No wonder we have such problems in the district. Let's take a deep breath and demand a true audit before handing $500 million over to what's left of her administration.

Hicks on McGinley: Laugh of the Day

The paper has gone whole hog to protect Superintendent McGinley's position in the Charleston County School District. Mayor Riley is beating down the doors of individual school board members in an attempt to save his protege. The editorial page laments the potential loss of a great superintendent, and the news articles point out how costly her buyout would be.

Nevertheless, Brian Hicks takes the prize for the most outrageous sentence in his impassioned defensive column.

To wit, "McGinley has never been a politician."

CCSD's McGinley Teaches Watermelon Stereotype to AMHS Teens

Most of them were born between 1996 and 1998, long after the association of watermelons with African-Americans was banned from public discourse, so it should come as no surprise that the Academic Magnet football team, including its black player, would not have associated smashing a watermelon while making the usual football grunts and raves with being racist.

Trouble is, the Charleston County School District's superintendent was determined to teach them a lesson anyway.

And she did.

So now what the boys saw as a harmless marker of their victories has become a racist incident causing the loss of their football coach. The coach was held responsible even though not present.

Political correctness run amuck.

The super had better watch out. She can mess around with academics all she wants, but when she starts messing with football that spells trouble.

Reading at Fourth-Grade Level? CCSD Welcomes You to High School

If you set the goal low enough, almost everyone can achieve it.

However, the Charleston County School District struggles to meet its own criterion that all incoming ninth graders will read at the fourth grade level. Despite focusing on literacy for the past few years, nearly 13 percent of the district's students read at or below the fourth-grade level. That would be bad enough if those students were spread evenly among CCSD's high schools. An additional problem is that they are clustered, often up to 40 percent of an entering class, in CCSD's lowest-performing schools. a

Below is an example of a fourth-grade reading worksheet. Remember that this is the goal for these students.

http://www.k5learning.com/sites/all/files/reading-comprehension-worksheet-grade-4-Washington.pdf

We don't know what percentage reads below the fourth-grade level. Here is third-grade level. Can you imagine this student reading a high school textbook?

http://www.k5learning.com/sites/all/files/reading-comprehension-worksheet-grade-3-rover.pdf

It's way past time to get serious about reading. If students reading on this low a level pass their freshman classes, what does that suggest about the difficulty of what they are learning? What percentage of these students will actually graduate?

Time to fish or cut bait. Either put all students reading at fourth-grade level or below in the same classes in the same school and keep them there until each reads at least on the sixth-grade level or distribute them evenly over the district's high schools so that students reading at grade level or above need not face a class with a majority of poor readers.

Who's in Charge: CCSD Superintendent or School Board?

Amazingly, the Charleston County School Board has done something not first pushed by Superintendent McGinley: moved Lowcountry Tech from the Rivers building and voted to allow the Charleston School for Math and Science the use of the building instead of multiple trailers. It's a nightmare!

Well, it's a nightmare for McGinley. What this sensible vote suggests is that her long domination of the Board that is legally her boss may be ending. When did the Board last go against her wishes? Not in my memory.

McGinley is beholden to special interest groups who have no real interest in the education of Charleston County's students. They have a political agenda instead. That political agenda does not allow for a fully-integrated school on the peninsula that they do not control through the superintendent.

It would be nice to say that this disagreement with the elected school board is the handwriting on the wall, but don't hold your breath waiting for McGinley to resign, even if she's reduced to stating idiotically that Burke doesn't have room for the tech programs.

So now CSMS must wait for passage of the not-a-penny sales tax extension?

Please.