McGinley's Downtown Plans: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

Do you ever wonder if the superintendent of the Charleston County School District hopes to close all downtown schools and sell off the properties to outside investors? I do.

No rational person could believe her attempts (largely successful, thanks to a fawning school board) to move students around the peninsula like so many pawns in a game are for the purpose of improving their education. Burke Middle School is a case in point: have the students who were moved there from Rivers Middle under that aegis actually excelled? No. Quite the contrary.

To much fanfare, the Sanders-Clyde elementary school was rebuilt to serve as a neighborhood school for the surrounding east side community, largely made up of low-income housing. Students could walk to school; their parents, many of whom have no access to cars, could easily come for events and conferences.

Now, in order to increase her stats by closing failing schools, McGinley wants to take the building from them and refurbish it as a middle school. Those students would be loaded on buses and parceled out to the remaining elementary schools in the peninsula. The superintendent probably figures that their parents don't have enough pull or saavy to prevent losing their neighborhood school.

Let's face it: McGinley never met a neighborhood school she liked. She also has no interest in luring back to the peninsula schools those white students who live there but go to school elsewhere. For whatever reason she wants to keep downtown schools de facto segregated.

The Neighborhood Planning Team, even though stacked with McGinley supporters, has its own ideas that she should listen to. As Arthur Lawrence says, "What's the rush?" Why shouldn't we make sure this time around that these upheavals will do some good?

However, what sounds sensible to you and me does not to Superintendent McGinley, a situation that reveals her agenda to be more about self-aggrandizement than better education for students.

Darby Creates "Straw Man" to Argue for Rivers

• In his (dare we say it?) bi-monthly column Thursday masquerading as an op-ed piece for the P&C, vice-president of the Charleston Area NAACP, Joseph Darby, uses demeaning language against Charleston County School Board members Moffly and Taylor. He also insinuates that those two Board members are racist for raising the possibility of putting Lowcountry Tech (that phantom school) at the Burke campus.


• Darby, a non-native of Charleston, non-graduate of its schools, and non-resident of its peninsula, lectures Moffly and Taylor on Burke's history as a "place for minimal vocational training" and "'a place to supply cooks, maids and delivery boys,'" information that he has gleaned from reading about CCSD's history.


• Carrying his arguments to their logical conclusion, putting Lowcountry Tech at Burke would be a racist action. Strange, isn't it? A program providing access to future high-tech jobs he rates in the same category as training cooks, maids, and delivery boys?


• Darby's prism seeks out white racism at every turn, action, and word. There are no exceptions. The reality is that Darby himself is racist. Such an attitude should disqualify him from his post with the NAACP and ought to give those pause who view him as a Christian pastor.

Education Deficit Is Not a Learning Disability

It reads well. Has great human interest and good details. What I'm referring to is the first in a promised series of articles on functional illiteracy in Charleston County. [See Failing Our Students in Sunday's P & C.] This one addresses the plight of one student who attended Mitchell Elementary, Rivers Middle, Burke Middle, and Burke High School before dropping out. Because the article shows CCSD in such a poor light, Superintendent McGinley received an advance copy, one supposes, so that she could prepare her response [District Enhances Reading Instruction by Acting Early] for the same issue, a privilege apparently reserved for special friends of the paper's editors.

The truth is that readers never would have heard Ridge Smith's name (the student followed in the story) without the efforts of Pam Kusmider, recently chairman of the District 20 Constituent Board, not because she voted against the majority sending him on long-term suspension but because she cared enough to discover the poor reading skills that had affected his behavior. Kusmider should be lauded for her efforts to help Smith overcome his problems, but, judging from the battle she went through to do so, CCSD and McGinley probably wish they'd never heard her name.

We can all bemoan the lack of a father present in Smith's home, his grandmother's death, his mother's inability to focus on what happened to him as he moved from grade to grade. These are factors that made him a student at risk. They are also factors that no school system can remedy.

McGinley points out that's she's been Superintendent only for two years. True, and she was Chief Academic Officer for three years prior to that, during the time period when "Ridge left Mitchell Elementary School for Rivers Middle School as a seventh-grader in the fall of 2004. [. . .] He saw fights every day, and classmates brought guns to school." Wouldn't it be interesting to research McGinley's public comments regarding Rivers Middle at the time?

In her capacity as Chief Academic Officer, McGinley must have been involved in 2005 when "school officials recommended that he repeat seventh grade. His seventh-grade report card shows him being held back, and the school principal sent his mother a letter that said he would be held back.But Ridge was promoted to the eighth grade." Huh? Who made that decision?

When CCSD "moved Rivers Middle School students to the Burke High School campus in the fall of 2005, Ridge was part of the eighth-grade class involved in the change." And we all know how that one turned out--promises about A-Plus that were never fulfilled and the chaos that reigned--under McGinley's watch as Chief Academic Officer.

Ridge Smith does not have a "learning disability," although that's what officials must label his problem in order to get him assistance. To most of us, learning disability suggests that some innate defect in the student is the problem. This one is not innate. He has an education deficit. If you read between the lines of Courrege's article, it seems that at the end of fourth grade, thanks to caring and dedicated teachers, Smith had indeed made major strides towards remediation of his initial difficulties. As his fourth-grade teacher recalled, "

"More than halfway through Ridge's fourth-grade year, his reading skills ranked at an early third-grade level and his comprehension skills ranked at a late third-grade level. He could identify nouns but had trouble with verbs, adjectives, verb tense and subject-verb agreement. Wingard remembers Ridge reading fluently but struggling with comprehension.He thought Ridge's academic goals were attainable. Ridge always did what Wingard expected of him, and Wingard thought Ridge had a good, successful year. Ridge was administratively promoted to fifth grade."

What happened? Fourth grade is the point where, if reading skills have been mastered, knowledge of content begins to play a larger and larger role in comprehension. What we do know is that "He had academic plans [IEP's, as they are called] in fifth and sixth grades. Ridge was promoted to seventh grade." If the article is to be believed, Smith's reading progress stopped in the fourth grade. That lack of progress cannot be laid at the door of his grandmother's death. The buck stops with Mitchell's fifth and sixth-grade teachers, whom I suspect were inundated with students also reading at the third-grade level. How else to explain his eighth-grade science teacher's comments:

"He appeared self-conscious and uncertain as he read aloud in class, and he didn't understand what he read. Still, he didn't stand out from the class. Most of her students read on the same level as Ridge."

For sure, Burke Middle School was not an environment conducive to Smith's educational advancement. Ridge Smith is not alone in his failures and in the failure of CCSD to provide an environment that encouraged his advancement. I can well understand why his mother, a drop-out herself, assumed that "if he couldn't read, the school system would not have passed him from grade to grade." She trusted those more educated than she to do what was right.

Getting a GED is no walk in the park. Ask any student who has dropped out and attempted to get one. One hopes that Smith is motivated to do so for the sake of his son.

That brings up another point, one that the article glosses over. Smith is not married to the mother of his child. Why not? How old is she? Is she still in school? Will this sad story turn out to repeat itself with a single mother scrubbing floors and an absent father?

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.

More Nonsense from the NAACP and CCSD

Monday's CCSD Board meeting was a classic--a classic satire on school board meetings.

• Nelson Rivers III, field director and Burke High School graduate, showed up to prove that he doesn't know what's happening in District 20 these days.
  
• Academic Magnet parents showed up to protest the potential deflation of the Magnet's effectiveness when combined with the School of the Arts.
  
• Toya Green's absence (is there some reason she couldn't have voted by phone also?) guaranteed that the proposed budget for next year would not be passed.
  
• The Board refused to renew the charter for James Island High School.
  
• Hillery Douglas pretended he didn't know that, as chairman, he needed to sign the Board's approval (from its April meeting) for CSMS to use the Rivers campus.

Meanwhile, the ground is being prepared for the construction of the combined Academic Magnet and School of the Arts off Enterprise Avenue in North Charleston, now that the Special Day School has been completed. Has the public ever seen the final plans on that building? Has anyone? Has any traffic study been done? Where will the entrance to this "gi-normous" school be, off Enterprise or Montague? What is this, a state secret?

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.