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.

Finally: Sensible Plan from CCSD Board

Charleston County School Board approves controversial plan to move tech program
by Amanda Kerr

"Despite urging from black community leaders to keep Lowcountry Tech Academy at its location in downtown Charleston, the School Board voted Monday to move the program to three other high schools and allow a charter school to take over the space.

"The Charleston County School Board voted 5-4 to approve a plan to move Lowcountry Tech Academy to West Ashley and Burke high schools as well as a third location in North Charleston. School Board members Cindy Bohn Coats, Todd Garrett, Tom Ducker, Elizabeth Moffly and Tripp Wiles voted for the expansion, while Rev. Chris Collins, Craig Ascue, Michael Miller and Chris Fraser voted against it. The board modified the plan to have flexibility in choosing which school the tech program moves to in North Charleston over concerns over space limitations at North Charleston High School.

For the rest, see

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20140922/PC16/140929782/1006/tech-academy-to-move-despite-outcry

The NAACP is not happy. Perhaps it's losing control of the school board.

CCSD Has Only One Sensible Option for Rivers Building

Edward Jones tells it like it is in Monday's paper/

Wise Rivers plan
The proposal to expand Lowcountry Tech into multiple high schools and move Charleston Charter School for Math and Science (CCSMS) middle schoolers into the Rivers school building has the unanimous support of the District 20 Constituent Board.

When the Charleston County School District pushed to close and sell the Rivers campus, the movement to save the building was led by CCSMS. In 2008, this board voted unanimously to place CCSMS in the building. There was then, and remains today, a need for more middle and high school courses in math and science, which are prerequisites for entry into our best state colleges and universities.

The middle school has a waiting list of 226. Enabling it to move out of trailers into the school building will create approximately 60 additional seats. CCSMS is one of the few fully integrated downtown schools, with 50 percent minority students.

After the tragedy of Sandy Hook, and after years of enormous investment in our school buildings to make them safe and secure, we cannot deny that leaving 260 students in trailers is to put them in harm's way. The safety of our children must prevail over politics. There can be no justification for dividing this building between CCSMS and Lowcountry Tech, leaving 260 students outside where we cannot protect them.

A logical next step is to involve the principals of Burke, West Ashley and North Charleston high schools in the logistics of accommodating Lowcountry Tech on their campuses. Burke has a full wing not in use. A proper plan should place the needs of students above all else and strengthen our middle and high schools.

EDWARD JONES
Chairman, District 20
Constituent School Board
President Street
Charleston

CCSD Should Pay Attention to More Than Squeaky Wheel of NAACP

Would you believe that the Rev. Joseph Darby surmises that the Charleston County School District's Charter School for Math and Science will be entirely white by 2025?

Really, CSMS has been an embarrassment to the district from its beginnings by a group of diverse parents, to its fight with CCSD administration for trailer space at the old Rivers campus, to its present status of the MOST INTEGRATED SCHOOL IN THE ENTIRE SCHOOL DISTRICT.

Shame on Darby. His ritualistic op-ed columns provide the equivalent of "waving the bloody shirt" of earlier times.

Here's the skinny: Charleston County Schools administration (i.e., Nancy McGinley) made a foolish promise to the NAACP and Ministerial Alliance in order to get their undying support. The aforementioned have no problems with having all-black schools in the district. For a group of grass roots parents to create a well-integrated school on the peninsula without their blessing added insult to injury.

Lowcountry Tech at the Rivers building has never made any sense given that Burke is half-empty and many Burke alumni and parents want the tech classes there. It has never made any sense to bus in students from around the county when their participation precludes participation in sports and other activities or adds two hours to the school day.

The sole purpose of LTA at Rivers at this point is to preclude CSMS from using the rest of the building and to keep the NAACP's support of McGinley.

It's not about the children.

CCSD's McGinley Tone Deaf on Burke's Heritage

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charter High for Math & Science Occupies Rivers

Finally finished is the Charleston County School District's renovation of the 1938 Rivers High School building. The high school classes of the Charter High for Math & Science have vacated their mobile classrooms without regret. Its 260 middle school students await a brighter day when they too will roam free of trailers.

Meanwhile, CCSD plans to begin its much-touted Lowcountry Tech Academy later this month on the other side of locked doors. Students will be bused in, presumably for part of the day, into three low-tech courses that could be offered in any recently remodeled classroom: networking, keyboarding/computer applications, and graphic communications.

While promising more technologically-advanced classes, CCSD has labored and spent elephantine amounts of tax dollors to bring forth a mouse.

Let's see. Leaving 260 students in trailers and busing 160 in to take courses they could get elsewhere.

Yes. Superintendent McGinley's independent thinkers must still be in charge.

CCSD Caught Violating Open Meetings Law

And not by the P&C, which habitually ignores such FOIA trespasses, except when its own ox is gored.

The whistle-blower is the SC Press Association, which correctly points out that public was not notified of the tour of the Rivers building where a quorum of the Charleston County Board of Trustees showed up.

The wrong-headed decision of the Board will go forward now that the renovations have been finished.

Lowcountry Tech will share the Rivers campus with the Charter School for Math and Science (CSMS).

CSMS will remain in mobile classrooms ad infinitum.

The NAACP and Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, both intentionally de facto segregated , will continue to complain that CSMS is 50 percent white. They also assume, and are determined to enforce, that Lowcountry Tech be 100 percent black.

Burke Middle High School will continue to be half empty and 100 percent black.

One bad decision after another. Decisions have consequences. Charleston County students must live with them.

Rivers Campus at the Crossroads

When will the Charleston County School District finally stop kowtowing to the Chamber of Commerce and self-appointed spokespersons for the black community about the Rivers campus?

Against all common sense, Superintendent McGinley and the "Citizens United for Public Schools" (a misnomer if there ever was one!) insist on creating a phantom "tech" school at the newly-renovated Rivers campus in order to forestall the growth of the highly-successful and totally diverse Charter School for Math and Science. Low Country Tech will not even be a school in its own right but a series of classes with students bused in from other schools in the district!

In CCSD, absurdity has no limits when it comes to the disdain of the superintendent and the NAACP for the wishes of the community. In order to force CSMS to continue using mobile classrooms on the Rivers campus, the superintendent will leave Burke Middle High nearly half empty and spend money busing Burke students to Rivers.

Will the insanity never end? The Burke community wants the program at Burke. Only the superintendent's stubbornness prevents an obvious (and cheaper) solution to the need for tech programs in the district. Dot Scott and her crowd have been proven wrong about the supposed conspiracy to create an all-white charter school in District 20.  How soon we forget (and that goes for the reporter too) that Rivers space was provided to CSMS practically over the dead bodies of the above.
Never was there consensus on sharing the building, no matter what the superintendent's sycophants pushed through in 2007.

It's time to face facts in CCSD. Low Country Tech does not exist. CSMS does and is thriving and outgrowing its facilities. Why can't the district allow success to succeed?

A Tale of Spending OPM*: The Sky Is Falling

*Other people's money.

Imagine this scenario.

A business has existed in the same building, built especially for its purpose, for 80 years, a building now considered an architectural landmark. One day a visitor from San Francisco arrives and asks the owner if his building is earthquake-proof.

"Why on earth would you ask me that?" the owner replies. "No earthquake has occurred here during my lifetime, my father's lifetime, or even my grandfather's lifetime. In fact, only one earthquake has ever occurred in this area, and that was more than 100 years ago. Scientists think there might be another some day, but they have no evidence that any earthquake ever occurred in the area except for that one. We're not on a fault or the edge of a plate the way San Francisco is."

"Yes," the San Franciscan replied, "but there might be an earthquake. I can make your building safer from an earthquake if you will give me $5 million dollars."

"Five million dollars!" the businessman screamed. "You must be joking!"

"It's no joke. Listen, I have a plan. We can use OPM and I can make a buck or two while providing jobs for all my friends."

One day, a few months later, neighbors watched in disbelief as the San Franciscan removed and trashed a perfectly good slate roof that had sheltered the business for 80 years and would have done so, with a bit of care, for another 100. In its place the San Franciscan's buddies put plastic tiles, guaranteed to last at least for 20.

"Wait a minute," a bemused bystander interrrupted. "How does removing those beautiful slate tiles make the building more earthquake-proof?"

"Silly," the San Franciscan replied, "if we ever have an earthquake, one of the slate tiles might fall off the roof and hit someone on the head. The synthetic tiles aren't as heavy."

The bystander gaped for a few minutes, watching the carnage, then walked away shaking his head.

"What businessman in his right mind would make a decision like that," he wondered.

"Ha!" the San Franciscan mused as he looked at the headlines. "Mine is only the second-biggest job of its kind on the entire east coast of the United States. Those people up in Maine and New York City and Washington, DC, and New Jersey need to take some advice from a San Franciscan. I wonder why they haven't."

Mayor Riley Butts in on CCSD Board's Business

• Not to put too fine a point on it, does the mayor of Charleston have any legal power within the Charleston County School District? Answer: no.


• But that doesn't mean he can't throw his weight around, especially when the long-time support of the Charleston Area NAACP is at risk. Can you say "primary"?


• Board chairman Chris Fraser has received a letter from the mayor, no doubt solicited personally by Charter School for Math & Science haters. Basically it says "Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead" with plans to place the fabled Lowcountry Tech at the Rivers campus along with CSMS.


• His letter does not address (1) what should happen to its auditorium; (2) the desire of Burke supporters to place the program at Burke; (3) the success of CSMS leading to potential permanent use of trailers; or (4) the likelihood of our seeing the fruition of the phantom program during the next decade.


• What Riley has signaled is that he personally resents the success of CSMS. Considering how long Riley has been mayor, if he has influenced past CCSD Boards (which seems likely), the mess we have now in the district belongs at his doorstep. He can't have it both ways.

Common Sense Solutions to Rivers Campus

• The auditorium at the former Rivers High School building should be saved and revitalized for the benefit of both CCSD as a whole and the surrounding community.

• As it grows, the Charter School for Math and Science, the district's most integrated school, should be allowed to fill in any available space in the Rivers building.

• CCSD should set up its promised Lowcountry Tech at Burke High School, a place desired by both Burke parents and the majority of the District 20 community. When and if the Lowcountry Tech outgrows Burke's capacity, CCSD should build an addition to the Rivers building to receive the then-successful program.

• There. Community members, not merely yours truly, thinking outside of the box. KISS method.

For That Imminent Earthquake, Why Wait Till Summer?

CCSD and its School Board don't care about the lives of students, teachers, and staff!

How else to explain leaving so many students at risk for dying in an earthquake until this summer? [See Quake Fears to Shutter Schools?]

Why, that means we have to worry about this catastrophe for another four months.

It could happen any day, any hour, any minute!

Where is the Superintendent's common sense?

This is a lawsuit waiting to happen!

And we thought Toyota was bad!

Why hasn't Bill Lewis reported her stubbornness to the proper authorities?

Parents should pull their children out of these unsound schools immediately.

Power Play in CCSD Almost Over?

Why would anyone assume that a public school should be allowed to use a public school building? As you read this, the Charleston County School District is wasting your tax dollars to prove this use illegal in Charleston County. See Ruling Soon on Charter School Act in Wednesday's P&C.

A charter school is a public school. Circuit Judge Roger Young should extend Act 189 of the State Legislature to all counties in the state.

CCSD's complaint against this use dates to the emergence of the Charter School for Math and Science, organized by a group of parents that the School Board and Superintendent did not, and do not, control. No such grief was given to Orange Grove Charter (for which Act 189 was written) or James Island Charter.

It's all about power.

By the way, why is Armand Derfner representing the District? Doesn't CCSD have a perfectly good lawyer, John Emerson, on its payroll? Derfner surely is an added expense!

CCSD Needs to Repair Neglect of Rivers Campus

I'll admit: it looks like an earthquake hit it.

Seismic "repairs," is it now? So says Gregg Meyers in Tuesday's P&C regarding the Rivers campus where the Charter School for Math and Science has set up shop in portable classrooms. [See Rivers Campus Promised Funds]

According to the story, "The charter school and a proposed district program, currently called Lowcountry Technical Academy for Health, Human and Public Services, have received the board's OK to share space in the building, but the structure needs a considerable amount of work, including seismic repairs, before students can occupy it."

Those repairs would be from the nonexistent earthquake that occurred after CCSD last emptied the building of students, well documented previously on this website.

You've got to figure that the anticipated earthquake will actually occur when pigs fly, or when the proposed Lowcountry Tech materializes, whichever comes first.

Good News for Charter School for Math and Science

Brian Hicks approves.

At least, that's the gist of his P & C column in Wednesday's paper, School Has Marks of Success. Hicks makes several points about CSMS that makes me wonder if he's been reading this blog:

• "It's hard to understand why anyone would have a problem with another good school, open to the public, on the peninsula. But ever since a group of parents had the idea for the Charleston Charter School for Math and Science, people have been taking potshots."
• "The truth is, Math and Science couldn't be more diverse: 49 percent of the students are black, 44 percent are white."
• "Principal David Colwell, who was formerly at North Charleston High, has never failed to increase diversity in his school staff."
• "The student body and, frankly, its board look like Charleston."

One quibble from me: the school needs to start using its blog to communicate the good news.

Can't Talk Straight Either

The gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight--AKA the CCSD School Board--admitted Monday night that it "forgot" to add the Rivers Middle School building to its request for estimates of repairs and seismic upgrades of older schools in the district. [Board to Assess Scope of Repairs]

Sometimes it seems as though the Board, and its henchman, Bill Lewis, think they're doing the rest of us a favor by not immediately razing every school over the age of 20, but that's another story.

The NAACP--that would be the "shoot-self-in-the foot" gang--which remained remarkably silent on the closing of five all-black schools, spoke up in advance to decry any expenditure on a building potentially useful to an integrated charter school.

Gregg Meyers can use words such as "unintentional" and "misunderstanding" all he wants; given the history of this issue, "supporters of the Charleston Charter School for Math & Science [who] realized the omission of Rivers and began asking questions" propelled the change of course on the Board's part.

CCSD Using Capital Assets for Operating Expenses

Too sanguine over the sale of property owned by the Charleston County School District--that's what the editors of the P & C are in claiming that "There is nothing to lose" from those sales. [See Sell Surplus School Property in Wednesday's editorial section.] Depends on what you mean by "nothing," I guess!

County residents should contemplate whether the district should have centrally-located schools or neighborhood schools. The first cut down on busing costs and wasting students' time being bused. The second allow parents, especially poorer ones, greater access to their children's teachers and a better environment for their children.

Further, older campuses paid for with public taxes should be readily available for the new public charter schools so desired by taxpayers. The Rivers building is a prime example. The present School Board is totally out of sync with public opinion, still smarting over Rivers' use by CSMS and still determined to stymie CSMS's success at every turn.

The P & C's just a bit too trusting of how the proceeds from capital asset sales will be used. No reputable business would take the proceeds from selling off capital and put them into the operating budget! So why does CCSD not deserve opprobrium for having done just that in the past? What is to stop it in the future?

Why shouldn't CCSD be required to put the proceeds from sales of capital assets back into the capital fund? Then maybe CCSD would not need to raise either of its taxes next time around.

CCSD's Lewis's Doomsday Approach Wins $7.5 Million Down Payment

Cousin Arthur's thrown in the towel. Arthur Ravenel, Jr.'s now supporting making Charleston County schools earthquake proof. I suspect he's decided that some battles just aren't worth fighting. Let's face it: he has little encouragement from the results of the last election. Still, he's been resident in Charleston County longer than most of us--and how many earthquakes have damaged the city during his lifetime? None, of course.

What has the sky-is-falling crowd won? [See Safety First with Schools in Wednesday's paper] The major changes proposed by ex-Californian Bill (can you pronounce "San Andreas Fault") Lewis come with a major price tag "to be named later." So far the CCSD School Board has "seeded" only $7.5 million into the process to get it started. Those were "leftover" dollars. We should all hope for such leftovers.

Wait till Lewis goes for the big bucks.

Experts differ on how far to go in retrofitting (or the necessity of replacing) school buildings in this not-earthquake-prone, not-on-a-fault-line area. A totally earthquake proof environment does not exist and never will, here or elsewhere. Lewis has encouraged the doomsday approach; the CCSD School Board has knuckled under. Is there any hope that they might get a second opinion regarding how much work is really necessary? The necessity for millions to be spent on the Rivers building was revealed much too closely to the request for its use by the Charter School for Math and Science for anyone with common sense to believe that politics is not involved in the process.

Also, it would be fitting if a second opinion came from a firm that did not have a vested interest in recommending major big-bucks work. Well, since Arthur has caved, all we can do is hope.

As for the "comparatively undistinguished" Memminger Elementary building, it's probably far better built than the recently-constructed (under the aegis of Bill Lewis) West Ashley High School, which is already falling apart. Whatever happens to its 1950s building, let's not forget that Memminger's property is prime real estate that Joe Riley's friends would love to get their hands on. The property also has a long history in education that predates the present building.

If you think that greedy developers are not in the equation, you may have just fallen off the turnip truck.

Read Between the Lines on CCSD's Rivers Building

Friday's P & C contained yet another CCSD apologetic from its award-winning education reporter, Diette Courrege. As usual, the reporter parrots CCSD's absurd decisions and assertions regarding the old Rivers High School with nary a second opinion from the community. [See Rivers Middle School Sits Vacant.] You would think that Rivers dropped from the sky in 2005 in order to become "racially divisive and political."

Here's a bit of reading between the lines:

"The Rivers building and its use has been a racially divisive and political issue since the district closed the school"--only because the administration at 75 Calhoun and the CCSD Board of Trustees have made it so.

"and moved its students to the Burke High campus in the fall of 2005."-- a move desired by no one in the community except the bigwigs in CCSD. And just look at how those transfers have benefitted former Rivers students--not.

"The community fought for months about what should fill the space"--that would be years, actually. The reporter can't subtract properly. CCSD had no use for the building, but it didn't want a public charter school to use it either. During the almost two-year hiatus CCSD's official vandals wrecked the inside of what had been a usable building [see previous damning pictures on this blog].

"and the board agreed in the fall of 2007 to allow the charter school to share space with a new, yet-to-be-created school, Lowcountry Tech High"--practically over their dead bodies, actually. Of course, no progress has been made on this chimera, nor is there likely to be any in the first half of this century.

"Later that fall, the board received an engineering report that showed the building would collapse in a serious earthquake."--A ha ha ha ha ha. Excuse me, I was just caught by a paroxysm of laughter. The timing of this doomsday report was purely coincidental, of course.

"District leaders decided that no one should occupy the building until its seismic problems are addressed."--I want to see the seismic report on 75 Calhoun. I'll bet it too would collapse in a serious earthquake. When are the offices moving into trailers?

And so we have more red herrings thrown before the taxpayers of Charleston County. The Charter School for Math and Science would have been perfectly willing to accept the building at 2005 condition. Problem is, the Board plans that CSMS will occupy that building on a cold day in hell.

It's all about power, not academics.

In Case You Don't Subscribe to the P & C: Rivers Campus

From Friday's Letters to the Editor:

Honor public's choice for Rivers site

Friday, December 19, 2008

All three of Dr. Nancy McGinley's School Redesign options for Rivers Middle School destroy this handsome 1938 building designed by Albert Simons and relocate the Charleston Charter School for Math & Science (CCSMS), a middle high school, to Archer Elementary School.

How well can the Archer building, designed for 283 little children, serve the needs of 480 teenagers? In addition to being too small in scale and capacity, Archer won't meet the many special needs of high school students — including science labs and a gym. Does Archer make sense for a middle high school?

Dr. McGinley's plan also raises other questions. What happened to the public's vote on Rivers last year and the school district's four year agreement with CCSMS to use Rivers Middle?

On May 22, 2007, about 250 people participated in an elaborate public engagement process concerning the Rivers Middle campus. After hearing and discussing the alternatives, they were asked to rank various alternatives through a formal voting process. CCSMS was the undisputed winner of the vote.

In keeping with the vote, on April 14, the Charleston County School Board approved a four-year agreement for CCSMS to use Rivers. Yet eight months later, all three redesign options banish CCSMS from Rivers Middle.

Do votes by the public and signed agreements mean nothing?

On Aug. 20, CCSMS opened on the Rivers Middle campus with the most diverse student body in Charleston County. Before its first year of operation, it built a waiting list and already has more applications than spaces for next year's 6th grade.

Bucking the tide of declining enrollments in peninsula schools, CCSMS, will grow from 188 today to 480 in 2012 if it is allowed to stick with its four-year plan and facility agreement.

One sure way to improve educational opportunities for all District 20 children is to respect the public's choice for the Rivers Middle School. That choice is that the Charleston Charter School for Math & Science — designed for that campus and doing very well — remain there.

CCSMS is currently accepting applications for 2009-2010 for grades 6-10. Applications are due by Jan. 14 and are available at: charlestonmathscience.org. Prospective students and their families are invited to an open house on Jan. 10 from 10 a.m.-noon.

PARK R. DOUGHERTY
Chairman
Board of Directors
Charleston Charter School for Math & Science
King Street
Charleston