Summerville School Administrators Need to "Get a Grip"

First, Summerville High School suspends a student for writing an essay about killing his neighbor's dinosaur with a gun. You can't make this stuff up.

Now an eighth-grade boy at a Summerville middle school [unnamed] has been suspended for listing the gang of 14 students who have been bullying him, labeling it "People to Kill," and dropping it in the hall for a teacher to find.

According to DD2's Pat Raynor,

The principal brought the student into her office and asked him to tell her who had been bothering him. He mentioned the same names as those on the list, according to the report. The student said he made the list to relieve stress and didn't plan to hurt anybody. He said he meant to throw the list away.

The deputy notified the student's parents. They told him he didn't have access to any guns, according to the report. 

The student was suspended until a disciplinary hearing, District 2 spokeswoman Pat Raynor said Wednesday.

All the parents of the 14 students on the list were also contacted.

Don't you wonder what was said to parents of the gang of 14 bullies?

Do you wonder why the teachers didn't already know the student was being bullied? Or, if they did, why nothing was done?

How about wondering why the student felt he couldn't tell anyone what was going on? Consider that we're talking about a 12- or 13-year-old boy.

Gee, DD2 nipped that Columbine in the bud.

Not.

Disgrace at Ashley Ridge Assembly

Given what happened at Ashley Ridge High School last week during a junior assembly, people must be wondering if the school has any effective discipline.

Imagine jeering and critiquing (loudly and inappropriately) a speaker whose goal is to save lives! Not only that, the speaker speaks from personal experience with drunk driving, experience substantiated by her severed left arm and many scars.

Sarah Panzau travels the country for Anheuser-Busch telling teenagers about her near-fatal decision 10 years ago to drink and drive.

About 20 percent of the class was so disruptive that after 45 minutes, she finally quit speaking when one obnoxious student "mocked her appearance." Some students laughed at the joke.

Dorchester District 2 schools spokeswoman Pat Raynor reported that "one male student" is facing disciplinary action.

So where were the proctors? teachers? vice-principals? Afraid to step in?

Ask yourself: what mentality mocks those who are maimed? Chilling, isn't it?

Dorchester 2 Follows CCSD's Lead on FOIA

The irony of it all.

If this story had concerned the Charleston County School District, the P&C would have buried it.

Teamsters request for Dorchester District 2 school bus contract gets improper fee quote• BY BO PETERSEN• Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

SUMMERVILLE — Three people who asked for a copy of the Durham School Services bus contract from Dorchester District 2 schools were told it would cost $150 — an apparent violation of the state Freedom of Information law.

The requests came over the last few weeks as Teamsters union representatives try to organize bus drivers in the district.

District officials say the fee quote is policy. One of the requesters said it was an attempt to withhold information.

A South Carolina Press Association official called the fee quote “smoke.”

Durham School Services Regional Manager Dave Brabender confirmed that “there’s an organizing event going on, and there will be a vote in a couple of weeks.”

Allyson Duke, the district’s chief financial officer, said the $150 fee was quoted for copying a 22-page document because that fee is called for under a district “commercial use” policy, and staff understood the contract was requested for the Teamsters.

“No, no. There’s no specification for that in the law. District policy does not trump state law. I think there’s smoke there,” said Bill Rogers, S.C. Press Association executive director.

The requesters are state residents and are treated the same as anyone else under the law, he said. “Above all, financial contracts are open. They should be available at minimal cost,” Rogers said.

Two of the requesters were a bus driver in the district and a bus driver from another district who is a union representative. They were told they could view the contract without charge.

Asked to assist by the Teamsters, activist Rob Groce of Knightsville pushed the district on the fee, and the contract was copied for him for $5.

Groce said he was told at first that it would take two weeks to produce the copy.

“We didn’t deny anybody. We do have to have policies in place” to compensate for employees’ time and protect taxpayers’ dollars, Duke said.

She said she would speak with the district’s attorney about whether the commercial use fee is proper.

“The fact that I had to go through such rigamarole to get information ... it’s my opinion she was deliberately trying to withhold information where my tax dollars go, and I don’t appreciate that,” Groce said.

Duke said that was not true.

The district outsourced its bus services to Durham at the beginning of the school year.

The contract copies were requested because of drivers’ concerns that they are paid less per hour to drive to extracurricular events than they are to drive routes, Groce said.

DD2's Obfuscation of Events?

Sometimes the reported facts don't add up.

Take the case of the Summerville High School teacher who was recently charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a student at Summerville High. The salacious details of sexting have been all over the news. [See FormerTeacher Faces Charge in Tuesday's edition of the P&C.]

Apart from the mind-boggling situation with a 25-year-old's behavior, one part of the report does not ring true:

Banner had been at Summerville High for three years but had opted not to continue her contract after the current session ended, said Pat Raynor, public information officer for Dorchester District 2. The district is conducting its own investigation of Banner, she said.

Banner thus has been a "former" teacher for a matter of days, not weeks. Misleading headline.

Any teacher will tell you that no teacher in her right mind would give up a job at a school like Summerville High when she was about to get tenure. That is, this was her third year of teaching. If she were to teach there next year, she would have tenure.

Of course, we could argue that since she was not in her right mind over 16-year-old boys, she was not in her right mind in general.

We could, but the most likely scenario is that she was not offered a contract for next year.

Why? Does Pat Raynor know more than she is saying? How about a little transparency?

Post-McKissick: Will Summerville Stop Importing Players?

A phenomenon it is. How John McKissick's career as football coach at Summerville High School developed its longevity is a worthwhile story to read in the P & C. [See Lifetime of Wins]

Perhaps the local press awaits his retirement to investigate the illegal recruiting of players that fuels that success. Almost everyone I meet has a story, just not for publication. What does that say to our students about ethics? Cheating is okay if it's football?

That'll Work: Task Force to Stop Teacher-Student Sex

"Jim Rex, the head of South Carolina schools, launched a task force Thursday aimed at stopping teachers from having sex with students," according to Channel 4 News.

My question is: If the Summerville High School teacher charged with taking female students to his home and providing alcohol to them is 43 years old and the principal says he has been employed at Summerville for "about three years," where was he teaching before?

And what recommendations did the previous schools provide?

Veto! Veto the High School Coaches' Dream Bill!

Do it!

The P & C reports today that Governor Sanford is considering vetoing the "school choice" bill passed by the state legislature. On its face, the bill sounds reasonable; it's the predictable effect that is monstrous.

This bill is a coach's dream. No longer will Summerville High School's coaches need to figure out surreptious ways to get players from other districts eligible to play on its football team (and we know that practice has been going on for decades). Multiply that effect all over the state.

The bill masquerades as school improvement. Yes, it will improve certain athletic teams but not academics. Does anyone believe that, say, the ordinary student from Burke or North Charleston High will be any more able to transfer in to Wando? Wando will say it's full. Will the ordinary student at Wando desire to transfer to Burke or North Charleston other than to play on their athletic teams or escape expulsion? Show me.



The bill is a cockeyed answer to growing pressure for allowing true school choice. It gets pressure off politicians but creates even more problems for students. It is also likely to encourage re-segregation of schools, just as CCSD's liberal intra-district transfer policies have done in the past.

Why would new Superintendent Jim Rex advocate its passage? When has any state school superintendent advocated REAL change?


Please, Governor, do all South Carolina's students a favor!

UPDATE: Yessss! He did it! Thanks to Gov. Sanford and, one hopes, not enough votes to override the veto, South Carolina will be spared this bill that would illustrate the law of unintended consequences!

And District Transfers Are Going to Help?

The South Carolina state legislature appears to be poised to congratulate itself on passing legislation that will allow any student to transfer into a district he or she does not reside in, provided that the percentage of non-district transfers into a district does not rise above 3%.

I've been racking my brain, trying to conjure scenarios that validate this new policy as improving South Carolina's schools. Finally, it dawned on me: this will improve some of its football teams!

Yes, friends, now Summerville's long-serving football coach, known to recruit out of district and use various subterfuges to get those promising out-of-district students into the Green Wave, will simply get them to transfer into the district. No doubt there are other football powers that will also reap the benefit. Why didn't we think of this before?

Do you ever feel like they're rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?

But District 20 parents can really laugh at the worries of some upstate residents that district re-segregation will occur if students transfer out of districts where they actually reside. CCSD knows that we don't need inter-district transfers to re-segregate schools; intra-district works just fine. They need only look down from their offices on Calhoun Street at the Charleston penninsula schools to see that.

An added bonus will be that those out-of-district Buist Academy students who entered on the downtown list will become only 100% illegal instead of 200%.

Will transportation be provided out of district? I hope it won't depend on CCSD. It can't even get students transferring out of its failing schools on the penninsula to Mt. Pleasant on time, much less to Berkeley or Dorchester County!

"They're Coming Across the North Charleston Line!"

Why would I worry that it might be a while before the Post and Courier provided another "newsless" article? How silly of me; there were three to choose from today alone. Where to begin?

"Hanahan shootings stir fears: Town that rarely sees slaying is abuzz" by Prentiss Findlay, first page of Local and State section, June 6, 2006.

"They." Would that be the same they that called it the ParaPro (see previous comments)?

Prominently featured in this article were comments by the denizens of Pappy's restaurant on Remount Road, just inside Hanahan from the city of North Charleston. The buzz regarded two murders in Hanahan. Problem is, the reporter perhaps has a poor sense of geography. We'll be generous here, since the paper itself showed exactly where the murders took place in a small map attached to the end of the article.

It's easy to understand the comment of one of Pappy's customers (i.e., "They're coming across...") as ill-informed and probably racist in genesis (on the other side of Remount is Charleston Farms). However, the reporter need not have reported it, knowing that the murders took place in a part of Hanahan MILES north of the "line," in fact, north of Hanahan High School.

Further, the suspects in one slaying (of a resident of Summerville) were from Dorchester County and Summerville. The other victim lived in Hanahan but had a Georgetown address on his driver's license. Since the Hanahan police said they had no suspects in the second slaying, the North Charleston connection is BOGUS. Here we have in addition to the newsless paper, the factual error paper.

Now, if he had just said, "They're coming across the Summerville line," the comment might have been factually correct, if still fatuous!