Gasp! Reporters Discover CCSD's Segregated Schools!

If you really want a quick run-down of de facto segregation in the Charleston County School District, I recommend the left-hand subject column of this blog. What you will discover is that, silly me, for my first five years back in Charleston after more than 40 living in various parts of the country, I actually thought CCSD's schools were integrated! It's a subject that our local paper has chosen not to explore--until now.

The Jonathan Green mural at Sanders-Clyde and the school's curriculum specializing in the history of slavery are a case in point. The mural greets children as they enter--but only black children, since no white faces appear. This message seems appropriate for a segregated school. Well, Sanders-Clyde does have one white student; evidently, CCSD administration never planned for any more. Meanwhile, fully 40 percent of its 720 students have transferred in from other schools. You can't insinuate, as Parker and Hawes do, that only white and not black parents request voluntary transfers based on race. They aren't making these choices based on the school's performance.

Learning of these statistics, what conclusion can you reach except that many black parents want a segregated school? If you know of some other reason, please comment. "Convenience" is the buzz-word for voluntary transfers, and CCSD does not provide transportation.

Let's not forget that federal government policies after World War II started the move from the peninsula to the suburbs as it granted returning veterans VA loans only on new construction. Talk about unintended consequences! But it's ridiculous to suggest that white movement off the peninsula in the seventies and eighties caused downtown schools to re-segregate: the population on the peninsula has remained (and increased) as majority white since the sixties.

It is remarkable to think that the only high school in this majority-white downtown has merely one white student; it's even more remarkable to realize that nearly 30 percent of Burke's students have transferred from other zones. Again, what gives? It's not the lure of its football team!

Parker and Hawes also try to make the case that Berkeley and Dorchester counties lack these fully segregated schools. They cite that Dorchester District 2 "doesn't have a single school lacking in diversity." Of course not: it has Dorchester District 4 to take that position!

Berkeley County is a different story. Traditionally a rural and black population, only in the past 30 years has it developed as a suburb--and new construction disperses whites from Ohio into the diverse mix. The Charleston peninsula has an entirely different, and much older, history.

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.

McClellanville Schools Badly Mismanaged by McGinley

Here sits the original McClellanville Public School, right in the heart of the town. Isn't it beautiful? Doesn't it look as a school really should, rather than resembling a loading dock on a warehouse, as so many modern schools do.

In 1921 the school housed all grades. It operated for more than fifty years, then was shuttered as the Charleston County School District attempted to force integration of its schools. (How did that work out for ya?).

Then after Hugo, the school was renovated at a cost of $4.4 million in taxpayer dollars (OPM). It operated as a middle school for about 19 years; then CCSD shut it down again.

That was more than five years ago, and for five years the building has sat unused, after spending all those millions. It must be nice that the school district is rolling in so much money that now as part of its new "penny" sales tax scam, it proposes to spend half a million on studying plans to renovate the building yet again to make a high school of it. That's not half a million to renovate; that's half a million to plan to renovate.

Really, this would be a joke if the Charleston County School District did a better job of educating its students in McClellanville. It's not funny.

You can easily predict that after studying the problem, McGinley will again propose sending McClellanville's high school students to Wando High School on a cost-effective basis. And why wasn't Wando built in a more northerly part of Mt. Pleasant? Could anyone look ahead to see the long bus ride that would be foisted upon McClellanville?

Nah.

CCSD Values Form over Substance with June Make-up Day

Just when you thought the Charleston County School District couldn't get any sillier, it proves you an optimist!

This school year, students used up all extra school days built in for bad weather, not for hurricanes or tropical storms but for ice. Then ice forced CCSD into further closure. In order to compensate for those instructional days, the Board of Trustees, acting upon the superintendent's recommendation, changed June 6, which had originally been a "teacher workday," to a make-up day.  The action seems sensible until you realize what it means.

On June 6, CCSD will run its full bus contingent, feed students, and cool all its buildings for a fraction of enrolled students. How can I predict rampant absenteeism so far in advance?

By June 6, CCSD will have held its graduation ceremonies. Testing will be completed. Textbooks will be packed away.

So, what will the expense of running the schools on that day accomplish?

Babysitting.

Burke High/Middle's Numbers Don't Add Up

Sunday's article on lack of integration in the Charleston County School District muddled the overall picture in several ways, not the least of which was its discussion of Burke High/Middle School. First of all, Burke has a long, proud history as an all black school which most natives of Charleston have been unwilling to change--just ask the NAACP. When the all-white High School of Charleston was closed, it was almost, if not certainly, inevitable that Burke would remain for all intents and purposes segregated. Of course, other principals' recommending difficult students into Burke that went on during the last 20 years (and may still be!) didn't help matters. 

What really bears analysis, however, are the puzzling numbers cited in the article. For example, the reporter states that 13,245 students ages 15 to 19 live downtown. Where? Is "downtown" the same as the zoning to attend Burke? What is the source of this number? If it comes from the Census Bureau that also means it includes 18- and 19-year-olds enrolled in the College of Charleston as well as other high-school graduates.

Even if we cut the number in half, and claim that 6600 students are zoned for Burke, if 466 students is 45 percent of public school students zoned to attend, then the number still makes no sense. 

What the reporter inarticulately tried to state is that only 45 percent of students who are zoned for Burke and are enrolled in the Charleston County School District actually attend Burke. What the school board since its inception has accomplished through its own policies is for 55 percent of students from downtown to be bused elsewhere in the district. Now, the other statistic of which the reporter makes no mention is how many students are bused into Burke from other parts of the district. And don't tell me there aren't any.

In fact, wouldn't those numbers be interesting for all the schools in the district, but especially CCSD's high schools? Don't hold your breath.

SC's Walk-to-School Day Becomes Bus-to-School Day in CCSD

Children do not get enough exercise, or so experts tell us constantly. They sit to watch TV, play video games, or entertain themselves with the computer or a smart phone. Partly due to lack of suburban sidewalks, many children never walk farther than the end of their driveways. So what to do?

South Carolina, in an effort to encourage more walking, has created its own Walk-to-School Day, one that occurred as scheduled this morning. Local TV showed students walking to Lambs Elementary. What I hoped to see did not materialize: an interview with Superintendent Nancy McGinley of the Charleston County School District explaining her philosophy on walking to school.

Has there been anyone in the entire history of education in the State of South Carolina who has discouraged more students from walking to school?

From her actions and recommendations, the following picture of the McGinley-inspired school district appears: no neighborhood schools and a massive fleet of buses that criss-cross the district at all hours of the day and night ferrying students to and from so-called magnet schools.

Over the next few weeks, while you drive to work past students waiting for the bus in the dark, remember who is responsible for students' not walking to school.

Charleston County Superintendent's Fail-Safe Evaluation

You have to hand it to Superintendent Nancy McGinley: she wrote the rules for her own evaluation and then cowed the Charleston County School District Board of Trustees into signing them! Or perhaps her hand-picked Board members weren't too savvy with numbers.

The result? Despite what future elected Board members might think of her, unless the district suddenly implodes, she's safe for yet another contract renewal and another bonus. She's soon to become the longest-tenured superintendent in CCSD's history. Crafty!

The Board of Trustees has the responsibility to oversee the Superintendent's performance. Soon will come another empty evaluation process. What about evaluating the Superintendent on these burgeoning factors: increased busing, increased defacto segregation, and increased homeschooling?

At this point in her seven-year tenure, she can show us how many failing schools she has closed to improve her statistics and how many new and expensive school buildings she has facilitated. Where's the academic progress?

PRIME at Wando? Why Not at Burke?

Them that has gets! Isn't that the old song?  It rings true when comparing Wando High School, the largest in the state located in the affluent community of Mt. Pleasant, with Burke High/Middle School, a  2AA school located on the peninsula of Charleston that is de facto all black.

Sunday's edition pointed out that Wando "has been named a PRIME model school by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers’ Education  Foundation, one of 11 schools from across the country to be selected this year". According to the reporter, who sees no irony in the report, "PRIME model schools also have strong partnerships with local manufacturing businesses that offer students opportunities such as mentoring, tours, job shadowing and internships."

Isn't this what the Burke community has demanded for years? What about the so-called "high-tech high" that has morphed into low-tech Lowcountry Tech, not at Burke where the community wanted it but at Rivers to forestall the Charter School for Math and Science.

Taking her talking points straight from CCSD, no doubt, the reporter goes on to provide PR for Superintendent McGinley: 

"STEM education is growing in prominence in the Charleston County School District. The school district has been working with a high-profile group of partners, from federal labs to HBCUs to businesses, to make the district a national model for preparing students from kindergarten through college for STEM-related jobs.
"Wando High’s STEM programs have been nationally recognized in the past. The school has been part of Project Lead the Way for more than a decade, and that program offers hands-on, project-based, biomedical and pre-engineering courses. Project Lead the Way has named Wando High a model school twice.

Probably motivated students who live in Burke's neighborhood are taking the bus to Wando to take part in those programs. Superintendent McGinley has done everything possible to strip Burke of students. As usual, the reporter has no curiosity regarding how many non-Mount Pleasant residents are being bused to Wando. 

Sometimes it seems that McGinley's long-term goal is to strip Burke of students, close the school, sell its prime location to private developers, and leave District 20 with no high school. Couldn't be, could it?

Schools Confusion on Daniel Island

Daniel Islanders are mad at the Berkeley County School District--and they're not going to take it any more. Therefore, more than 400 met Thursday night at the Bishop England auditorium to contemplate switching the community to Charleston County.

No doubt other aspects of life in Berkeley County annoy the residents, but what really stirred the hornet's nest was the belief that, if they voted for a tax increase for its schools, another school would be built on Daniel Island. Then the Berkeley School Board said, well, maybe it will be in Cainhoy. Residents see this as bait-and-switch, and they may be correct.

Yet leaving Berkeley for Charleston County is not the same as leaving the Berkeley County School District for the Charleston County School District! No one seems to focus on the parameters involved: will CCSD agree to build another school on Daniel Island? Will CCSD purchase the Daniel Island School from Berkeley County? Where will the money come from?

Where will students from Daniel Island go to high school? the already-overcrowded Wando or the nearer, and nearly empty, North Charleston High School? If a middle school is not built on Daniel Island, where will middle schoolers go? Moultrie (overcrowded), Cario (overcrowded) or Northwoods?

Perhaps the rising talk and indignation will be used to force the Berkeley County School District to put the new school on the island, the best possible outcome for those parents who want their children to walk or bike to school.

Busing, and as much of it as possible, is the preferred mode of transportation in CCSD.

Lincoln High: See the USA in Your High School Day!

Superintendent McGinley of the Charleston County School District has a vision for Lincoln High School, quite a vision indeed! Apart from moving middle grades around without first consulting its very supportive community, she has plans to gut the courses offered at the school to include "core subjects" only.

But wait! It gets better. Lincoln High students will get to ride practically the length of Charleston County each morning and afternoon to Wando High School to take the rest of their required courses for a diploma. Golly, what fun! Perhaps someone could estimate the time involved: will these students need to rise at 4 or 5 a.m.? Will they return before 6 p.m.? Does McGinley even care?

Of course she does, or as she puts it, "Let me entertain you." These "special" coach buses will be equipped with Wi Fi. That means those with laptops can play games the whole way! Or sleep. Brilliant.

It seems that she envisions quite a marvelous future for Lincoln: several years of this cavalcade and Lincoln will disappear. That is the goal.

Stopped Clock Right Again: Wando High School

Brian Hicks is right about a second high school for Mt. Pleasant. How did we get to such a stage that even Hicks can see what needs to be done?

Poor planning, plain and simple. Within a year of its opening, Wando High School was adding trailers for additional classrooms. Imagine: millions of dollars spent on a high school that was immediately too small. You would think the lunatics have been running the asylum. Well, in a sense, they have.

Superintendent McGinley (and Goodloe-Johnson before her) persuaded her lackeys on the Charleston County School Board of Trustees that Mt. Pleasant should have only one high school. Never mind that the school would be twice (and now three and one-half times) the size of the optimal climate for students. Never mind that the monster school would create monster traffic jams. The fiat came down. In fact, McGinley is planning to add to the traffic with another 600-student installation at the same location.

The result is the largest high school in the state (not something to brag about, by the way) that has twenty-five trailers, practically another school in itself, coping with the overflow. Of course, no one could have predicted the growth of Mt. Pleasant, or, to put it another way, no one could have predicted that the sun rose today.

Swails says, "You build the schools where the kids are."

Actually, McGinley has never considered that. She builds hubs so that thousands of students can be bused out of their neighborhoods to larger schools. Old Wando High School has been there all along, used by CCSD as "swing" space. Heaven forbid they should use it as a high school. Why, it might divide the town!

CCSD Tourism Runs Amuck in North Charleston

“Go tell that man we ain’t a bunch of trees.”
“Ma’am?”
“I said to tell that man to get away from here with that camera.”

Anyone who has read Toni Cade Bambara's "Blues Ain't No Mockin Bird" might chuckle over the Charleston County School District's attempt to show new teachers North Charleston "communities where their students live." In fact, administrators at the Taj Mahal might benefit by reading the story themselves.    

However, the tour is not funny. How would you like it if a bus rolled through your neighborhood in order to show how "the other half" lives?  Condescending, to say the least.    

How I wish Mr. Cain had showed up to request that these intruders leave.

Charter, Magnet--What's the Difference?

I kid you not.

Wednesday's print edition of the P&C contained an editorial congratulating the Charleston County School Board for voting to continue free transportation for charter school students in the district. There's one glaring problem.

The CCSD Board didn't vote on a proposal to continue free transportion to charter schools. In fact, CCSD does not now, nor has it ever, provided free transportation to charter schools.

You can't make this stuff up.

Here the P&C prides itself on covering the news in local  and surrounding school districts, yet the editorial writer doesn't know the difference between a magnet and a charter school! This slip, corrected hastily Wednesday morning in the on-line version, reveals an abysmal ignorance on important issues. We have claimed for years that the reporters merely parrot what the district (i.e., superintendent) hands them.

Now we have proof.

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.

Inmates Running Amuck in CCSD Again

What ever happened to common sense? Cowardice.

Cowardice on the part of Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley and the Town Council of Sullivans Island.

You see, the one-size-fits-all elementary school of 500 students adopted by a previous CCSD Board of Trustees enables Superintendent McGinley to avoid making decisions about size on the basis of common sense. She merely points to the Board's decision (which she initiated, by the way). Even the scintilla of common sense that might justify the policy, saving money by using the same architectural plans for each school, is nonexistent.

What will Sullivans Island become when its most salient landmark is an large, elevated elementary school?

How can a school district defend a $24.6 million building on a barrier island subject to hurricanes? Can anyone say "Hugo"? Don't you wonder what the yearly insurance will cost the district?

Then, there's the fact that only 85 students actually live on Sullivans Island. Let's think. Which is more cost effective: to bus 85 students to Mount Pleasant twice daily or to bus 415 students to Sullivans Island twice a day? Duh.

That said, why not please the folks on Sullivans and simply repair the building now being used. Why? Because McGinley can't take the heat of other parts of the county complaining that their smaller schools were closed because, McGinley claimed, they weren't large enough to be cost effective. Of course, we know other criteria entered into McGinley's school redesign as well--her statistics as superintendent.

In addition, not to put too fine a point on it, the Town Council of Sullivans Island needs to be voted out of office for agreeing to lease the land to CCSD before using its collective brains. Now, because it is too cowardly to call the citizens' petition too-little-too-late, the Council has chosen to pass the hot potato to a judge

As I said previously, the inmates are running amuck in the asylum that is CCSD. Where are the grown-ups?

Sullivans residents: Can you say "charter"?

CCSD's McGinley Promises Future Transparency

Oh, sorry! That was the caption for the Onion story!

How about "McGinley Promises More Self-Satisfaction in 2016"?

To anyone familiar with shenanigans during Nancy McGinley's opaque reign as Superintendent of the Charleston County Schools, her periodic op-ed commentary has become its own joke. In fact, her words are almost impossible to satirize, given their ludicrous background.

This caveat in mind, I hesitated for twenty-four hours to read McGinley's latest public relations ploy that appeared in Friday's P&C. I'm glad I did because reading that in January and February she will invite the public to "public engagement" meetings to "finalize" her goals for 2016 would jeopardized my breakfast.

McGinley has already set her goals; the meetings will merely publicize what she already has determined behind closed doors. Really, the "Vision" of McGinley's remaining as superintendent until 2016 should be enough to put anyone off. By then she will have eliminated every neighborhood school in the district and achieved 90 percent of students being bussed the length of Charleston County. The budget for gasoline (a state secret) will pass the cost of teachers' salaries, and the cost of her two dozen associate superintendents will pass even the bus budget. Further, every school built prior to McGinley's arrival in Charleston will have been razed to the ground in the name of earthquakes.

How's that vision for 2016?

New CCSD Board Members Ask Too Many Questions

New board members should be seen and not heard.

That's how the adage goes, isn't it? Well, at least in the world of Superintendent Nancy McGinley and the obsequious chairman of the Charleston County Schools Board of Trustees, Chris Fraser.

Fraser posits the unusual idea that when new members are elected, they should stick with the opinions of those they replaced instead of representing the taxpayers who elected them. Rather like President Obama's announcing that, despite being elected as a Democrat, he intended to reinforce all of the policies of the previous administration (admittedly, some would say that he largely has! Still).

Why did Fraser sent an email to all board members asking them not to revisit old issues (at the bequest of the Superintendent, no doubt)? Because Mary Ann Taylor and Cindy Bohn Coats are asking too many questions that were ignored in the past and remain unanswered. Why, good grief, Taylor and Coats even set up a meeting with Bill Lewis, Michael Bobby, and Troy Williams to get some answers. Heaven forbid! That one had to be nipped in the bud before causing too much "work" for the district.

Where have we heard this song and dance before?

Sample questions include such old chestnuts as

• What are the benefits of rebuilding versus retrofitting Sullivans Island Elementary?


• Have any contract service providers (such as Heery) ever been approached by any CCSD employees or school board members (past or present) seeking and/or initiating favors?


• Where are the demographic data to support CCSD's choices for where to place schools? To size them?


• What is the CCSD transportation bus cost?


• Where have Fraser students been transferred since its closing? What tracking data have been kept on each to see if the new school's program is effective?

It's a good list. Fraser and McGinley will do their best to ignore it.

CCSD Wants Feedback? Give It an Earful

By any measure, the Charleston County School District finds itself in an awkward position: it touted a one percent rise in the sales tax as a way to forgo a rise in property taxes--and won.

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.

Now it must explain to the public that none of the millions from that extra sales tax can be used for its most basic budgetary needs--running and staffing its schools. Thus, unavoidable budget cuts loom. CCSD holds informative meetings for feedback.

What could anyone possibly say at one of these meetings that would make any difference?

Just think. Charleston County will have the best looking, state-of-the-art school buildings in the state, but it won't be able to pay the salaries of the teachers it needs for its students.

On the other hand, if CCSD had raised property taxes, it wouldn't be able to spend millions on seismic evaluations or renovating bus stops.

What a trade off.

Facts Speak Loudly on Busing

Isn't Alabama the state that always saves us from being last?

South Carolina has just arranged to purchase 11-year-old school buses from Alabama. These must already have 100,000 miles on them.

PUNCH LINE: to replace SC buses that are more than twice that age.

Meanwhile, CCSD does its bit in driving up demand.

Start the Day with a Laugh from CCSD

Turn first in your morning copy of the P&C to any article touching on the Charleston County School District; otherwise, you may miss a good laugh. Monday morning's meets that expectation. [See Bar Rises Higher for Schools.]

Wait for it.

"Schools Superintendent Nancy McGinley said she's pleased with the district's overall results, particularly in terms of the decreasing number of schools that must give students the option of transferring elsewhere. That number has been cut in half in the past three years, and she said that's a positive for those schools and the receiving schools that might have been overcrowded. Taxpayers' money also won't have to go to transportation costs for those students, she said.

"'The investments we've been making in some of our highest-poverty schools are starting to pay off,' she said. 'And we think our focus on literacy is paying off.'"

As you can see, McGinley's goal (and that of the new PASS) is to cut transportation costs for busing students and avoid sending them to schools that don't want them. [horse laugh here] Of course, those savings can be used for transporting others from "seismically deficient" schools, or at least mask the true costs of that decision made last spring.

Now, how has the number of failing schools required to offer busing to others "been cut in half"? [horse laugh #2]

Could it be that a number of schools have been closed in order to make this claim? Nahh. We all know every decision is made "for the children." Not.

Include as well the schools that made the grade because the categories in the new PASS were changed and you see the reason for laughing.

We can count on CCSD to provide entertainment at the expense of its residents.