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.

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.

CCSD's McGinley a Goner?

Please, oh please.

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.

Lapdog of McGinley, P & C Ignores Charter School for Math and Science

When was the last time you saw good news in the P&C about the Charter School for Math and Science?  Me too. It just doesn't happen. Instead, the reader learns that CSMS has had several principals, has struggled to find space because the Charleston County School Board refuses to allow it to use most of the Rivers building, and is largely confined to mobile classrooms, thanks to the undying animosity of Superintendent Nancy McGinley.

To McGinley's undeniable horror and despite her feeble efforts at integration in the district, CSMS remains the lone example of a fully integrated school in all of Charleston County. The NAACP must hate this.

Now, thanks to an Op-Ed by CSMS's college counselor, we learn that CSMS has been so successful that 200 applied for 60 spots in its sixth grade. Don't you wonder what would have happened in the future if CSMS had been able to find room for those 200 instead of holding a lottery?

At the same time we learn that in Mt. Pleasant (them that has gets) the Charter Montessori school will be able to practically double its enrollment by occupying the old Whitesides campus with the Superintendent's full cooperation. 

No double standard there.

CCSD's McGinley's Tunnel-Vision Diversity

Really, it's a hoot to see our local rag touting the push for diversity within Charleston County's magnet schools. Under the leadership of Superintendent McGinley the district has become almost as segregated as it was prior to consolidation and desegregation. Someone needs to confront her with the facts, but apparently the reporter is unwilling to do so.

The reality is that Buist Academy, with 21 percent non-white, is the most integrated school on the peninsula barring the Charter School for Math and Science, of course! And the School of the Arts with its 23 percent nonwhite is more integrated than any other high school in the district.

You might say McGinley's putting the emphasis on the wrong syl-LA-ble.

How about considering upping diversity at the Military Magnet? What about Charleston Progressive?

The district remains silent on integrating these magnet programs, and the reporter follows suit.

One point made about the School of the Arts is that students at Corcoran Elementary, another de facto segregated school, didn't know about its programs. McGinley has been in a position for years, first as chief academic officer and then as superintendent, to tell them, so she's responsible for their ignorance.

Someday the newspaper will stop shilling for the district. Someday.

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?

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?

CCSD Board Members Must Justify Racist Voting on Lowcountry Leadership Charter School

Michael Miller, Craig Ascue, and Chris Collins need to justify their votes against the sixty-day lease of the vacant Schroder Middle School building to the Lowcountry Leadership Charter School (LLCS). Evidently each cares more about inventing racial problems than supporting the district in providing the most effective use of Other People's Money.

Any sensible person would applaud the requirements put on LLCS for use of the building as improving the finances of the Charleston County School District. Without the $128,000 in rent and additional building repairs assumed by LLCS, this asset would sit vacant and deteriorating for those two months. CCSD certainly has no plans for it! In addition, the lease cannot be renewed, and school starting time will differ from the adjacent C.C. Blaney Elementary School. So what's the problem?

First of all, none of the three opposed board members lives anywhere near Hollywood, SC, where the schools are located, so whatever ideas they have are coming second-hand. The citizens who are most affected by problems in that part of the district who showed up for the School Board meeting were overwhelmingly in favor of the charter school. The accusations that charter schools are a stalking horse for taking us back to sixties segregation are a joke with no basis in fact, although that has never stopped the NAACP from opposing them. You need only look at the racist rhetoric from the NAACP regarding the Charter School for Math and Science downtown (the most integrated school in the district) to realize the idiocy of these ideas.

Charter schools, whether approved by the state or by the district, are public schools open to all students. In this case, of the 400 students expected at LLCS, 67 percent are "low income" and 25 percent are minority. That ratio means that the school is more evenly divided both economically and racially than virtually any other school in CCSD, including Blaney. Is that what bothers our three board members?

Chris Collins, of all people, should have supported the lease, given his own history of leasing from the district. How ironic.

CCSD's Rules Differ for Charters in Mt. Pleasant

The way to get the Charleston County School District's support for  your charter school is to locate it in Mount Pleasant and plan for rich kids to attend.

That's the lesson charter-school hopefuls should take from the chummy relationship between CCSD and the East Cooper Montessori Charter. Earlier this year the district announced it would provide the Laing campus for the charter, which has outgrown its building in I'On, one of Mount Pleasant's most exclusive developments. Those of us who remember the prolonged enmity over the use of the downtown District 20 Rivers campus by the Charter School for Math and Science snickered. Why, according to Superintendent McGinley, the best practices from the Montessori's experience would be worth the district's financial support. No agonizing over charter schools' taking away tax dollars from other schools this time!

Bur wait--there's more.

CCSD determined that the Laing building must meet the highest standards of Montessori classrooms for this favored charter school. That means renovation, McGinley-style. Millions of tax dollars. It's not enough to keep a campus that the district had planned to sell (foregone millions), replace the roof (almost $1 million), and fix damaged ceilings (at least half that amount). This money comes from "federal stimulus dollars" that must be allocated by October 14. Then the building will sit vacant.

Does anyone believe that the Montessori school said it wouldn't consider using the building unless walls were knocked down to make larger classrooms, technology and other infrastructure were state-of-the-art, and  bathrooms updated? Those improvements would add $10 million to the cost of renovations, money that Bill Lewis, who oversees capital programs, says must now be spent on additional classrooms for Jennie Moore Elementary and the new Laing Middle School--as though the district couldn't have known last spring that additional seats would be necessary.

If anyone ran a business like this, it would go out of business. CCSD gets away with it.

Charter High's Home Run with Middleton

Congratulations to the Charter School for Math and Science! It has wisely chosen Juanita Middleton, a long-time Charleston educator, for its new principal. Middleton as a principal has earned high marks in the past from both parents and teachers, most notably at North Charleston High School in its recovery efforts.

A strong, experienced principal who knows the county and can consolidate CSMS's successes on the academic front while keeping its diverse student body, the best integrated in all of Charleston County, should send shivers down CCSD Superintendent McGinley's spine.

CCSD: Mt. Pleasant Charter School More Equal than Others

Superintendent McGinley and East Cooper Montessori Charter Principal Judy Swanigan "have been in 'creative brainstorming conversations' for a few months," according to the P&C, and those have led to a proposal for the district to bankroll renovating the old Laing campus so that the charter school can occupy it "at a reduced rate" to meet rising demand for its program.

Substitute "Charleston Charter School for Math and Science" in the appropriate slots. Can you imagine such a far-fetched scenario?

How about its rising demand? How about its being the only truly integrated school in the entire district? How about its lack of permanent facilities? How about its excellence?

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?

Why Deerin's Gang of 4 Hates Charter Schools

The Gang of 4: Barter, Garrett, Lecque, and Ramich

The Super PAC controlled by Ginny Deerin and the Chamber of Commerce is plastering the names of the Gang of 4 all over Charleston County. These are supporters of Superintendent Nancy McGinley and her policies, handpicked for their ignorance of what really goes on in the district. Their qualifications? All will support the superintendent come hell or high water.

Anyone who believes in charter schools and in establishing new charter schools in the county should shun these candidates. Their goal is to tamp down wherever possible any spark to "go charter."

The reality is that the majority of Charleston County's voters want charter schools. Charter schools, unlike those run by the superintendent and school board, must meet certain standards or go out of business. Parents like competition. Superintendents do not.

We have nine charter schools in Charleston County in spite of virulent opposition from this superintendent and her predecessors. The superintendent and her lackeys would rather see students stuck in failing schools than fhriving in charters that she cannot control. Opponents even suggest that charter schools are not really public and cherry-pick students. Nothing could be farther than the truth.

The success of the Charleston School for Math and Science is a case at hand. Despite the handwringing of the NAACP and CCSD, the school has thrived with a diverse student body achieving high standards. In fact, that school is the only one on the peninsula without admissions testing that has a diverse student body.

CSMS is making CCSD look bad. Deerin's Gang of 4 will make sure that charters field no more competition to CCSD's iron control.

There's one more public forum at the College of Charleston Wednesday night: ask the candidates.

D. Scott Admits Error on CCSD's Charter High School

Congratulations to the first graduating class of the Charter School for Math and Science!

Despite the loud objections of Dot Scott and the Charleston Area NAACP, the school has thrived and continued its racially balanced student body. Scott was convinced the school was a plot to have an all-white high school on the peninsula. The proof is in the pudding.

According to the P&C (no friend of charter schools)

The Charleston Charter School for Math and Science opened as one of the most racially balanced schools in the county, with 47 percent of its students being black and 46 percent white. It’s still among the most diverse today. Its percentage of black students has stayed the same, while its percentage of white students has grown to 52. The district average is 45 percent black and 44 percent white.

What's wrong with those statistics, of course, is that while the district average looks balanced, as we all know, the only high school that is racially balanced is this charter.

At least Scott has the grace to admit she's been proved wrong.