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.

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.

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 School Board Cowed into Raiding "Rainy Day" Fund

What is a "rainy day"? Well, really, it's an emergency fund, so why not call it that?

Because the emergency in the case of the Charleston County School District came about through a consultant's study of administrative salaries that the CCSD Board of Trustees approved on Superintendent Nancy McGinley's recommendation.

The emergency? the bloated bureaucracy at the Taj Mahal needs to be paid more.

McGinley and Chief Financial Officer Michael Bobby have cloaked this raid on the emergency fund by allowing the ordinary step increase in teacher pay! Imagine that! What an innovation!

Still, 75 percent of the pay increases will accrue to administrative staff in the Taj.

You can't make this stuff up. In fact, the $7.4 million taken from the emergency fund (It's an emergency! These bureacrats might leave!) doesn't fully cover the $8.5 million for denizens of the Taj. And these are ongoing salary increases that only partially meet the recommendations of the consultant's study for salary increases.

Instead, dollars for low-income middle schools get the ax.

To complete the farce that purports to be a responsible school budget, the Board, again at McGinley's recommendation, voted to forgo taxes from two TIF districts, no doubt in order to please Mayor Riley. Certainly it is not in the best interest of CCSD to forgo tax dollars when it must raid emergency funds for ongoing salaries.

You can see where this is headed. Time for an outside audit.

Charleston County School District Ignores Community Ideas on West Ashley Middle Schools

Superintendent McGinley of CCSD has tried and tried again to rally West Ashley's support for merging its two unpopular middle schools but to no avail. Last night the School Board signed off on her idea: the two middle schools will indeed merge into one next year, and $3.4 million will be spent to improve its building. Oh, yes, and it will become a magnet.

Magnet here; magnet there: pretty soon every school in the district will be a so-called magnet!

McGinley has two goals, neither of which helps students. By closing a failing middle school, she will make her district statistics look better without improving anything, and by proposing an expenditure in the millions in the West Ashley sector of the district, she hopes to buy votes for an extension of the one-cent sales tax.

It's all for the students, you know.

Quagmire for CCSD's Downtown Middle Schools

Keep Burke Middle School at Burke High in order to keep the building full?

Move Burke Middle to the Rhett Building?

Add middle grades at Sanders-Clyde?

Add middle grades at Memminger?

Create an entirely new middle school on the Fraser campus?

What is going on with multiple proposals from Superintendent McGinley to mend the community's dislike of downtown middle schools (with the exception of the Charter School for Math and Science)?

She's trying to get enough projects going in District 20 that its voters will approve of the next referendum on the one-percent sales tax for a new district-wide building program.

Hence, James Simons third floor remains unfinished, even though the school was listed on the last referendum.

Meeting Tuesday night will reveal what is really the Superintendent's choice, despite being labeled for community input.

CCSD's Orange Grove Charter Expansion a No-Brainer

The standing-room-only Orange Grove crowd at Monday night's Charleston County School Board meeting cheered the CCSD Board's decision to allow the charter elementary school to add middle school grades 6 - 8. The Board had made proponents worried that months would pass before a decision due to its own inchoate plans for the two existing middle schools in the West Ashley district. Parents have so reviled those schools for the last few years that enrollment has dipped dangerously low, and district plans to close one and merge the two schools had been floated.

Orange Grove is a prime example of a charter school that can succeed with good leadership. As with James Island Charter High School, Orange Grove had the community's trust as a public school before it attained charter status. It also had a new building started when CCSD assumed it would remain under the control of Superintendent McGinley and the School Board.

Too bad more existing schools have been unable to takes themselves out from under CCSD's spell.

CCSD's Michael Miller: Naivete Showing on Orange Grove Charter?

The Charleston County School Board's "strategic education committee" must sign off on Orange Grove Charter School's request to add the middle grades. Committee head Michael Miller says he is in favor of the proposal but the school must delay, linger, and wait until the District 10 Task Force reports on a proposal (from Superintendent McGinley) that would merge West Ashley's two middle schools.

The "task force," as with all such committees formed in the district, is guaranteed to be stacked with those who will do whatever the Superintendent proposes.  Has the Superintendent not made up her mind yet? Or is Michael Miller so naive that he doesn't realize the report is a foregone conclusion.

Whichever is the case, postponing only decreases the chances that Orange Grove will get its desired result any time soon. And that's not good news for potential middle-schoolers West of the Ashley.

CCSD Should Build on Success at Orange Grove Charter

West Ashley has two middle schools, but their enrollment is so low that the Charleston County School District is considering closing one and combining on one campus.

Contemplate that for a moment. . .

West Ashley is a large area, replete with young families with children. So why has enrollment dipped so precipitously in its middle schools? Because families who can find other choices take them.

Parents who can do so choose a better school for their sixth to eighth graders. Who can blame them? Their children are not an experiment, no matter how much CCSD would like them to be.

Then there's Orange Grove Charter School. From its inception, it has been successful at just the criteria where CCSD's other schools fail. When its pupils leave Orange Grove after fifth grade, parents must choose among a failing middle school, a private school, a magnet school (such as School of the Arts), or homeschooling.

No one should have any difficulty in understanding why Orange Grove wants to expand to include grade eight. Given its successful track record, no one, even CCSD's School Board and its charter-hating superintendent, should stand in its way.

CCSD's One-Cent Sales Tax Extension in Full Swing

Ruminations of a superintendent

How do we get more millions of OPM, Superintendent McGinley asks herself, when people don't want more taxes. To get the last sales tax passed we had to pretend it amounted to pennies, promise to build or renovate school buildings in every corner of Charleston County, and count on voting during an even-numbered year so that voters showing up to vote in Congressional or Presidential elections wouldl check that box, i.e., more Democrats.

First, we need to get some laws changed so that the tax will appear on the 2014 ballot. Shockingly, state law doesn't allow us to extend the tax until it has only two years left.  Michael Bobby, CCSD's chief of finances and operations, says that if he has to wait another year for the vote, "that would delay some construction projects." Michael always has my back, even though he has known all along what the law is and could have planned accordingly. The audit and finance committee of the School Board, stacked with my supporters, is happily going along with the request to change the law. It has been a blessing that I can control district audits; who knows what might have come to light otherwise.

I'm running out of options on replacing or renovating the downtown schools, so I'll be forcing the change of Sanders-Clyde from elementary to middle-school status, That way new renovations will be needed in District 20 and we'll get those downtown votes. People have short memories, so they'll have forgotten just how new the Sanders-Clyde building is. Those downtown voters who don't want it as a middle school have been kicked off the community task force and replaced with district employees, so by hook or by crook they'll approve my plan.

I already have the Mount Pleasant votes since they've been asking for a new elementary school since 2005. I've deliberately dragged the district's feet so that it can be rolled into the sales tax extension.

Then there are the rich. I can appeal to them by suggesting that a sales tax extension can be used to lower property taxes. John Barter has helped by pointing out that 30 percent of the revenue comes from tourists. No one cares about the 70 percent of locals, many of whom are poor, who must pay more to see that property owners taxes go down.

I just need a good carrot for West Ashley and it's a done deal. Maybe I can suggest that West Ashley High is seismically challenged. Michael's working on that for me, and I can count on my board supporters to lend a hand.

Yes, it's all coming together. I know I can count on the local press to print my public relations handouts without investigating too closely. Look at the headline: "Schools want law changed." Success is at hand. After all, who ever heard of a tax that had an expiration date, despite what I said in 2010? It'll go on forever.

Should Daniel Island Control Berkeley School District

When all else fails, form a committee. That's the mantra of every school superintendent in the United States. Further, the effectiveness of that committee is inversely proportional to the number of committee members.

Thus, Rodney Thompson, Berkeley County School Superintendent, has formed a committee of at least a couple of dozen to study the problems of site selection and grade configurations that are on his front burner due to Daniel Island's threats to leave the county behind. The committee is so big, in fact, that it must be divided into two parts.

But wait! Daniel Islanders are not happy with its makeup. Given the parameters for membership, Daniel Island, with its desire for a pedestrian lifestyle, cannot control the outcome. As one resident put it, the Island's voice will be "muffled."

The attitude expressed by Daniel Islanders posits a philosophical question: is Daniel Island the "elephant in the room" that sits wherever it wishes, or is it simply the most well-heeled part of Berkeley County?  Should a relatively new community (one that did not exist 20 years ago) control the school district's policies? Thirty-four percent of Daniel Island School students do not live on the island even now.

We have a representative group of Daniel Island parents yelling, "We wuz robbed," by Thompson's self-serving implied promises to keep students on the island if parents voted for the bond issue. Now let's see if Thompson has the wisdom of Solomon.

I doubt it.

The Forgotten Five CCSD Schools: Just a Statistic

Justice delayed is justice denied, as the Federal Office of Civil Rights sits on the complaint filed for Charleston County School District's closing of five schools in 2009. More than a thousand elementary and middle-school students were uprooted from their neighborhood schools while Superintendent McGinley promised them a better education.

McGinley also promised to follow through to see that the end justified the means; however, she isn't nearly as interested in providing that evidence as she is in showing that, as a result of moving these students, a smaller percentage of students district-wide are attending "failing" schools.

You see, making the statistic look good was the goal, not better education for these students. If McGinley really had the interests of these students at heart, she would be brimming over with tales of how their lives have been improved.

Once again, the superintendent has been rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Don't they look attractive on her pie chart?

CCSD's Rural Schools Win--for Now

Congratulations to those community members from Edisto Island and Hollywood who made their desires known to Superintendent Nancy McGinley and the Charleston County School Board. Middle-school-age students will remain in their respective schools for the next school year.

These concerned taxpayers must know that the fight is not over and vigilance will be required. Will the time ever come when the superintendent stops thinking in the "Broad" urban mentality of one-size-fits-all? Probably not. Do not believe her weak protestations that she has no intention of closing rural high schools. It's only a matter of time until the next go-round of school "redesign."

No doubt McGinley will structure more "community" input with stacked committees in these communities in the future. Forewarned is forearmed!

P&C Editorial Ignores McGinley's Motives

I'm always happy to see a sensible editorial in the P & C, especially when its topic is the Charleston County School District. Thursday's agreed with Todd Garrett, CCSD School Board member and downtown parent, that the district should not rush into a decision creating a better middle school on the peninsula (District 20), one that would attract rather than repel most parents, as Burke Middle does at present.

Is the writer naive? The "rush" is to save middle schoolers from any state takeover of a failing school (Burke High/Middle) and to erase another failing elementary school (Sanders-Clyde) from Superintendent McGinley's list of failures.

Some of us could provide a long list of her failures during her decade of leadership in the district. But who's counting?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surprise! CCSD Super Ignores Neighborhood Planning Team

Strangely enough, the District 20 Neighborhood Planning Team (NPT) took its duties seriously over the last few months and produced a masterful plan to create D20 schools that actually reflect the makeup of its neighborhoods on the peninsula.

No matter. Superintendent McGinley has her own agenda, especially regarding a stand-alone middle school. You see, Burke High/Middle is on the verge of state takeover yet again (can you say, deja vu?). The superintendent has determined to keep Burke's middle school students out of the clutches of a state takeover.

Now, would you believe it, she wants to turn the new Sanders-Clyde elementary school building into a stand-alone middle school, complete with retrofitting that will keep CCSD contractors on the payroll. The plan not only "saves" Burke's middle-school students; it distributes Sanders-Clyde's student body among the remaining elementary schools. Thus, the super can declare she has yet again reduced the percentage of "failing" elementary schools on the peninsula. Masterful.

You can't make a parody of this; it already is.

Murky Hiring at Northwoods Middle Not Encouraging

Perhaps Dan Conner really will be an effective principal for Northwoods Middle; however. Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has some 'splaining to do.

• If Conner was such an effective principal at Stall High School for four years, why did he leave, and why did Stall just make the list of lowest performing schools in the state?
• Why did Conner feel the pull to become a principal in Iowa? Why was his tenure there so stormy?
• Are jobs as principal in middle and high schools really so interchangeable?
• Why was Conner  named interim at Garrett when he came back from Iowa (presumably with his tail between  his legs), and why is Garrett's popular band director now out of a job?
• Why wasn't Northwoods Middle allowed some consistency by keeping on its interim instead of naming Conner in August, just at the beginning of the school year?

Does this situation sound like mismanagement to you?

One More Try at AP Proficiency in CCSD

Over the next three years the Charleston County School District will receive nearly $2 million in federal tax dollars to prepare for and improve Advanced Placement classes at five high-minority and high-poverty middle and high schools in North Charleston. Since CCSD's policies of placing so many magnet schools in North Charleston have drained achieving students from these schools over the last decade, the news should be welcomed.

The College Board's Advanced Placement program does indeed have much to recommend it, not the least of which is that the exams are not locally graded; hence, no dumbing down to get the desired results as so happens with state testing. A solid background that begins at least as early as middle school (and preferably in elementary school) must precede the rigorous requirements of high school AP courses. One need look only to Burke for the poor results in its AP academy, caused not by its teachers, who do yeoman service, but by the weak backgrounds of students entering such courses.

If CCSD uses its dollars wisely (always questionable), such a large sum of money should go a long way towards alleviating discrepancies with other areas of CCSD. Why, even Superintendent McGinley has suggested that "she also would like to identify more gifted and talented students in elementary schools, so they can take more accelerated classes."

Does she really mean what she says? Taking children who are on or ahead of grade level and separating them from the majority of students who cannot read well? That would require--horrors--tracking. Educrats of the last two or three decades would roll over in their graves.

Of course, having a First-Grade or Third-Grade or Sixth-Grade Academy amounts to the same, just in different schools. Maybe the old ways weren't so bad after all.

Surprise! Expectations for Students Make a Difference

What every teacher knows:

Without order and discipline in a school, academics suffer. So Ken Burger's column in Thursday's P&C on the turn-around at Haut Gap on Johns Island surprises only in its common-sense approach. See Order Is a Product of Expectation.

Burger touts Haut Gap as a magnet school (although statistics would prove it). And a new school building may be just the opportunity to shake off old stereotypes of poor academics and daily mayhem. (Haut Gap was originally built in the 1950s during segregation to show that black schools could be "separate but equal.")

The magnet program and new building are just the icing. What really makes the cake and drives any school's improvement is a good principal. Principal Paul Padron and Ed White, his "PBIS instructional coach" (i.e., head disciplinarian) are to be commended, as well as the rest of the staff who are making a difference in the lives of students who aren't always expected to succeed.

We can't count on all students' having interested, involved, and caring parents--even if each child deserves them!

"Dramatic" Step into the Past in CCSD

What seemed completely normal 50 or 60 years ago has returned dramatically: single-gender education. Now that virtually all schools at every level are co-ed, even the Citadel, the federal government has deemed that we may once again separate the sexes. [SeeMorningside Middle to Pioneer Dramatic Single-gender Program] I suppose that in another 50 years people will be pushing for co-ed education.

Of course, CCSD would not be making the effort without the threat of state takeover. NCLB strikes again!