CCSD Disconcerted by Its Own Policies Regarding School Transfers

I'm not sure anyone has counted how many programs Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has instituted to entice students to attend school outside their attendance zones, but those programs are legion.

So it's all the more puzzling why CCSD administration last month claimed to be "disconcerted" over this trend. Maybe it thinks the "wrong" students are heeding the siren call of magnet and partial-magnet schools or petitioning for curriculum offered only at the other end of the county?

Actually, one reason for concern is that, while North Charleston's elementary and middle schools are full, numbers are exiting North Charleston for high school, perhaps to avoid ninth-grade classes where up to 40 percent are reading at the fourth-grade level or below. Another concern is falling enrollment at de-facto all-black Burke, the only high school on a majority-white peninsula. Could Burke's celebration of its all-black hsitory have anything to do with white flight?

Seriously, does anyone wonder why students who can choose to go elsewhere do so, even opting sometimes for "gasp" private schools?

Board Vice-Chairman Ducker worries that too much parental choice will send some schools "into a death spiral." Some parents, on the other hand, think a death spiral might be the solution for the ones with dismal records.

CCSD has decided to throw another edublob consultant at their perceived problem: for $16,500 he or she will "study school choice trends using a two-pronged approach--an online survey and focus groups." With all the fine administrators already on board at 75 Calhoun, you'd think this could be an in-house job. Apparently not.

Let's at least hope that McGinley resists tinkering with the focus groups.

CCSD's Coats Needs Map-Reading Skills for Hursey

What is "walking distance" for an elementary school? No doubt Hursey Elementary School parents are asking themselves this very question.

According to Cindy Bohn Coats, Charleston County School Board Chairman, when Hursey becomes all Montessori, "students would have traditional choices within walking distance of their homes." CCSD administration can't leave well enough alone. Hursey now contains both traditional and Montessori programs, both of which are equally "diverse," to use the new buzzword. Superintendent McGinley proposed, and the school board rubber-stamped, that the school drop its traditional program.

Take a good look at the map of Hursey's sending district, Cindy. How old must a child be to cross busy Montague Avenue to get to North Charleston Elementary or travel the distance to Chicora?

These are mere details to Coats, who's never had an elementary school student of her own. And she thinks she should be mayor of North Charleston.

Please.

Deja Vu on CCSD's Failing Schools

Burke. North Charleston HS. Stall HS. Sanders-Clyde. Burns.

"No Berkeley or Dorchester County schools were in this group," according to today's newspaper. Really? Don't you wonder why CCSD has the honor of five schools located on the peninsula and in North Charleston that have achieved the notoriety of the Palmetto Priority List? (Why, the list doesn't even include all of the failing schools that district administration has shuttered instead of improving over the last few years!)

Despite her training at and assistance from the Broad Institute, Superintendent McGinley has now proved she doesn't have the qualities and wisdom to "fix" the problem. Who else remembers the glory days when Sanders-Clyde made great strides in its test scores? Why, McGinley was so impressed that she made its principal head of two schools simultaneously. She supposedly had no clue regarding the scandal that finally came out of the closet--organized changing of answers on the tests. And the principal was allowed to escape to a district in North Carolina. Isn't it lucky?

What McGinley has managed to accomplish is new and/or expensively remodeled buildings that should be showplaces for learning. The building program has also been a boon to construction firms. Not to teachers.  Not to students. If a state-of-the-art building could fix these schools' problems, we would not be talking about them now.

Idiocy of Selling Memminger School Property

 Say it ain't so, Joe! Or should we say, Michael  (Bobby, that is)?
While Charleston County School District Superintendent Nancy McGinley promises great future enhancements ("global studies") to the District 20 Memminger Elementary campus now being adjusted to earthquake standards, the district's chief financial officer, Michael Bobby, is preparing the School Board to sell off part of the property.

Do these people talk to each other? Or is something more underhanded going on. You know developers would love to get their hands on this property situated in a prime real estate area not far from King and Broad.

Why would these non-natives in charge of CCSD care if a school named Memminger has been present on that site for over 100 years? Or that the gift of the property to the school district specifically provides for a school on the site? (see below)

CCSD has already allowed the sale of the original Memminger School auditorium after its "benign neglect" over several decades; now it will sell off the property on Wentworth that contains elementary classrooms.

Dectect a pattern?

And construction is moving so slowly. Why isn't the same construction moving slowly at Buist?


20 Beaufain St.

-- Memminger school, The first parsonage of St. Philip's Episcopal Church was built on this site about 1698. It was part of the Glebe Lands, 17 acres given to the minister of the Church of England in Charles Town and his successors in office "forever," by Mrs. Affra Coming, in 1698. The Rev. Alexander Garden, rector of St. Philip's and Commissary of the Bishop of London, opened school for black and Indian children on the GlebeGlebe St.). ln the division of the Glebe Lands between St. Philip's and St. Michael's in 1797, the southern portion, including the old parsonage, was conveyed to St. Michae's. In 1858, the Normal School, for the training of female teachers, was built on the site of the old parsonage. Charleston architect Edward C. Jones designed the large and impressive building which had an arcaded front portico and a high mansard dome. It was built by contractor Benjamin Lucas. The school was later named for Christopher C. Memminger, a leader in establishing Charleston's public school system in the 1850's, and Confederate Secretary of the Treasury in the 1860's. The City Board of School Commissioners bought the property in 1899. Memminger School remained a high school for girls until 1950, when it became an elementary school. This building was built in 1953.

(Smith & Smith, Dwelling Houses , p. 311-313; Wallace, p. 184, 464; Ravenel, Architects , p. 218; Rogers, Charleston in the Age of the Pinckneys , p. 91-92; McCrady, 2:245-247; Williams, St. Michael's , p. 48; Stockton, News & Courier , Aug. 5, 1972; Stockton, unpub. M.S.; Mazyck & Waddell, illus. 21)

858 No-Doc Students Ignored by CCSD Audit

The Charleston County School District counts 858 students as not having the necessary documentation to show that they live in the district.

That's enough to fill an entire school.

Why isn't that the headline instead of the audit's not finding more than 15 out-of-county students at the magnet high schools?

Bizarre.

Exciting Ideas Without the Edublob

This week's article on the poetry recitations at Chicora Elementary [see Finding the Poet Inside] should remind everyone that inspiring children does not require specialized programs or technology sold by the edublob.

A creative teacher can take this blossoming interest in poetry and run with it in so many educational ways.

Partial magnets aside.

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!

Economics Forces McGinley to Do Right Thing

Where are the new and improved statistics for the five "partial-magnet" schools in the Charleston County School District that received thousands of additional dollars and additional teachers this year "to improve [their] performance and increase student diversity"? See Partial-magnet Growth on Hold in Saturday's P&C.

What's that, you say? It's too soon to know if the programs work? Actually, it isn't--at least in regard to statistics on diversity, but I agree that only six months' experience with the programs is too soon to know if they will improve academic performance at those schools.

So why discuss creating more of them if we don't know yet if they work?

Because that's how Superintendent McGinley sees her job--creating one costly special program after another. You know, throw all of them out there and see which ones hit the fan. We're still waiting on the results of last summer's reading improvement experiment and this year's Sixth-Grade Academy.

Let's focus on reading!

If Sullivan's Island Elementary wants to use the marshes and salt water as assets for its science lessons, it doesn't need a special program to do so!

CCSD Board Cuts Off Nose to Spite Face

Needlessly self-destructive. That's the attitude of the majority of the Board of Trustees for the Charleston County School District. Sheer stupidity (or greed, I'm not quite sure which) prevents them from seeing that the way to keep the public school system alive and to regain public confidence is through public charter schools.

Anyone following the shenanigans of the Board recently (and its henchmen at 75 Calhoun) knows only too well its delay-linger-and-wait /dagger-in-the-back attitude towards the establishment of more public charter schools in CCSD--a certain elementary school in West Ashley waits on the front lines of this struggle; a certain District 20 charter high school engaged the enemy on many battlefields in order to exist, and its skirmishes with the enemy continue. The present Board won't even send a representative to the SC Association of Public Charter Schools conference being held on its doorstep.

McGinley's half-baked partial-magnet (that's a magnet that attracts on one side and repels on the other) schools represent the Board's attempt to stave off the inevitable. The illegal moratorium on new charter schools in CCSD is the other half of the attempt.

So, here comes Sen. Robert Ford. [Ford Pushes School Tax Credits] His ideas ought to be CCSD's worst nightmare. Let's see--a Democratic candidate for governor who wants school tax credits versus a Republican candidate for governor who wants school vouchers.

Nancy, Gregg, and Toya--that's called a lose-lose situation for you.

Encouraging Magnet Schools = Busing in CCSD

No one in his or her right mind would trust the numbers game being played by the Charleston County School District in regard to its next budget shortfall. However, one phenomenon is clear: closing schools and reorganizing "partial" magnets produce more busing.

Somehow these costs never seem to figure into the "savings" asserted by these proposals.

We've come to a sorry state when the lowest-paid employees of the district are forced into unpaid furloughs, but even so the powers-that-be at 75 Calhoun have no difficulty living with themselves. Their next step is supposed scrutiny of the millions spent on busing within the district. (Perhaps this step is as disingenuous as the "let's-sell-75-Calhoun ploy; perhaps not.)

According to news emanating from the latest CCSD Board of Trustees meeting, "$276,472 to provide transportation for students who attend the six new partial magnet schools" will be added to the millions for busing next year. [See Board Approves Another Furlough.]

Let's get this straight: low-paid employees will pay for students' transportation to the partial magnets next year: "The furloughs will save a projected $191,942"; why, that leaves $85 thousand in chump change for the Superintendent to pay outside consultants! What could be fairer? So fair, in fact, that the Board saw no need to discuss the merits of the additional furloughs.

Back to busing. According to CCSD (and who trusts them to be accurate about this?), busing to the district's magnet schools costs "about $2.49 million annually." The proposal suggesting that magnet-school parents contribute to the costs opens up a whole new can of worms. Who would trust CCSD to decide which parents could afford to pay and how much they could afford? For sure, if all parents are required to pay busing costs, these magnets will become even more so the bailiwick of the wealthy.

Parents didn't create this problem; CCSD did as it was drawn down that magnet road years ago by--could it be?--present Board member Gregg Meyers. Ask him how to pay for the busing.

School of Communications Needs Editor

If you're going to set yourself up as a magnet school for communications, as 75 Calhoun has encouraged Chicora Elementary in North Charleston to do, you need to employ someone who writes well--writing well is an essential component of communication, isn't it?

Therefore, reading the PDF for Chicora School of Communications (partial magnet) found on the Charleston County School District's website left me in a state of dismay:

Chicora students will be able to:

• Effectively use diverse forms of communication

• Use critical and higher order thinking skills to deliver engaging presentation to inform, persuade and solve problems

• Write proficiently in different genres

• Work cooperatively and exhibit self esteem and pride to communicate utilizing different media

• Effectively apply technology

Every teacher has seen a similar format of curriculum goals, and I will be the first to admit that most of the copy above is adequate; however, some of it is just plain wrong:

• "deliver engaging presentation"? Surely the writer meant to use the plural form. You may see this error as a minor cavil, but remember what the purpose of the curriculum is!

• "presentation to inform, persuade and solve problems"? Where to begin: inform problems? persuade problems? Mindless repetition is the culprit here.

• "exhibit self esteem and pride"? How, pray tell, will this goal be measured?

• "to communicate utilizing different media"? The speaker will inform us how to utilize different media?

I'm afraid what we have here is eduspeak. Let's hope that's not what Chicora will teach.