C.C. Blaney: Magnet Status to Lure White Students to CCSD

It's a shame. If the Charleston County School District really wanted diverse elementary schools (read, "integrated"), it would reinstitute tracking!

I know, I know. Tracking has been the third rail of educational philosophy for the last couple of decades. Instead, CCSD is laboriously trying to deal with the problem of white flight by creating magnet schools. Students will end up tracked by school instead of by class.

C.C. Blaney is the case in point. In the early 1990s the school had nearly 400 students enrolled. By the spring of 2014, it had fewer than 200 students and was rated Below Average, with 94 percent of its students on free or reduced lunch. This year the building sat vacant as its students were divided between two other schools; ex-Superintendent McGinley was only too happy to remove it from her stats on failing schools.

Blaney will end up with the same "diversity" problem as Academic Magnet under the present circumstances. CCSD must up its game with the many defacto segregated black schools in the district. Until it does so, no true magnet school will be as diverse as Charleston County citizens would hope.

Angel Oak Parent: Every Child Deserves a New School

You've got to be kidding. Here in the traditional Lowcountry, where tourists flock to gawk at centuries-old buildings, the Charleston County School District's actions have convinced parents that every child should, by right, learn inside a brand-new school building.

That's the take-away from the gripes of Angel Oak Elementary parents, who see that Mount Pleasant is getting more new schools than Johns Island. According to Stanley Heydrick, whose wife is the PTA President, ""Our kids deserve what all the other kids deserve, a new school and resources that are up to date."

Nevermind that CCSD will spend over $9 million to renovate the 38-year-old school (Good Lord! It was built in medieval times--1977!), parents want the district to spend at least twice that to erect an entirely new building. After all, the present one is "aging."

By this logic, 40 years is too long for a school building to be in use, renovated or not. Don't you wonder where the cut-off is? 30 years? 20? 10? Maybe it's already time to replace the "aging" Wando High School building!

Parental complaints about leaks and cockroaches are legitimate. However, the problem is not the building's age, but CCSD's usual neglect of proper building maintenance. How did those downtown mansions survive for centuries?

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.

SC House Signs on to CCSD's One-Cent Sales Tax Extension

Don't you love it when politicians get together to spend Other People's Money? Our state House has now made it possible for voters to approve an extension of the tax for capital building programs in both Charleston and Horry Counties in the next election cycle. Otherwise, those districts might actually have a chance to pause and take stock of whether previous capital expenditures were really worth it.

My favorite statement from Michael Bobby, who is in charge of CCSD's capital program?

"The school could use the money to finance long-term bonds instead of a "pay-as-you-go" system, which they say would reduce the overall cost of projects. They could also use any additional funds generated by the 1 percent tax to reduce property taxes."

In other words, what we really need is long-term debt. And we can promise the voters that we might reduce property taxes. Actually, I've always been a fan of "pay-as-you-go." That must make me old fashioned. If you think this tax will lower property taxes, well, I've got a bridge. . . . Furthermore, sales taxes are the most hurtful to the poor among us, something CCSD Board Vice-Chairman Tom Ducker apparently doesn't mind.

As you read, Superintendent McGinley and Bobby are busy conspiring to dream up a list of "necessary" capital projects that will be of interest to voters in every corner of Charleston County. They've been working on it for months. You get the picture.

Call or email your state senator and tell him or her to vote against this bill if it actually comes to a vote in the state senate! And ask the CCSD Board of Trustees for an external audit of capital expenditures. It's past time.

CCSD Proposal Highlights McGinley's Failures, Sales Tax

We will run out of fingers if we count the failed programs that have wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in the Charleston County School District under Superintendent McGinley's watch. Associate Superintendent Jim Winbush (who wouldn't sneeze unless McGinley recommended it)'s proposal of an alternative high school program for "at-risk" students is a case in point.

Just in case you've forgotten, McGinley's failed solution to the problem was the "discipline school." McGinley brought in the Broad-recommended edublob called Community Education Partners to set up and run the school. Not only was the company contracted to run it, but the $9 million school building was designed and built according to its specifications. As the reporter so quaintly puts it, when "the company didn't produce the expected results, its contract ended." That was more than five years ago.

Supposedly the gently-named Community High School would be more than a "discipline school." Board member Michael Miller rightly wonders if it would be a "dumping ground," since Chief Academic Officer Lisa Herring suggested perhaps 500 students would fall into categories such as lagging in high school credits, pregnancy, low test scores, and return from juvenile detention. This way, McGinley could show how Vision 2016 has succeeded by taking low-scoring students out of local high schools. Genius.

No doubt the proposed school will require, if not a new multi-million dollar building, at least multi-million dollar retrofitting of an existing building--all part of the new campaign to extend the one-cent sales tax.

Sick and Tired of CCSD Half-Truths in the P & C

Having read the story in Sunday's paper concerning payments to fired teachers in excess of $150,000, a person must assume that the reporter (or editor) desires for the elected Charleston County School Board to appear as slacker idiots. Nowhere in the article does she mention that it was CCSD administration's decision to defer hearings that began the "rubber room" salary status of five tenured teachers who were not given contracts.

One suggestion from a local observer deserves a look:

"If the board had its own administrator to run a small and efficient staff focused only on the board's work, one that was independent of the superintendent's office, preferably a competent attorney, it wouldn't be running into these conflicts. That's how county council does it. Every standing committee in the state legislature does it that way, too. I can't imagine the cost of this small but qualified staff being any more expensive than what the district is now paying out to outside attorneys and for other related charges associated with this problem."

Two other observations deserve attention:

1. Why does a hearing take an entire day? Something is wrong with the process. Cindy Bohn Coats is in charge and should move the hearings along so that no hearing takes more than half a day.
2. Board members need to know in advance that their election means many other meetings to attend than merely the twice-monthly Monday night ones. The amount of time spent on CCSD business is extensive. As comments from two or three present Board members reveal, the Board should be paid more or the self-employed will be discouraged from participating. At this rate, the time involved for representing the public points toward a board composed of retirees and millionaires.

The truth is that some non-attendees have missed more than 29 out of 30 meetings (our noblesse oblige Chamber of Commerce member, Chris Fraser, comes to mind).

CCSD's Planning for Parking Fees a Joke

Evidently the reporter can't remember that part of the Memminger School property was sold off to the College of Charleston on a no-bid basis in April of 2012. Geeze, that's less than a year ago. What short memories we have.

Just think, that piece of property could have been used for parking. Instead, together with those from Buist, the Charleston County School District will spend almost $100,000 per year in parking fees for employees.

Speaking of Buist, district administrators, including Superintendent McGinley, wax poetic over the need for a gym and other spaces, expansion of the old footprint to bring the school amenities provided to other schools. That's the excuse for paying parking fees for Buist employees.

The reporter has also neglected to mention that parents in District 20 (downtown schools) proposed combining Buist and Charleston Progressive, another school being rebuilt at the old Courtenay campus only two blocks away. Several lower grades could have been assigned to the CPA campus and upper grades to the Buist campus, with the existing gym shared by both levels.

Oh, duh. That was just too logical, not to speak of putting a higher percentage of black students into the merged schools.

Here's one of those mathematical word problems:

The proceeds from the sale of the Memminger property went into the operating budget. The fees for parking come out of the operating budget. How many years will pass before the money gained from the sale will be exhausted by parking fees?

And another capital asset will have disappeared.

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?

Parent University? CCSD Needs Truth in Labeling

Today anyone who has a child enrolled in the Charleston County School District may attend what the district bills as "Parent University" at Stall High School. The purpose of the gathering ostensibly is to inform parents of  "Vision 2016" goals and of Common Core strategies. Oh, yes. Breakout groups will discuss other aspects of education.

Nowhere in the district's press release does it mention the granting of advanced degrees. Who dreamed up this misnomer that conveys status upon a parent-relations ploy? Our district has lifted this idea wholesale from others as close as Charlotte and as far away as Boston. Do these people believe that parents will assume attending such a "university" will assist them towards a degree? Can we deduce that other CCSD descriptors are equally inflated in importance?

Here's a definition of the word "university" for the special attention of the district's chief academic officer:

u·ni·ver·si·ty  (yn-vûrs-t) n. pl. u·ni·ver·si·ties 1. An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master's degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's degrees. 2. The buildings and grounds of such an institution. 3. The body of students and faculty of such an institution. [Middle English universite, from Old French, from Medieval Latin niversits, from Latin, the whole, a corporate body, from niversus, whole; see universe.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Corpus Christi 2009

CCSD's McGinley Unprepared for Board's Challenges on Burke Recommendation

She's getting soft.

Charleston County School Superintendent Nancy McGinley has controlled the membership of its Board of Trustees for so long that neither she nor any of her henchmen can support their assertions when questioned by independent board members. Monday night's meeting is a prime example.

On the Executive Session agenda McGinley put a request to move Child Development programs to the Rhett Building at Burke High/Middle. [See previous column for my take on this proposal.] According to reports, McGinley was unprepared and disorganized when several board members peppered her with questions.

That was not the worst of it, however. The superintendent and her lackeys made several statements that have been shown to be outright lies and others that seemed to be wishful thinking. Board members are not amused.

For example, McGinley claimed that a waiting list exists at Garrett for the early childhood Career Technical Education (CTE) program, but when a board member checked, he found that no waiting list exists. Michael Miller also discovered that McGinley's claim that students want such a program at Burke was wishful thinking.

Showdowns also occurred between member Todd Garrett and Chief Finance Officer Michael Bobby regarding enrollment and vacancy figures in downtown schools. What Bobby didn't know was that Garrett was using the numbers from the seven-day count that Bobby himself supplied to the board earlier this month. Using an EXCEL spreadsheet with the numbers, Garrett reached conclusions that Bobby had tried to avoid.

In a move that long-time watchers of the McGinley administration find typical, Associate Superintendent for Secondary Schools Lou Martin implied to board members that a list of  CTE programs were already in place at Burke and Lowcountry Tech. They aren't. Currently, Burke offers a lackluster culinary arts CTE course. McGinley probably assumes it need not be rigorous for future hamburger flippers! In fact, the courses and "majors" enumerated by Martin are a wish list presented for the board's approval in 2010.

Hoisted by his own petard, Chief Operating Officer for Capital Programs Bill Lewis claimed that the unused Fraser building could not be used for Child Development programs because it has an elevated first floor. Maybe he meant there are steps going in? In any event, only three years ago Bobby pushed for a CD center at Fraser for the exclusive use of MUSC, C of C, and CCSD employees. Prior to that he had told Fraser parents that the school was unsafe. So which is it, Bill?

Well, McGinley was probably prescient in her request for Executive Session on this item. Imagine the uproar that would have occurred if members of the community had heard this discussion.

We hope someone watching CCSD has filed a lawsuit regarding the Open Meetings Act, which McGinley seems to scorn at will. Meanwhile, the Board did table the request for later action.

Gee, I wonder why.

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?

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.

Note to Daniel Island: Be Careful About Joining CCSD

Residents of Daniel Island are mad as hell, and they're not going to take it any more! At least that attitude emanates from the latest discussions over whether the "island community" should vote to become part of Charleston County.

First, new residents discover they're not in Charleston County, even though they're in the City of Charleston. So confusing! Even the local newspaper often forgets that they're in Berkeley County. That means that their students must find a surreptitious avenue into Charleston County's Academic Magnet High School, ride nine miles to Hanahan High School, or pay tuition to attend Bishop England High School, situated on the island where they can ride their bikes to school.

Second, speaking of riding bikes to school, the icing on the cake appeared last spring when, to relieve overcrowding at the Daniel Island School (K-8), the Berkeley County School District announced that it will build a new middle school. In Cainhoy. DI residents must have choked on their morning latte. "No biking to Cainhoy," they shouted. "It's not part of our island dream." Residents want a second school on Daniel Island.

These people need to become acquainted with CCSD Superintendent Nancy McGinley, who's never seen a neighborhood school she didn't want to destroy. Students will be bused in from all points of the compass. Further, though Berkeley County is well advanced in planning and financing a new school to relieve DI crowding, Charleston County would need to add the school to its next go-round of financing, postponing construction for at least five years more. If the idea is to bike to school, forgetaboutit!

Residents also need to review their geography: Daniel Island sits between the "north zone" (North Charleston) with its vacancies in many of its failing schools and the"east zone" (Mt. Pleasant) with its highly overcrowded (think Cario) successful schools. Where will the overflow from Daniel Island go?

From the Daniel Island School (as a reference point) to Hanahan High School measures about 9 miles.
From that point to overcrowded Wando High School is about 12 miles.

From Daniel Island to vacancies-a-plenty North Charleston High School is only 8 miles. Think.

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.

Why No College Summit in CCSD?

Cross High School. Berkeley County. Eighty percent free or reduced lunch. Students from the small communities of Cross, Ridgeville, Pineville, Pinopolis and Sandridge. Forty seniors this year.

Where am I going with this one? Not where you would expect.

Named one of America’s Best High Schools by U.S. News & World Report in 2010.

Maybe its participation in a program named College Summit contributed to that recognition. To quote the P & C,

• At Cross, college planning starts in earnest during the spring of junior year, when students are encouraged to take the SAT or ACT. That way, they can meet early decision deadlines, which is Oct. 1 for many colleges.
• Most of the 40 seniors at the school have submitted at least one [college application by now].
• The seniors got a jump on the process thanks to a program called College Summit, a class they all take.
• “We lay out for them how to get into college,” said Seay, who teaches the College Summit program and is chair of the social studies department. “We want them to have a post-secondary plan, but this community is not a wealthy community and we find that some of them will turn down college to go into the military or get a job.”
• For that reason, all of the students also take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the military’s admission test, and attend an annual career fair with local industry.
• “One of the things I love most about College Summit is that they are very persistent in making sure the students get what they need,” Davis said. “Although not all of the students wind up going to college, it has created a college-going culture here.”

Well, amen to that. Why not Burke or North Charleston High Schools?

Vote in Haste; Repent in Leisure in CCSD

A sloppy presentation from Michael Bobby, CCSD's chief financial officer, will push through a faulty use of part of the Memminger School property at Monday's Board of Trustees meeting. Somehow the College of Charleston was given an exclusive right to bid for the property in a secret process.

Outrageous, really:

• failing to make the sale public by offering it on the district's website;
• failing to have a current appraisal; and
• not clearly defining what is being sold.

The current redevelopment plan for the new Memminger Elementary reduces the outdoor play area to about 40 percent of its original size. Who decided that? The area never was extensive; as a former student at Memminger, I know!

Surely the Harleston neighborhood and the adjoining school would benefit more from an open space or a park rather than another student dorm!

Five Board members are guaranteed to rubber stamp this outrage. Remember them next election.

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)

What Lies Beneath. . . Buist?

Does history of the Charleston peninsula matter? Apparently not to CCSD's Bill Lewis and his boss, Superintendent Nancy McGinley.

How else to explain their treatment of the land upon which the Buist school sits? What if, indeed as is possible, that land reveals artifacts of early settlements of African-Americans, even of slaves?

We'll never know what history has been lost. The Charleston County School District has shown its disdain for the past from the beginning of its campaign to replace the old school building.

Nevertheless, we can ask questions. Alert observers of CCSD have plenty of them.

1. Work on reopening Buist in August of 2013 remains on track, in fact, at "full speed, damn the torpedoes" speed while the promised replacement of Memminger, James Simons, and Courtenay has ground to "dead slow," aiming at 2014 or later.
2. In the dead of night, residents near Buist have been awakened by noise of construction on the site. Working at night because?
3. Perhaps the removal of truckloads of excavated soil given to a member of the public and not examined for artifacts is easier then. For all we know, graves are being removed--they would just slow down the work.
4. Rumors abound of the pocketing of coins and even slave tags by workers involved with the pile and foundation work. No one thought there might be below-ground historical assets?
5. On the same topic, the area was part of the city's defense lines during the American Revolution's siege of Charleston before its surrender in May of 1780. Just sayin.'
6. If CCSD could order a seismic survey, why did it not order an archeological survey and recovery plan to be included in its original time line?
7. Did anyone consider using the valuable expertise of staff at the Charleston Museum? Why will CCSD not release its Board-ordered archeological surveys done before the work was started? Were Final Reports even made?

Let's face it--Memminger is also in an area that begs for archeological study.

Back in the 1950s the Charleston Historical Society banded together to save architectural gems in danger of destruction. Without its efforts, the old city of Charleston would be half the gem it is today.

There could easily be as much history below ground as what we see above, but the administrative structure of the Charleston County School District echoes Rhett Butler: "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."