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.

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.

Kovach Indictment Cramps CCSD's Style on Not-a-Penny Tax Extension

When the Charleston County School District last kicked off its Yes4Schools campaign in 2010, the initial press conference was held at Sanders-Clyde Elementary. What a difference a little fear can make!

This time the press conference's appearance in a vacant lot opposite Dunston Elementary School on Remount Road shed any perceived impropriety that the tax is being pushed by CCSD. The Chamber of Commerce spokesman carefully pointed out that "no school employees were at the campaign kickoff."

Crimping Nancy McGinley's style. Too bad.

Berkeley CSD's Thompson About to "Get Outta Dodge"?

Perhaps the moment of clarity came when they issued a search warrant for Berkeley County Superintendent Rodney Thompson's computer. Or maybe when Amy Kovach, his communications director, received a second indictment.

At some point Thompson realized that the remaining two years on his contract with the county's school district would not be fun. Whether ultimately indicted or not, Thompson will leave a district that seems largely improved under his guidance.

This latest news punches another hole in all school districts' personnel meddling in referendums. It should send a clear signal to Charleston County School District Superintendent McGinley to be more careful in the upcoming tax renewal.

Oh, I forgot. She's safe because Board member and Chamber of Commerce officer Chris Fraser will do the dirty work.

Brian Hicks Imposes Stereotypes Where None Exist over "Not a Penny" Tax

When did we guess that Brian Hicks was merely a liberal flack? Probably when his first column appeared in the P&C--was that only seven years ago? Seems like an eternity.

Case in point: The Charleston County Republican Party questions the need for a six-year extension of the "not a penny" tax to fill the coffers of the Charleston County School District for its contractor friends. It dares to suggest that the "not a penny" tax is overkill when new schools are necessary only in the places where population is burgeoning and overfilling present schools.

Of course, Hicks' being the conspiracy theorist he is (must be a friend of co-conspiracy theorist Dot Scott) thinks the anti-tax sentiment reveals that Republicans want new schools only for whites.

Um, duh.

Mostly whites are moving where the student population is bulging at the seams. Must be a Republican plot perpetrated in New Jersey and Ohio.

Hicks also claims to believe that the Metro Chamber of Commerce is conservative! He neglects to mention in his anti-Republican rant that Chris Fraser, whom he quotes for the School Board, is the guiding force of the Chamber of Commerce on the School Board and an officer of the Chamber, a bit like ignoring that Hillary Clinton is the wife of an ex-President.

To top off his ignorant rant, Hicks suggests that tourists will pay 40 percent of money raised with the extension. Apparently, he's been drinking CCSD's Kool-Aid. Heaven forfend that property owners should foot the bill!

Hicks wants to lay this oh-so-regressive sales tax on the backs of the poor instead.

What a guy!

Remember: it's not a penny. How often do you purchase items for a dime?

CCSD's "Core" List Satisfies Vote Totals for Sales Tax--They Hope

Surely even the most enthusiastic supporters for building a new Lincoln High School realize that the mushrooming student population at Wando (now the state's biggest high school and approaching 4,000 students) begs for a new Mt. Pleasant high school first. Let's face it: Lincoln's 100 students would be merely a blip on Wando's radar screen.

On the other hand, if the Charleston County School District builds a new high school for McClellanville, ignoring the historical elegance and millions in investment already made in the original McClellanville school building, let's not build it in McClellanville.

In fact, the new Mt. Pleasant high school should be built halfway between the Wando campus and downtown McClellanville. That would work out to be the center of Awendaw. Imagine that! In a few years it won't seem so out of the way to new residents of Mt. Pleasant either, since development will continue galloping north.

There.

I've just solved the problem of McClellanville's new high school and Mt. Pleasant's at one fell swoop. There's no need to spend half a million developing plans for a new Lincoln either, unless the administration is trying to keep its architects busy.

CCSD School Board Steps In It

Remember all those promises you made? It turns out some people want to hold the Charleston County School District to its promises. What a thought!

As a result, after foisting a 500-student building on a barrier island (Sullivans Island Elementary) because no school building could be built smaller, at a hurried last-minute meeting the school board voted to build a new school for fewer than 200 students in McClellanville. 

You can't make this stuff up.

A Letter to the Editor sums up this nightmare best:

Costly call

The 11th-hour decision by certain members of the Charleston County School Board to vote for a new $35 million Lincoln High School for, at best count, 170 kids, is an unmitigated folly of epic portions. 

Using fourth-grade math with second-grade logic should make it clear to anyone that this is a total misappropriation of public funds. 

When questioning the failures of the South Carolina education system, we should start with the failures of our local elected leaders. 

Joseph Wren
Carolina Isle
Mount Pleasant

Let's hear from our school board candidates on this decision! 

Sheheen's Incestuous Relationship with SCEA Showing

The South Carolina Education Association wants to be the equivalent of a teachers' union for South Carolina. If Vincent Sheheen has his way, it will become one.

Meanwhile, Sheheen will parrot every desire of the association. His "back-to-basics" education plan is anything but. What Sheheen knows about education can be written on the head of a pin, and a small one at that. He knows where his backers are, and "back-to-basics" has a nice ring to it. Too bad it's not about basics!

No, it's about money, otherwise known as OPM. Sheheen's education plans should be called "spend-more-money" education.

CCSD's Incestuous Relationship with Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce

The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce never saw a sales tax it didn't like, but then who would expect it to advocate for the poor or even (gasp!) small businesses. 

Once again, the Chamber will run the campaign to convince Charleston County voters to vote against their own best interests and approve extending the one-percent sales tax for the Charleston County School District. Let's see if the voters can be fooled twice.

Point man for both the CCSD Board of Trustees and the Chamber is, you guessed it, Chris Fraser, who is a

member of the Board and chairman of the Chamber. How cosy. Needless to say, the Chamber always manages (with the collusion of CCSD) to have its own representative elected to the Board.

Fraser is a perfect example of how a supposedly non-partisan position can be used to advance interests other than those of students. Remember the payments to fired teachers who didn't get their proper hearings when Board members didn't show up? Fraser missed 29 of those 30 meetings. Well, he had other business to take care of for the Chamber, no doubt. Why, Fraser even brags that he doesn't bill his expenses to the district. Too bad he can't be billed for the payments to those teachers.

While Chairman of the CCSD Board, Fraser also signed off on CCSD's Race-to-the-Top grant proposal without telling the other members of the Board. Hasn't that worked out well?

It's been 30 years since the voters have been asked to approve a library expansion program in Charleston County. A referendum will be on the ballot this fall. 

That's the tax that we should vote for!

CCSD Delays List for Projects Funded by Sales Tax Extension

What's the problem, folks? The Charleston County School Board, under the advice of Michael Bobby, has completed its list of projects to be funded by the sales tax extension up  for a vote this fall. Yet the list is so special that it can't be shared yet with the voters.

No doubt the propaganda campaign is still in the works. You know, the one that will guarantee that the measure will pass by giving every corner of Charleston County a reason to vote for its own pork.

No one disputes that some schools are needed, especially in fast-growing Mount Pleasant. Some of us thought two high schools were needed when they built the new Wando. But, please, schools of "advanced studies" at West Ashley and North Charleston High Schools? The latter, especially, has plenty of extra room already and was renovated recently. This need to spread the pork around for votes leads to unnecessary squandering of tax dollars. How about raising property taxes in parts of the district where schools are really needed instead.

Vote "no" on this sales tax extension. They can call it a "penny" all they want, but how many items do you purchase that cost a dime?

Right.

CCSD Gets Ready to Soak the Poor Again with Sales Tax

Perhaps the new education reporter for the P&C doesn't realize that new schools can be built with property tax money? Certainly, her reporting on the ongoing shenanigans of the Charleston County School Board and the district's chief financial officer, Michael Bobby, seems to ignore the possibility.

Once again CCSD will promise new building projects all over Charleston County in order to get enough votes to renew the one percent sales tax. The district will try to tell you that tourists will contribute mightily to the coffers under this system. Don't drink the Kool Aid. Sales taxes are regressive and fall most heavily on the poor. Apparently CCSD believes that the poor, not the property owners, should pay for new buildings and technology. 

Don't hold your breath until CCSD runs out of schools to raze or improve to the tune of millions of dollars. Yes, Mt. Pleasant needs more schools. Why inflate what's really needed to get votes from all corners of the county?  So that the school sales tax will pass.

Where's the outside audit when we need it?

CCSD Hoping to Soak the Poor Again with New Sales Tax

Doesn't the P&C's new education reporter realize that raising the sales tax isn't the only way to finance new school buildings?

It's deja vu all over again.

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.

Stop CCSD Administrators' Bloated Pay Packages

The Charleston County School District remains topheavy with too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Neverless, Superintendent McGinley is determined to increase pay for administrators at a higher rate than that for those teachers who are on the front line everyday.

Who doesn't believe that those from "off" would take a lower salary just to live in the Lowcountry? Talk to medical students at MUSC and see the truth of that statement. The same undoubtedly holds true for incoming educrats. However, McGinley (and her school board of lackeys) commissioned a study several years back to justify having CCSD's administrative salaries equal to those of less desirable cities. 

Now, the chickens come home to roost: over $11.6 million in rising costs in the district is tied to employee pay raises, but only a quarter of that rise is due to increasing teachers' pay; nearly 75 percent ($8.5 million) is "partial implementation of a new salary study that will boost pay for some employees [i.e., not teachers!] based on market pay for similar positions." The district will dip into the "rainy day fund" so that taxes need not be raised.

Nice work if you are a friend of McGinley's--live in the Lowcountry and get paid as though you live in Podunk.

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.

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.

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.

CCSD and North Charleston's TIF: What Did CCSD Get?

Still the question remains, thanks to closed-door meetings!

The Post and Courier
North Charleston expands special tax-financing district
David Slade
Posted: Thursday, December 12, 2013 9:42 p.m., Updated: Thursday, December 12, 2013 10:12 p.m.
"North Charleston has expanded a special tax-financing district that will channel some future city, county and school district property taxes into the city's redevelopment initiatives.
"Initially, the funding will mostly support the ongoing development of the city-sponsored Oak Terrace Preserve subdivision near Park Circle. Funds could also be used throughout the designated areas for things such as street and utility improvements, and parks.
"The way it works is, the city has expanded what's known as a tax increment financing district, with the county and school district's approval. The deal extends by 10 years a TIF district that was due to expire in 2018, and increases the size of that TIF district to nearly 700 acres.
"Within the TIF district, for the next 15 years, property taxes generated by new development and rising property values will be used to pay for city-chosen improvements within that same area.
"The Beach Company's Garco Mill development and the former Naval Hospital are both within the TIF area.
"New property tax revenues from development and rising real estate values would have gone to the city, county and school district general funds, if there were no TIF district. The TIF concept is that public improvements will increase property values, which will create tax revenues, which will repay money borrowed to fund the improvements.
"The school district accounts for the largest share of property tax revenue, and will keep 12.5 percent of the new property tax revenues that it would have otherwise received, under an agreement with the city. The TIF district will get the rest.

A little transparency, please.

North Charleston TIF Expansion Agreement with CCSD Murky at Best

What was the quid pro quo for the Charleston County School Board's agreement to forego future tax revenue in an expanded TIF district in North Charleston? The district has so much money that missing increments for the next 15 years don't matter?

Here is the problem in a nutshell: closed-door meetings raise public distrust. The deal was negotiated in closed meeting. Other than voting 4-3 for approval, the district has released no further information. How opaque can the district get?

Of course, that last statement assumes that the reporter didn't ignore statements about the agreement made in open session. You never know.