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Post by geraldgarrett on Oct 10, 2015 8:59:28 GMT -5
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Post by geraldgarrett on Oct 31, 2015 11:47:04 GMT -5
www.wgog.com/lawsuit-alleges-trustees-are-a-rubber-stamp/
Who knew it could be a civil rights violation for a school board to rubber stamp the wants of a superintendent. Didn't we almost lose our accreditation in Pickens County because that idiotic Concerned Citizens group wants our board to do just that?
Darned if you do, darned if you don't.
(By the way, I didn't say "darned" - Alex's built-in censor did. It's like texting. I have never - EVER - used the word "bucking" in a text, but that's what it turns out sometimes thanks to auto-correct. Go figure.)
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Post by conservative on Nov 1, 2015 19:30:19 GMT -5
Alex, Your 20 year chart reveals an interesting relationship between the near-level number of students compared to the rising funding required to teach them. Obviously Pickens County isn't growing much. That can be good and bad. Is it interesting or even possible to add a column or two with statistics the superintendent and teachers believe best measures teacher success/student learning success? Hopefully, we are showing incremental improvement as we devote a steadily higher percentage of funding resources. Meeting or exceeding the expectations of parents would be my top priority, if there is a measure for that. What would be more important?
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Post by alexsaitta on Nov 6, 2015 14:16:35 GMT -5
Here are some academic scores.
First column is SAT score, 2nd is our state rank, third is scores for high school exit exam, rank in the state, and then the graduation rate.
SAT Rank Exit Rank Grad. Year 1510 8 83.3 16 75.4 2007 1497 13 85.7 16 66.7 2008 1525 3 79.7 21 72.6 2009 1547 3 82.8 16 71.2 2010 1523 3 83.3 15 72.6 2011 1541 2 84.0 16 75.2 2012 1483 8 86.1 17 76.8 2013 1489 7 80.2 25 80.4 2014 1501 5 NA NA 82.3 2015
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Post by conservative on Nov 6, 2015 21:25:27 GMT -5
There are mixed results within the numbers. Graduation rate improvements stand out comparatively. I'm thinking this is the important one. Not just for the diploma, but affirmation that kids at every level of potential feel challenged, relevant and personally successful. I'm wondering if education, the way we keep doing it, can last much longer.
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Post by alexsaitta on Jan 1, 2016 13:15:01 GMT -5
I sent this letter to the editor.
Dear Editor,
I’m sure most read the article where the School District Of Pickens County paid architects $50,000 to draw up a plan to close Ben Hagood Elementary as part of a proposal to do $15 to $22 million in building renovations and new construction.
The administration and board majority are moving in the direction of larger class sizes and larger schools. That’s the wrong direction. They eliminated 55 classroom teaching positions the last two years or so. The plan is to eliminate 12 to 18 more teaching positions next year. Now they are proposing Hagood be closed. I oppose both and believe in the principle of smaller class sizes and smaller schools, in order to provide students more personalized instruction with their teachers.
The school district just finished spending $387 million, building 7 new schools and renovating another 20. The district barely has the money to maintain its new buildings much less the funds for more construction running in the $15 to $22 million range.
If they move forward, they’ll have to borrow the money. The district is still saddled with more than $300 million in construction debt (nine times the legal limit thanks to the Greenville Plan). And they’ll have to raise property taxes to fund the additional loans. School taxes have already risen from 128 to 165 mills due to the building program.
Not only do I oppose what the architects presented, but I opposed paying them $50,000 to do the study in the first place. The last eight years the district paid architects nearly $25 million in fees (enough to build a middle school). We are a school district, not a construction company. Instead, the district should shift its focus back to educating children, maintaining its new buildings and work on paying down some of its $300 million in staggering debt.
Alex Saitta
School Board Trustee -- Pickens
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Post by weewillie on Jan 20, 2016 19:28:37 GMT -5
Alex, what is the maximum student to teacher ratio that the State allows? Some parent's are being told that if they close Ben Hagood, the class size could rise to 40 student's per teacher. Has the building at BHE not been kept up and maintenance been done when needed?
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Post by conservative on Jan 21, 2016 12:32:19 GMT -5
Wee,
My suspicion is we're in the middle of a plan that will force the Board (some just need cover) to raise taxes to the maximum (or minimum if you're a SDPC employee) allowed. They've reduced teacher numbers through attrition for several budgets and now the Superintendent is willing to reduce class rooms as well calling it economizing. I don't think pupil numbers are forecasted down. I read the Administration is spending savings as fast as possible instead of prioritizing. A rescission coupled with class ratios sneaking higher than surrounding counties will be a perfect storm for a tax increase. The holy grail of extra pay raises for all is satisfied for a while. Classroom ratios allowed to grow incrementally will suddenly become the next catastrophe only a tax increase will remedy. I might be wrong on the plot but taxes must go up. Why doesn't matter.
On the positive side, I hear or read nothing about deficiencies in teaching accomplishments, goals apparently are being met, parents are happy and graduation rates are rising. We've got a great schools system running on all cylinders. Without a tax increase, how long can they continue meeting these expectations year after year? They'll think of something.
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Post by conservative on Feb 9, 2016 11:00:45 GMT -5
Alex,
Though I'm on the outside looking in, it seems that we've flipped from closing one school (Hagood) to consolidate administration facilities for cost savings to consolidating 3 schools without admin facility consolidation for different cost savings. I read your position and understand it. Public input, especially in the aforementioned school areas, should be the heaviest factor on the scale.
Are these solutions in search of a problem or does the county really have over capacity that has to go? Now. Is it imperative to make a decision on these recent alternatives this week or could cooler heads consider this next year? I'm always leery of an current planning emergency having long term, no-going-back solutions.
I'm surprised that the newly placated teachers, now at desired pay grades, aren't extolling the advantages of even smaller classes or more targeted teaching opportunities for at-risk pupils. We apparently have the space for that, is there a need? That would be worth paying more taxes, if needed. Even I could sell that. Exceptional education opportunity is an agreeably foundational precept to improving Pickens County economically and socially. Is this a chance we are skating by in an attempt to appear financially responsible. Does/is this current plan come with expectations of better teaching and learning outcomes for all students? After all, our school system is not a cost saving scheme, it's a teaching/learning one. The goal is successful lives. Are current plans under consideration furthering the goal?
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Post by conservative on Feb 14, 2016 11:11:37 GMT -5
Vote delayed? I hope the real reason is the public support for these 3 "little mountain schools". They are for the littlest school children in the most rural parts of a rural county. Why the sudden political interest in abandoning this large part of the county school district? Is the reason these schools are here gone? Will this potential rearrangement of pupils come with less school board representation as well? The children will come form the northern potions of the county, but will the political power flow to the school locations? The most important question is how will this improve K-5 learning for northern Pickens Co. children? My world is purposely small now, but my only new neighbor, ever, moved in with Holly Springs Elementary nearby in mind for their pack of soon-to-be elementary students. I think this one family represents many who want to take advantage of life in this portion of Pickens Co.
Schools are fundamental for supporting families. Every portion of Pickens Co needs families. If this is a only a cost savings plan, is it worth it? If it's a plan to shift school board power to the south and left, fight for that openly. My opinion.
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Post by alexsaitta on Feb 15, 2016 12:42:36 GMT -5
I'm sorry I spend most of my time on Facebook now and just came back here. Wee the maximum by law is 30 students. Class sizes will rise if they close schools despite what the district spokesman is saying. Parents frankly don't want that. Wee do you support the plan to close schools and raise class sizes again? I will vote against the plan. I have written letters to the letter stating my objection to closing any schools. See attached. My children attended Holly Springs Elementary. We just spent $10 million on those three schools and totally renovated them. It makes no sense to close them and let them sit there. We just finished a $387 million 8-year building program, and now they want to do more renovations. It makes no sense. We built an extra elementary school in Liberty to end the 5th-8th grade configuration in Liberty Middle to make the district uniform. I oppose this at Dacusville Middle. Revenue growth to the school district is the strongest it has been in 8 years. They need to just stop spending all of it and more. If we could balance the budgets in 2011 and 2012 when revenue was falling and we didn't have to close schools, we should be able to do this now. I can give you a 100 reasons why I oppose this. You can count on me. I will vote against this. wspa.com/2016/02/08/plan-to-merge-several-pickens-elementary-schools-under-debateAttachments:
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Post by alexsaitta on Feb 15, 2016 12:43:55 GMT -5
Conservative, the solution at this point is simple. The board presented its plan to close 3 schools and reconfigure 4 others. The public has rejected the plan unanimously.
If the board continues to talk about closing schools or alternative solutions for closing schools the next few months or even the next few weeks, it will turn these schools completely upside down. The board should say we heard the 800 people at the 3 meetings, and then pledge not to close or reconfigure any schools. It is simply not an option and then look for alternative solutions.
I about fell over the other night when the chairman was saying, well give us a better solution. It is not the responsibility of the public to then come up with a solution. That is what the public hires school board members for. The public gives the board a directive and the board members have to figure out how to make it work.
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Post by conservative on Feb 15, 2016 14:20:09 GMT -5
It's ridiculous what's being considered in the face of your points, public opinion and common sense. Wrong motives lead people to bad decisions. Are all the motives known to the public? Is it just a budget issue?
I just violated my own credo and visited any Facebook site, this one time, The Concerned Citizens. In a few minutes, it was obvious that tax increases must be behind the insane plan to close 3 schools on one side of the County. Holding elementary schools hostage is bad politics. Doing anything other than improving learning and teaching is a waste of public resources. How is closing these schools an improvement for teaching elementary students? That question alone should be enough to redirect the fight. I'm sure you've already asked it.
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Post by alexsaitta on Feb 18, 2016 13:53:57 GMT -5
In one instance, it may look like the new board majority and new administration doesn’t know what it is doing, but that is really untrue. There has been a reversal of what the board of 2006 set out to do, and what the new board/ administration is now doing and it just looks like no one knows what they are doing. I’ll give you three examples because I’ve lived the before-and-after being on the board since 2004.
The 2006 board saw all those portable classrooms and built in a ton of extra capacity – 38% more in order to insure the district wouldn’t need portables for 20 years. Now the new board and administration sees all this extra capacity, doesn’t really know the history, and wants to close and reconfigure schools to wring out that extra capacity. Back to that analogy I’ve talked about -- one boss hires a person to dig a hole and the next day the new boss sees the hole and hires a guy to fill it in. Both bosses had a clear aim; they just didn’t realize they were 180 degrees opposed and it looks foolish to those who regularly walk past the construction site.
The previous boards said it was going to leave all the schools open, renovated them all, and then ended the building program. Building the equivalent of 37 new Easley libraries was enough for all those involved (including me). The focus was then shifted to maintaining the schools. This new administration and board comes in, not having lived that long history either, and is pushing for new construction and renovation and on top of the require maintenance of all these buildings and is scrambling to pay for it all by closing some of the schools just renovated. Again, it doesn’t make sense to me having been here the whole time, but I’m not steering the ship.
The board of 2006 saw the 5th through 8th grade configuration at Liberty Middle and felt it was a problem mixing 5th and 8th grade students. We built Chastain Road Elementary to get Liberty Middle back to the 6th to 8th or standard configuration like we have everywhere else in the district. It was a $16 million fix. The new board and administration is paying no nevermind to a uniform configuration scheme and now wants to make Dacusville Middle 5th through 8th. And that will open up the possibilities of special configurations in different attendance zones throughout the district
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Post by conservative on Feb 20, 2016 18:14:19 GMT -5
In round numbers, what would the tax increase have to be to pay for what's already budgeted and planned to spend, bringing the budget into balance including your strategy of expecting surprises while slowly increasing savings for poor revenue years. I suspect the amount will be unpalatable and expose the value of better management from administration. Closing schools is better than effective management? No, it's just easier apparently.
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Post by conservative on Feb 26, 2016 15:04:08 GMT -5
"Take closing schools off the table first, then let the school board consider what changes and tax level are needed. That's why the board is elected and not appointed by the School Superintendent or focus groups."
My statement on the survey requested via Concerned Citizens.
I hope the School Board has not taken the bait of either a big tax increase or close schools as the survey suggests.
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Post by geraldgarrett on Feb 29, 2016 12:46:49 GMT -5
We're facing about 9,000 problems with funding and administration in the School District of Pickens County, but today I saw this article showing where their focus really is:
www.wyff4.com/news/students-wage-online-battle-for-teacher-removed-for-reading-poem/38251820
Really, Alex? Suspending a popular teacher for reading a poem with the dreaded f-word in it? What's next? Book burnings? Are we going to ban the teaching of Faulkner, or Shakespeare? Man, those were two dirty-minded f-word'ers.
Let's be clear. Yes, the word is offensive, moreso because it's used casually in public by people who should know better nowadays, to the extent that is almost no longer shocks. But maybe there's a way around the problem in the classroom if we do like the crew of the Firefly did in that short-lived television show a decade ago: Cuss in Chinese or some other language. Let's test the theory.
The f-word that caused this problem is actually from the Germanic "ficken" or the Dutch "fukken" and not of either Old English or Middle English origin. I guess we can blame those ficken Germans or those fukken Dutch for our modern f-word dilemma.
I'm reminded of a couple of British pilots during WWII recounting the air-to-air combat they had just survived.
PILOT 1: "Those German Fokkers were all over us today."
PILOT 2: "Yep, and they were all flying Messerschmitts."
(NOTE TO THE EASILY OFFENDED: A "Fokker" was a Dutch-made airplane used by Germany during both WWI and WWII, named after its original designer, Anthony Fokker.)
How about that, Alex? Your state-of-the-art, built-in word censor that won't even let me say D-i-c-k Cheney without the hyphens (it turns into "Thingy Cheney" which greatly amuses me) didn't catch a single one of my uses of "profanity" above.
The suspension of this teacher must be a joke perpetrated by a bunch of administrators with too much time on their hands. I hope the School Board has a chance to overturn it. It's hard enough to keep good teachers without resorting to the kind of blatant overkill that rivals political correctness for its sheer lunacy. Maybe it's time we accept the fact that you learn some very offensive facts in school that you cannot - and should not - run from or censor, no matter how unsettling they are.
Alex, you can censor or delete this post if you choose to. I know how (and usually when) to censor myself, but this is a privately owned forum and it's your call all the way. I posted to make a point, not to offend. You (as usual) get to decide if it's a point worth making.
But the school administration or the School Board? You represent the government, my friend. Please, at the very least, point out the little detail called the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Perhaps none of them had the opportunity to read it during their long, arduous journeys through the elementary and secondary education college curricula. Maybe it was an elective.
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Post by alexsaitta on Mar 1, 2016 8:50:01 GMT -5
Gerald you don't understand how the process works. I understand you are angry at the school board but the board doesn't manage the schools day to day. We can't. We work 2 days a month, evenings usually. The administration deals with personnel day to day and there are hundreds of decisions they make there. I don't know anything firsthand about this. Add that it is not in my district, so I've heard less about it. Nothing directly from any school administration official.
The school board acts as an appeals board to administration personnel decisions. Let's say employee XYZ is involved in something, and is fired. The employee can file a greviance and appeal it up to the school board for a final review like the US Supreme Court. If the employee just resigns and never files a greviance or files one and doesn't push it up to the school board, the board doesn't get involved and under policy can not get involved. It is like the US Supreme Court, it won't go down an grab a case that is sitting in district court in Greenville. The cases have to be pushed up to the Court by the plaintiff.
I'm not going to delete your post. Why? You have an opinion. That's OK.
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Post by geraldgarrett on Mar 1, 2016 15:59:18 GMT -5
Alex, I do understand how the process works. And I'm NOT upset with the School Board - yet - or with you. I clearly said, "I hope the School Board has a chance to overturn it." That's why I indirectly asked YOU (as an elected official) to point out to THEM (hired/contracted hands for public - translate: "government" - education who work in school administration) that little detail called the First Amendment. The BOARD didn't do this, but the BOARD is ultimately responsible for the CULTURE that exists in Pickens County academia at the moment.
As of right now, it's obviously an administrative matter alone. Unless that teacher files a grievance, it's over. Narrow-mindedness wins. THAT is what I'm upset about. Angry is too strong a word for my reaction. I don't recall that you've ever seen me angry. Upset, maybe, but not angry.
You seem to have forgotten that I really DON'T want the Board to micromanage district operations. I've said that many times. I'd just like to see somebody in a position of authority - like, maybe, a member of the School Board - speak out on behalf of an employee who has been wronged. Yes, I have an opinion. So do you, Alex, and I don't believe there's any rule or law against you expressing it.
Actions like the one taken against this teacher tend to cripple the abilities of all teachers to do their jobs, much like the restrictions regarding teaching Christianity in the context of Western Civilization cripple their abilities to teach Western Civilization in the context of World History. It would be wonderful if all of our issues were simply black and white. But they're not. It's a big world out there, with many cultures and many opinions (and languages) that tie in and interact in many ways.
I'm not afraid to learn about any of them. Why are so many of our so-called educators?
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Post by conservative on Mar 1, 2016 18:33:21 GMT -5
My opinion, it's not about learning, teaching or speech. It's "political correctness", the disguised weapon of Liberalism, too long ago successfully waylaid by the few wanting political power over the many. This is a textbook application of PC slap-down at a time when the presently-powerful in SDPC can't afford controversy they don't wield.
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