For the Press and Standard
At the April 18 --- and again, at the April 24 --- Colleton County School District school board meetings, the topic of re-arranging grade placement arose.
In earlier sessions, it has been proposed the configuration on what grades should be elementary school grades and which should be middle school be altered. Part of the reasoning behind this is because of behavior problems on the parts of both fifth and sixth grade students. There are instances in which fifth grade students may not be ready to move on to middle school because of the student size.
At the earlier session, Carr said it meant a “return to the drawing board,” and among the suggestions and recommendations were approaches such as leaving the sixth grade as part of the elementary level, rather than move it up to the middle school.
The topic prompted board member Daryl Erwin to urge the board not go forward until it believed it had all the information needed in order to make the best decision.
But unlike the April 18 session, tempers came to the surface at the April 24 session, with Superintendent Vallerie Cave weighing in on that suggestion by publicly stating “I think the board is making the wrong decision.”
This sparked a response by board member Sharon Witkin, which, in turn led to other board members to debate amongst themselves.
Again, it was Erwin who weighed in, asking other board members whether that had looked at the research Cave had provided. He reiterated his earlier point, that more research was his preference.
“Let’s get our staff’s input on this move as we’re moving forward,” he said, then added he was not calling for a halt or reversal of earlier decisions. “No one is saying we don’t want to do it. We’re simply saying let’s make sure that we have all the information needed in order to make the best decision for our students.”
In another matter, from the April 18 session, Cave raised concern over a possible charter school (later she would say there was another application in the works for another charter school, bring the total number to two). However, in discussing the first charter school that would soon be proposed, if approved, it might siphon away as many as 1,000 CCSD students. The estimated financial impact would be slightly more than $2 million, and that was just a preliminary calculation, she cautioned.
On top of that, in all likelihood there could be a substantial loss of teachers. Cave left no doubt that a number of teachers would apply for positions.
At one point, Cave was asked by a school board member where in the process the application was, to which she said the application process had not progressed very far.
