I want to clear something up about my personal thoughts about Buist and so called cheaters.
First, I do not think that Buist is a safe environment for any child. Why?
Take the death threats a few years ago by two students against another. It is my understanding that these kids were never even suspended nonetheless expelled according to the CCSD code of Conduct. Who stood up and protected the victim? When the District 20 board did they were crucified.
Second, I don't think that it challenges any child including the super smart ones to have hours upon hours of homework every night after a full day of school. Vit D is important.
Third, I do not think that children should be forced to maintain a B average....especially with the high divorce rate in Charleston-according to the CCSD. Kids go through enough just being kids.
Fourth, I do not think that any school should be able to make up there own rules as they go along which is what Buist seems to do. If they were honest and true 25 percent of the kids that attend Buist would live yes live downtown.
Fifth, I don't think that my child or any other child benefits from being forced to maintain even if they are so smart that they are bored. Did we forget the part where kids are also meant to be kids? I have much more enthusiasm for a child that works hard on their own, personally I think that they have a higher long term success rate.
I do not think that parents should be forced to turn their friends in. So no Mark I will not ask you or any parent to turn someone in. I think that the CCSD should do their job and live up to their responsibility. As a society that is what we expect.
As a community everyone who lives in Charleston County should be very concerned. Charleston is growing, most of the medical care is downtown and we can not attract people and families to buy homes in the downtown area because there is no place for people to send their children to school. So the downtown area including parts of West Ashley have little choices to send their children to public school. Not everyone wants or can afford to send children to private school. Gas prices are estimated to go up. So if nurses and new doctors who have families are choosing to live in other urban environments as gas prices creep up where does that leave us?
As for everyone who did cheat, I don't know who they are. I am not even guessing and I don't want to know. I would hope that they would recognize that they are taking a spot of a child who really needs it. Who ever did or does cheat...I have no doubt that if you are meant to be at Buist it would be so, there are other powers that control the CCSD and Buist Lottery. Nothing is by chance! For those of you who are thinking about putting your child on the list think hard, go to every school. I think that you will find that Buist isn't what you thought is was. Although music lessons for all is very nice. Did you know that some kids down the street don't have any microscopes?
You may ask why I am behind a more honest Buist then...well part of being a kid is having kids in the neighborhood to play with. Charleston has lost that, downtown needs to he humbled. There is something bigger then us, the sooner we recognize that the sooner we can get back to what made Charleston great in the first place.
Honestly Buist isn't good enough for my children thus they are not on the list.
18 comments:
Underdog,
It looks like you may have struck a nerve with Mr. Brandenburg. He should be very interested in getting to the bottom of these false addresses. Mr. Brandenburg should especially disturbed by the number of false addresses in the newly formed Buist organization. "We are the company we keep." Mr. Brandenburg, I'm confident you know many of these people. It doesn't take a rocket scientist for many of the false addresses to appear by simply looking at past Buist directories. If you're not one of them, then you should be embracing the people attempting to bring integrity to your children's school (instead of standing next to those who have destroyed it).
Why wasn't Mr. Brandenburg on the Low-performing list? Wouldn't he qualify living on Johns' Island?
Smells fishy -
kind of like Hootie and the Blowfish fishy.
Like what are the chances of getting IN on that COUNTY list???
The Low Performing Schools list is a joke anyway. Hillery still thinks it was the list designed to replace the minority quota. I seriously doubt is many minority students are ever admitted from this list. Instead it has become a free ticket for some of the county's worst slumlords.
Mark Brandenburg certainly is the company he keeps. From what's appearing on the Newsless Courier blog lately, his boss at The Citadel may also have some questions about his company and the time he's spending with them.
It is like Susan Simons so smuggly answered as to why the students who threatened the lives of others weren't suspended or expelled.....it is because their parents are high profile attorneys. What should that matter when you threaten to kill students and teachers!
Where is Mark, now? I would like to hear a response to my comments above.
I've been catching up on that other blog you make reference to.
Is he the guy who posted as bulldog or something to that effect...mr. anyone who post anonymous is... what did you say?? spineless??
Dialogue should be productive whether we do it with our name on it or not, should be irrelevant...I'm just glad people are discussing issues this town has avoid for far too long.
No, Jay, I have not posted elsewhere as "bulldog." As I said before, "anonymous" and other pseudonyms are for poets. My brother said those who hide behind fake names are "spineless." I said they were "cowards." And I still do.
As I have also said before, I do not know how parents can lie to CCSD to gain their child's acceptance into a school, Buist or otherwise, and then teach that child that dishonesty is wrong. My wife and I did not do so when our son entered Buist. However, I will readily admit that we were very fortunate when our son was accepted on the county-wide list. That year, Mt. Zion, the school for the area where we live, had risen from "below average" to "average," such that he was not eligible for the "low performing" list.
As to the directories, unfortunately, CCSD's eligibility rules make reliance on them a bit more problematic than you envision. According to the Buist Academy Admissions Procedures, "Students who were accepted from the District 20 list and who move outside District 20 are allowed to remain at Buist." (These procedures are available from CCSD, which promulgates them; Buist does not develop these rules.) I understand that many, if not all, D20 families believe this policy to conflict with other constituent districts' policies: if a student moves away from the Ashley River Creative Arts district, in other words, that student loses his or her seat. However, the policy is consistent with the other policies for attendance at Buist: when an 8th grade student graduates, his or her 2nd grade sibling remains at Buist. Likewise, if a school rises from below average to average (such as Mt. Zion did briefly a few years ago), students from that school who attend Buist are not forced to leave.
The result of this policy is this: many students who lived in D20 at the time of their admission have long since moved elsewhere. Other circumstances can yield similar apparent inconsistencies. Divorced parents who share custody of their child, for example. Without knowing where a child lived at the time he or she gained admission to Buist, though, mere reference to the Buist Foundation directory is reckless, at best. At worst, it can be defamatory.
CCSD has finally taken some steps to correct this. The new proof of residency requirements are much more stringent than they were when our son entered Buist. I welcome this increased scrutiny, but I also share your apparent lack of confidence in it. While the new requirements will make it considerably more difficult for entering students to fraudulently gain admission to Buist, they do little to investigate past conduct. Thus, I happily join the chorus of voices calling for Dr. Nancy McGinley to do more.
Perhaps you and I differ there as well, though. I believe the responsibility for address verification should lie with the constituent district associate superintendents: Earl Choice in District 20, and Dr. Doug Gepford in District 3, etc. Under FERPA, those officials have a clear right and ability to access all of this information. As private citizens, you and I do not.
/s/ Mark C. Brandenburg
Thanks, Mark. I appreciate you taking the time to offer your insight. Let's keep this productive dialogue going. I also noticed the inconsistencies with CCSD magnet schools and their residency requirements. Sounds like Dist. 20 is getting the short end of the stick to say the least.
So let's get back to the fake addresses. I'm not talking about people who actually lived downtown and then moved off the peninsula. I'm talking about people who blatantly falsified their address on their Buist application. When you speak and write the truth, the defamation card is off the table.
So let's get specific about some of the "company you keep" as posted above.
Did Peter Demetre actually live with his parents on Meeting St.? The Buist directory for that year his child entered kindergarten states he did. Yet, public tax records tell a different story. What's the real story? He seemed to be "jumping around a bit" back then with his car tax records. If he has nothing to hide, he should embrace the inquistion as a "let's get to the bottom" of this now.
I look forward to others responding to this productive dialogue, regardless of name use or not. I can respect a person's right to remain anonymous, as long as they're offering insight...never have been into name-calling. So I certainly don't plan to start now.
Thanks again, Mark. You seem like a good guy and I'm impressed by your openness.
I'd like to see these Buist Academy Admissions Procedures you speak of. All that does is encourage parents to use fake addresses. Who wrote that?? Give me a break!
So I can live downtown for a few months and then I'm in the clear?? Okay, Mommy and Daddy, here I come!!
We're are the West Ashley parents when we need them. Why isn't the downtown community outraged!
Oops - underdog worked liked a dog today.
Let me correct that error above...
WHERE are the West Ashley parents when we need them?
Luckily, typing isn't a part of my day job.
Hello Underdog. Saw your comment about my earlier post regarding a walk on the beach. There's a bit of truth to that but the story is overblown, so to speak. Glad to see you have a literate audience -- more so than some other local education/media sites. I am not quite sure what to think abut the Buist business and I don't have a dog in that fight. Perhaps I'll tell that story (and others) later, but for now I'll follow things vicariously through the blogs.
Thanks for visiting...I'd welcome any story from anyone regardless of what pseudonym they may decide to use. When you're dealing with people like George Kefalos, it can't be intimidating, Mr. Brandenburg. Let's give people a break and just let them talk.
Posts from Marc Brandenburg and more strange stuff from Jerry Adams? This blog is giving Babbie a run for her money! Now who are these people George Kefalos and Peter Demetre?
Peter Demetre, along with the Stefanellis and Hoefers appear to be people who have used their parents' addresses to get their children into Buist...at least according to the Buist directory...and public tax records. These people also embraced Mr. Brandenburg's County Residents for Buist organization - or whatever the name of that was...
George Kefalos is another story. The guy owns so much real estate he can't even figure out which address to put in Mark's directory. But there's no question where he claims 4% and that, my dear taxpaying citizen is Folly Beach.
Mr. Kefalos seems to have a bit of a history with Buist with an older child not being admitted to Buist many moons ago. From what I hear, his threat of a lawsuit created a second kindergarten class. Please tell me I'm wrong on that one. I think we can all agree, that CAN be intimidating (excuse the typo above)
While I think we can all agree Mr. Brandenburg has read the information above, you won't hear from him again. He wants to continue to play the "I don't know who you're talking about" game.
People who don't stand up for what's right and attempt to intimidate people and silence the truth are the spineless ones.
I'm sure that in a dog eat dog world where CCSD employees can suffer retaliation very quickly, hiding behind "anonymous" is a sign of wisdom, not cowardice.
To Mr. Brandenburg, I recall the words of The Boo, "You're quibbling, son. You're either guilty or an accomplice, so don't give me all that fancy foot work as you try to weasel your way out of this mess you're in."
A Citadel Cadet will not lie, cheat or steal, nor tolerate those who do. Mr. Brandenburg is not just a Citadel graduate; he's currently employed as a member of The Citadel's senior management. Maybe these words only apply to dog eat dog undergraduates, held in check by their peers.
To obfuscate, and then pretend to not know when the opposite is true, is more than quibbling; it would imply a serious deficiency in the argument, if not the character of the author.
To the two posters above, I couldn't agree with you more. Where IS Mr. Brandenburg now?
I wonder if Dr. Ray will get his last grandchild into Buist the same way he got his others in...that's the "Charleston way" folks.
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