The Pits of Education is found in Greenville, SC

Welcome to the drop out mill country 12-13-2007

South Carolina is falling further and further behind the rest of the nation in education. Take Greenville, South Carolina for instance; here we have 65,000 students and 65,000 illiterate adults. When you ask for a doctor in this town you may get a veterinarian. That’s the kind of educational system we have.
The system is too large and the Greenville County Board of education is very self serving. They are so dumb that they started a building program for new schools which turned out to be the biggest bidding contract in SC history as well as turning out to be the costliest. Does the school board not know that there is a stopping point to spending people’s money?
The original contract was for $768 million dollars. The contract at this time has cost 1 BILLION and 300 million and we are not finished yet. (I personally think they all went to school in Greenville, SC.)
Folks, the board wants to be important, not for the students and furthering education, but so that they can control the county. Next to the SC Legislature they are the most powerful entity in the state. In some cases SC law doesn’t apply to the school board. Our illustrious school board members (except for a few) are the net-working kings of America with the attitude of: ‘If you can help me I will vote your way’…although we do have 3 great, caring, school board members who are always out voted.
I bet you think that everyone in Greenville, SC wants all of the students to learn so that they can have a successful future, WRONG; all they care about is money and more money to spend (as long as it is other people’s money). The best way to control anyone is to keep them ignorant so they will have to depend on the rich for their living.
The high school athletes bring in to the school system $ 16,000,000 per year and not one coach or manager knows the GPA of any one of the athletes. So much for a c average to play sports, kudos for the school board.
This is from SC Policy Council: “South Carolina SAT scores are the regions lowest and the second lowest in the nation." The only reason we are not on the bottom is that Maine requires all of their students to take the SAT’s. In SC around 44% of the students take the test. If SC required 100% of the students to take the SAT’s we would beat out Maine for the bottom spot with plenty of room to spare.
The fewer students that take the test the higher the average of that school - sounds reasonable to me.
Say 1 student takes the test and passes and ten from another school takes the test and 7 of them pass the test, then the school that had only one student take the test would make 100%, and the school that tested 10 students where only 7 passed would score only 70%.
Greenville is in a big hole and we have an off duty Governor, unless of course you are rich, or he may be busy walking around with two squealing pigs under his arms. Kudos for Mark Sanford (and the dummy writing this helped get him elected).
"One hundred and eight (108) schools saw their SAT scores drop from 2006 to 2007" (SC Policy Council).
Folks, we are going backwards and the price keeps climbing while more and more people are losing their homes. But what the heck, who cares? Certainly not the school board nor would the Governor. After all if you only represent the very affluent then you don’t have to work very hard at your job because most of us in Greenville, SC are just above the poverty level.
More to come tomorrow. Let me know what you think.

Bobby C .
(The school boards favorite son)