Downtown meeting over school closures doesn't go any better

Image by Flickr user Zach Klein Image by 20081217-school-meeting.jpg McGinley attempted to regain order, but people stood up and screamed, saying these were their children and they would not be silenced. McGinley threatened to cancel the meeting, and that only provoked the crowd further.

That's from The Post and Courier's extensive article on Tuesday's meeting at Burke High.

Read more stories on this subject in our consolidation topic page.Obviously people are never going to welcome the possible closure of their school, but at this point it should be obvious that school district needs to handle these meetings in a better -- and much different -- way.

The Charleston City Paper's Greg Hambrick reports:
One man was escorted out of the auditorium for a brief time by city police and Superintendent Nancy McGinley threatened to cancel the meeting if the crowd didn’t calm down.

I thought the meetings were supposed to help reassure the public? If our leaders can't even pull off a civil meeting, how can we possibly hope they can "redesign" our schools?

I suppose it's good that there's just one meeting left, but if the execution of the plan is as botched as these hearings, many on the Charleston County School Board could find themselves getting the boot next election.

The last meeting is at 6:30 tonight, December 17, at the Baptist Hill High School outside Hollywood.