{"id":1468,"date":"2011-09-29T09:33:06","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T13:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/steve-prigohzys-magnet-school.html"},"modified":"2011-09-29T09:33:06","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T13:33:06","slug":"steve-prigohzys-magnet-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/steve-prigohzys-magnet-school.html","title":{"rendered":"Steve Prigohzy’s magnet school"},"content":{"rendered":"

CUEE’s paid expert from Chattanooga,
\nSteve Prigohzy, started and ran a magnet school in Chattanooga,
\nmuch like the one in Troup County that is
\n
\nstill causing extra costs and consternation eighteen years after unification.<\/a>
\nPrigohzy’s school also used prison labor to avoid spending on local labor.<\/p>\n

\nAfter reading Barbara Stratton’s piece about
\n
\nSteve Prigohzy screening a movie about magnet schools,<\/a>
\nI wondered, who is this Steve Prigohzy, anyway?
\nCUEE never showed us his resume, as near as I can tell,
\nand they’re a private organization, so they don’t have to.
\nBut his tracks are all over the Internet.<\/p>\n

\nCynthia M. Gettys and Anne Wheelock
\nwrote for The New Alternative Schools in September 1994,
\n(Volume 52, Number 1, Pages 12-15)
\n
\nLaunching Paideia in Chattanooga<\/a>,<\/p>\n

\n
\n<\/a>
\nWith the board’s approval and support from the Lyndhurst Foundation,
\na committee outlined the necessary steps to develop a Paideia school
\nfor Chattanooga students. First, the group hired Steve Prigohzy as the
\nschool’s planner, promoter, and educational leader. Prigohzy looked for
\nteachers who were lifelong learners themselves. \u201cI would ask teachers
\nto talk to me about a book they were reading that I shouldn’t miss. I
\nwanted people who were acting out their curiosity about the world,\u201d he
\nsaid. Prigohzy also sought teachers whose appreciation for discourse would
\nsustain the school as a community of learners. Limited public confidence,
\nespecially in the city’s middle schools, influenced the planning.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They must have liked him, because he was hired as its principal,
\naccording Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla in
\n
\nHaunted Chattanooga,<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nCSAS was the first, and until recently the only, K-12 Paideia school in
\nthe country. It was established on the Paideia principles that all children
\ncould learn and that the children learned in a lot of different ways.
\nSteve Prigohzy was hired as the school’s principal.
\nHe and his staff had little time, less money and a building they
\nvariously described as “nauseating,” “depressing” and “dog-ugly,”
\nbut they had enough motivation and drive to more than make up for
\nthose shortages. Mr. P, as he came to be known,
\nbrought in an interior designer willing to brainstorm ways to work with
\nmoney shortages, the need to comply with the fire code and the necessity
\nof preserving history.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The comments on the physical plant sound much like
\nTerry Jenkins’ comments about a local high school in Troup County
\nwhich had board floors and was only liked by “those people”.
\nHm, which high school around here is the oldest?
\nI think that would be Valdosta High School.
\nAnd of course
\n
\nits stadium is even older.<\/a><\/p>\n

\nIt gets better:<\/p>\n

\nMoney-saving measures included sending the auditorium chairs to Nashville
\nso prisoners could refinish them, as well as rescuing lights that were
\notherwise on their way to the dump for use in the school.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Did outcompeting local labor with prisoners help the local economy?
\nDo we want to promote the incarceration machine over education?<\/p>\n

\nTo be continued.<\/p>\n

\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CUEE’s paid expert from Chattanooga, Steve Prigohzy, started and ran a magnet school in Chattanooga, much like the one in Troup County that is still causing extra costs and consternation eighteen years after unification. Prigohzy’s school also used prison labor to avoid spending on local labor. After reading Barbara Stratton’s piece about Steve Prigohzy screening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,40,1376,14,15,49,2,19,72,21,22,3],"tags":[598,1636,3734,8829,8705,1484,8701,368,7,3735,3733,1486,3668,8789,1635,6],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-community","category-cuee","category-economy","category-education","category-elections","category-government","category-history","category-incarceration","category-planning","category-politics","category-transparency","tag-chattanooga","tag-consolidation","tag-csas","tag-cuee","tag-education","tag-election","tag-georgia","tag-hamilton-county","tag-lowndes-county","tag-magnet-school","tag-paideia","tag-referendum","tag-steve-prigohzy","tag-tennessee","tag-unification","tag-valdosta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}