Magnet School Success Story Turns Sour

Jan. 25, 2007— -- From Calhoun Street on the peninsula of Charleston, S.C., Buist Academy resembles many city schools. It's tall, red-brick facade is tarnished and faded; it's front door is painted a vibrant fire-truck red. But within these walls a great controversy brews among some students:

That is, among those students who have lied to gain admission.

Buist Academy has earned a special status as a success story in this county of South Carolina. It is the only magnet school in downtown Charleston and the only downtown school with an excellent rating. The education is outstanding and, more important, free.

The program has been a godsend to those desperate for a more than decent education and unable to pay for it.

Unfortunately, the Academy has fallen victim to the success it has fought so desperately to achieve. Often, parents would move out to the suburbs after their first year at Buist. Now even well-off parents who live far outside the lines of the eligible districts of the school fight to get their children admitted.

Over the years the principal at Buist, Sallie Ballard, has become wise to many parents' half-baked attempts. "I phone them and have a conversation," she says, when she suspects false information, "which says, 'Excuse me, but I have driven by your residence and it appears to be a coffee shop. Do you really live in the coffee shop?"

Embarrassed parents are often caught off guard by the ad hoc background check. "They stutter and stammer and say, 'Well, no -- and I say I'm sorry but you're not eligible to come to Buist."

Some parents are suspected of listing investment properties as their full-time abodes. At one such building, a tenant said that to her knowledge, no children lived in the entire building.

Pam Kusmider, a downtown resident, is fed up. "It's so frustrating," she says, "to watch true residents of the peninsula have their children in unsatisfactory schools."