DATELINE NOVEMBER 9, 2004
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LEGISLATORS: VOUCHER BILL LIKELY TO PASS HOUSE
A voucher bill supported by out-of-state interests and promoted by Governor Mark Sanford is likely to pass the House during the 2005 legislative session, says House Education Committee Chairman Ronnie Townsend of Anderson County. But Sen. Wes Hayes of York County advised that passage by the Senate is not as easy to predict.
"'Put Parents in Charge' is a serious challenge in South Carolina," Hayes said. Its proponents have "got some serious dollars behind it and they're in it for the long haul. They've had some success in other states. The Senate will be the battleground here."
Hayes noted that while a majority of his caucus would likely support the bill -- "because they don't care really one way or another and the governor's for it" -- but that many will look for guidance from Sen. John Courson, who is likely to succeed retiring Sen. Warren Giese as Senate Education Committee chair.
Townsend, Hayes and Rep. James Smith of Richland County offered perspectives on these and other education-related issues to the informal Friends of Education Committee, which includes The SCEA, the S.C. School Boards Association, the S.C. Association of School Administrators, the S.C. PTA, several regional education consortia and other professional organizations. While all three urged the education community to organize against the voucher movement, all three also predicted that the bill will pass the House with ease.
Smith called the 2005 session "the most important for public education in a long, long time."
Aiding the voucher scheme's chances of passage by the Senate, Sanford is urging Senators to change Senate rules on the first day of session to make it easier to break a filibuster. Currently, 28 votes are required to end a filibuster, or five more than half of Senate membership; Sanford advocates lowering that threshold to 22, one vote fewer than half of Senate membership. Hayes said he believes the Senate might reduce the threshold from 28 to 26 votes, but suggested it is unlikely that the requirement will drop lower than 26.
Smith noted that the election of Rep. Joel Lourie, an advocate for public schools, to the Senate represented "a referendum on vouchers." An out-of-state organization called All Children Matter, chief proponent of the voucher plan, is conducting extensive polling in Lourie's Senate district to find out why its efforts to elect a pro-voucher candidate failed.
"They're very concerned about their perception in the public. These people are no better than payday lenders," Smith said, adding that organizations which fund and award vouchers to earn tax credits will charge fees for the service, at the expense of the state's treasury. "We all need to be organizing now, well and aggressively to get out in front of this. The best defense is a good offense. We need to work together and not wait. That crowd is overconfident."
On vouchers, Townsend echoed the views of Hayes and Smith, calling the voucher plan "the biggest issue we'll face, and not just this year because this thing has ongoing repercussions."
Townsend advised educators to recruit the aid of other state agency administrators, whose departments stand to lose state funding as the voucher plan's proposed tax credits shrink the General Fund. Those departments, Townsend explained, are "folks whose ox is really going to get gored, and I think the lights haven't come on in their eyes."
The involvement of church leaders in the debate is troubling, Townsend opined: "When you start mixing in religion, there's going to be a lot of trouble." As church leaders perceive that state aid is available to parochial schools, without state accountability, in the form of vouchers, they imagine ways of using the aid to promote their programs.
The trio advised educators that the out-of-state organization and the South Carolina-based organizations allied with it have already begun lobbying lawmakers to support the bill. In the 2004 session, the groups brought dozens of home-schooled children to Columbia to lobby on the bill's behalf, and a similar crowd provided background scenery at the Governor's recent press conference to roll out his 2005 agenda.
"These people will target parents to call legislators," Hayes said. "When people start coming to public meetings, that makes a huge difference."
Sanford himself lobbied lawmakers at a breakfast at the Governor's Mansion recently. "The governor said, 'Ronnie, why don't we get a plane and go to Milwaukee, and let me show you how vouchers are working out there,' " Townsend recalled. Townsend told educators that he replied, "Governor, before I go to Milwaukee, how about you spend two days with me in public schools?"
Sanford did not make a commitment "either way" to the proposal, Townsend said.
Sanford telegraphed his view on vouchers in a press conference one month ago, in which he identified "increasing the educational freedom index" and promoted "more choices for parents" as his part of his legislative agenda, but he offered no support to public schools, which have been under-funded (according to the state's own funding statute, the Education Finance Act) since 2000.
Several lawmakers stood with Sanford in October as he outlined his agenda, including Sen. Glenn McConnell of Charleston, Sen. John Courson of Columbia, Sen. Billy O'Dell of Anderson, Sen. Larry Grooms of Berkeley County, Sen. Greg Ryberg of Aiken County, Rep. George Bailey of St. George, Rep. Bill Cotty of Columbia and Rep. Ken Clark of Lexington County.
Without noting the irony of his comment, Sanford defended his voucher proposal by arguing, "Can we afford incremental change in something as important as education?" While Sanford and his legislative allies have celebrated incremental increases in state funding for public schools, they have defeated measure after measure proposing to fully fund the Education Finance Act, the bedrock of school funding in South Carolina.
The SCEA has opposed, and will continue to oppose, Sanford's voucher plan; the organization recently aired a series of radio advertisements informing the public of the plan's negative impacts to state goverment. Instead, we will continue to seek full funding of the Education Finance Act, which has been consistently under-funded since 2000, now at a rate of almost $400 per child.
TOWN MEETINGS ON SCHOOL FUNDING CONTINUE THURSDAY
Wofford College President Bernie Dunlap and Steve Morrison, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the Abbeville v. South Carolina suit for school funding equity, will speak on Thursday, November 11, at the next in a series of town hall meetings on South Carolina's funding for public schools. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. at Trenholm Road Methodist Church in Columbia and is open to the public.
Meetings featuring Morrison, lead attorney Carl Epps and former Governor Dick Riley have already been held in Florence and Anderson. Additional town meetings are being coordinated in Charleston, Greenwood, Spartanburg, Rock Hill and Beaufort.
Morrison's presentation describes the present state of two South Carolinas, divided by economics and race. The division is due, Morrison says, to consistent, institutionalized under-funding of public schools by the state in 35 school districts where African-American students comprise the majority of public school enrollment.
The series is co-sponsored by a consortium of organizations that first collaborated for the March for Education Equity in May, 2004. Each of the town hall meetings will have the same format: a one-hour program of information regarding school funding, including a speaker and an attorney representing the plaintiffs in the ongoing school funding equity trial in Manning, and a one-hour small-group program wherein participants can discuss common questions related to school funding. Participants' responses and suggestions will be compiled, summarized and shared with others attending the town meetings as well as policy makers.
