For other education-related legislative news from The SCEA, visit www.thescea.org.
PRESS CONFERENCE FOR REPORT CARD ANNOUNCED
Sheila C. Gallagher, president of The South Carolina Education Association, will release the association's 2004 legislative report card in a press conference at 4 p.m. Thursday at the State House. The conference will occur on the first floor, in the common area between the offices of the governor and lieutenant governor. Copies of the legislative report card will be available to media at the conference, and thereafter by mail.
A total of 69 legislative votes are documented in the 2004 report card; votes include bills, amendments and motions affecting public education funding, education policy and the working conditions or rights of education professionals and school district employees. Just as in a student's report card, the association's report includes each legislator's previous score and a cumulative average for the legislature's biennium.
Copies of the report card are being mailed this week to The SCEA members as part of The SCEA Emphasis, the association's magazine.
DATELINE SEPTEMBER 9, 2004
For other education-related legislative news from The SCEA, visit www.thescea.org.
2004 LEGISLATIVE REPORT CARD RELEASED
The South Carolina Education Association released its report card on the 2004 legislative session this afternoon, which its leader called "shameful for its abandonment of children and public education."
Report cards are being mailed to lawmakers, education leaders and administrators statewide, in addition to the association's own members. By next week, its data will be posted also on the association's website, www.thescea.org.
Sheila C. Gallagher, president of the largest association of education professionals and public school employees in the state, said the record shows lawmakers "chose to use smoke and mirrors to give the impression of funding public schools."
"At the end of the day, they failed to fund the Education Finance Act, they cut a raft of public education initiatives, and they played a shell game with precious public education dollars to artificially inflate the base student cost," Gallagher said. "Worst of all, they pushed -- and continue to push -- a pair of bills patently designed to undermine public education: a voucher bill and a bill to take all real accountability out of new charter schools."
Gallagher, a teacher on leave from Williams Middle School in Florence School District 1, teaches health and physical education.
Votes on ten bills, amendments or motions in the S.C. Senate and fifty-nine in the S.C. House are reflected in the report card. While several entries reflect votes on state education and employment policies, the majority of votes were taken from the budget debates in both chambers.
Among the high-scoring lawmakers are Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of Orangeburg and Sen. John Land of Clarendon, who earned perfect scores in their respective chambers. While sixteen House members and a dozen Senators earned scores of 100 percent in 2003, Cobb-Hunter and Rep. Karl Allen of Greenville were the only two House members (serving for the full session) to make the mark in the 2004 report, alongside nine Senators: Land, Sen. Ralph Anderson of Greenville, Sen Robert Ford of Charleston, Sen. Maggie Glover of Florence, Sen. Phil Leventis of Sumter, Sen. John Matthews of Orangeburg, Sen. Clementa Pinckney of Jasper, Sen. Glenn Reese of Spartanburg and Sen. Bob Waldrep of Anderson.
While forty-four members of the legislature earned single-digit scores in 2003, most showed improvement in 2004, when only five legislators earned a score lower than 10 percent. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, who earned a score of zero in 2003, earned a 70 percent score this year; retiring Sen. Bob Waldrep of Anderson County leaped from a five percent score in 2003 to a perfect score in 2004. Two Senators -- Sen. John Kuhn of Charleston and Sen. John Hawkins of Spartanburg -- hold the distinction of earning scores of zero in both years.
Still, more House members earned scores below 70 percent -- the standard passing grade in most of South Carolina's public schools -- than above 70 percent. The opposite was true in the Senate, where 30 members earned scores of 70 percent or higher. Gallagher acknowledged that while some lawmakers may be pleased to have their efforts validated, those earning low scores may find little to praise.
"Those lawmakers, and their partners allied against public education in South Carolina, will criticize our report card for its reflection of their performance. They will criticize us largely for bringing this data to light, but they cannot criticize the data," she said. "Anyone in the world can go to the legislature's website and read the names, the voting records, the vote counts of these lawmakers."
"Educators have been advised since the passage of the Education Accountability Act of 1998 that accountability is paramount in improving the quality of education, and we agree. Accountability also matters in the committee room, and on the floors of the House and Senate. Our report card is designed to bring a measure of accountability to Columbia," she explained.
REMARKS OF PRESIDENT GALLAGHER ON 2004 REPORT CARD
Following are President Sheila C. Gallagher's remarks on the release of the 2004 legislative report card:
"Good afternoon. Today, The South Carolina Education Association is releasing its report card on the 2004 legislative session. Copies of the report card are displayed here, and copies have been mailed to educators and education leaders statewide this week.
"These report cards reflect that 2004 was not a good legislative session for the children in South Carolina. Actually, this legislative session is simply shameful for its abandonment of children and public education. These report cards reflect that the majority of our lawmakers have not made public education the state's highest priority.
"Those lawmakers, and their partners allied against public education in South Carolina, will criticize our report card for its reflection of their performance. They will criticize us largely for bringing this data to light, but they cannot criticize the data. Anyone in the world can go to the legislature's website and read the names, the voting records, the vote counts of these lawmakers.
"This year's 'Quality Counts' edition of Education Week magazine has ranked South Carolina as the top-scoring state in teacher quality for the second year in a row. We are one of eight states earning A's in standards and accountability. And again we have earned national recognition in improvements in student achievement.
"As educators, we do demand higher standards, but with necessary help. Our state legislature demands more from schools while asking less from themselves -- and it refuses to give educators and public schools the resources needed to perform to the higher standards.
"Too often the children we teach have been forsaken. They have been forsaken by absentee parents and crumbling families. They have been forsaken by a society plagued with violence and neglect. And they have been forsaken by a state legislature and by a governor who refuses to fully fund the basic education resource without taking from other education funding.
"At the end of the day, lawmakers failed to fund the Education Finance Act, they cut a raft of public education initiatives, and they played a shell game with precious public education dollars to artificially inflate the base student cost. Worst of all, they pushed -- and continue to push -- a pair of bills patently designed to undermine public education: a voucher bill and a bill to take accountability out of new charter schools. The Education Finance Act must be fully funded if the legislature is going to keep its promise to the children and the educators of South Carolina.
"Educators have been advised since the passage of the Education Accountability Act of 1998 that accountability is paramount in improving the quality of education, and we agree. Accountability also matters in the committee room, and on the floors of the House and Senate.
"Our report card is designed to bring a measure of accountability to Columbia. The scores reflect the votes lawmakers cast on public school funding. These scores hold our lawmakers accountable. Some lawmakers criticize our report card but they did not support the more than 600,000 public school children in South Carolina.
"More House members earned scores below 70 percent -- the standard passing grade in most of South Carolina's public schools -- than above 70 percent. The opposite was true in the Senate, where 30 members earned scores of 70 percent or higher. Therefore, some lawmakers may be pleased to have their efforts validated. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of Orangeburg and Karl Allen of Greenville were the only House members to earn a perfect mark in the 2004 report, alongside nine Senators: John Land of Clarendon, Ralph Anderson of Greenville, Robert Ford of Charleston, Maggie Glover of Florence, Phil Leventis of Sumter, John Matthews of Orangeburg, Clementa Pinckney of Jasper, Glenn Reese of Spartanburg, and Bob Waldrep of Anderson, who is retiring this year, and who deserves special mention since he only earned a 5% score in 2003.
"Many in the education family went without a raise last year while, finally, other state employees did receive an increase. Most education professionals were slighted in this year's budget process, and this is not something that can be ignored. Again the state health benefits -- this word is used loosely -- for all educators and state employees have been cut while our monthly premiums have been raised -- for the second consecutive year.
"When will our state legislature and governor to address these problems?
"In fact, our governor is actually becoming part of the problem with his promotion of a new health plan option that allows some state employees to participate in an almost non-existent pay-in. This needs another look and we do mean quickly. The legislature found $243 million and we believe these funds should be used to RESTORE the health benefits of all state employees."
DATELINE SEPTEMBER 10, 2004
For other education-related legislative news from The SCEA, visit www.thescea.org.
2004 LEGISLATIVE REPORT CARD ON WEBSITE
The South Carolina Education Association has posted its 2004 Legislative Report Card on its website, www.thescea.org. The report card was released yesterday in a press conference at the State House in Columbia.
Copies of the report card are being mailed to lawmakers, education leaders and administrators statewide, in addition to the association's own members.
Votes on ten bills, amendments or motions in the S.C. Senate and fifty-nine in the S.C. House are reflected in the report card. While several entries reflect votes on state education and employment policies, the majority of votes were taken from the budget debates in both chambers.
While forty-four members of the legislature earned single-digit scores in 2003, most showed improvement in 2004, when only five legislators earned a score lower than 10 percent. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, who earned a score of zero in 2003, earned a 70 percent score this year; retiring Sen. Bob Waldrep of Anderson County leaped from a five percent score in 2003 to a perfect score in 2004. Two Senators -- Sen. John Kuhn of Charleston and Sen. John Hawkins of Spartanburg -- hold the distinction of earning scores of zero in both years.
"Educators have been advised since the passage of the Education Accountability Act of 1998 that accountability is paramount in improving the quality of education, and we agree. Accountability also matters in the committee room, and on the floors of the House and Senate. Our report card is designed to bring a measure of accountability to Columbia," said President Sheila C. Gallagher.
DATELINE SEPTEMBER 21, 2004
For other education-related legislative news from The SCEA, visit www.thescea.org.
EFA UNDERFUNDED BY $377 PER CHILD
The base student cost for 2004-05 should have been funded at $2,234 per child, as defined by the Education Finance Act (EFA) of 1977 and determined by the state's Board of Economic Advisors. But legislators funded the base student cost at $1,857, a difference of $377 per child.
This difference is important because the EFA represents the bedrock of state education funding in South Carolina. (Funds from the Education Improvement Act of 1984 and the Education Accountability Act of 1998 support a handful of specific education programs and the state's standards-and-accountability programs, including standardized testing.) To determine the damage done by legislative under-funding in your own school, multiply the difference by the number of students enrolled there. In a school serving 100 students, the difference is $37,700, or roughly one teaching position.
South Carolina's K-12 student population topped 665,000 students this year. This means that the EFA was under-funded by approximately $250.7 million this year, despite Governor Mark Sanford's successful effort to eliminate a raft of education programs and initiatives and his diversion of those funds to the base student cost.
The last year the EFA was fully-funded was 2000.
Lawmakers seeking to distract attention from their failure to fully fund the EFA in 2004 argue that educators and parents should take into account the funds that flow from other sources as well, including federal and local governments. But the EFA is the state law governing public education funding, and lawmakers have consistently chosen to skirt that law.
PREMIUMS HIKED, BENEFITS CUT
For the second consecutive year, the state's Budget and Control Board (BCB) chose to raise monthly premiums charged to participants in the State Health Plan for insurance benefits, and to cut participants' benefits simultaneously. The vote was taken at the BCB's June meeting. The premium hikes and benefit reductions will take effect January 1, 2005.
In most other states, changes to state employment benefits are governed by state legislatures, so that local lawmakers are held accountable to state employees living in their districts. But in South Carolina, these changes are made by the BCB, which includes only five members: Governor Mark Sanford, Sen. Hugh Leatherman of Florence, Rep. Bobby Harrell of Charleston, Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom and Treasurer Grady Patterson.
SPLIT VOTE NETS 1.43% COLA FOR RETIREES
The same Budget and Control Board voted in June to give retired state employees and educators a paltry 1.43 percent cost of living adjustment (COLA). COLAs are intended to keep retirement benefits current against rising inflation, but inflation topped three percent in 2003. Rather than meet inflation, the tiny COLA approved by the board is likely to be sapped by the board-approved hikes in the State Health Plan's monthly insurance premiums.
The vote to afford a 1.43 percent COLA to retirees was a split vote. Treasurer Grady Patterson, Senator Hugh Leatherman of Florence and Rep. Bobby Harrell of Charleston voted for the COLA. Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom and Governor Mark Sanford voted against giving state retirees a 1.43 percent cost of living adjustment.
VOUCHERS
Governor Mark Sanford worked to allies in the House, including Rep. Doug Smith of Spartanburg and Rep. Lewis Vaughn of Greenville, to adopt a voucher plan designed to drain public funds from public schools. Casting the plan as a tuition tax credit rather than a voucher, Sanford et. al. proposed paying parents an average of $4,000 per child if those parents enrolled their children private, parochial or home schools rather than public schools.
(By contrast, in his executive budget proposal to the legislature last January, Governor Sanford proposed funding only $1,827 per child enrolled in public schools under the Education Finance Act. The legislature ultimately approved EFA funding of $1,857 per child.)
In the Sanford plan, parents enrolling their children in private, parochial or home schools would pay the full cost of tuition out-of-pocket at the beginning of the school year, then claim an average $4,000 credit on income or property taxes at the end of the tax year. Though described as a way to help low-income families afford private, parochial and home-school education, the plan ultimately aids parents who can already afford private education, since most low-income families are unlikely to cover the costs of private tuition out-of-pocket.
When it was clear that Sanford's bill wouldn't find traction in the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on K-12 Education, the bill was moved to a four-member subcommittee chaired by one of the bill's co-sponsors, Rep. Lewis Vaughn of Greenville. After a four-hour public hearing on the bill, Vaughn and Rep. Shirley Hinson of Berkeley County voted to approve the voucher plan, with Rep. Bill Clyburn of Aiken County voting against it. Rep. Lanny Littlejohn of Spartanburg County left the proceeding and did not cast a vote.
After several delays, the bill failed to pass the House Ways and Means Committee and missed the important May 1 crossover deadline. But Sanford has identified passage of the voucher bill as his highest priority for education in the 2005 legislative session.
SALARY INCREASES FOR SOME STATE EMPLOYEES, NOT OTHERS
School bus drivers and state employees who do not work for school districts won a three-percent salary increase in the 2004-05 budget, but state employees who are public school educators won no increase from the state. The SCEA, working with Rep. James Smith of Columbia, offered budget amendments in the House to give educators a five-percent increase, a four-percent increase, a four-percent increase effective January 1 rather than July 1, and a three-percent increase, but all of these amendments were tabled (defeated using parliamentary procedure rather than an up-or-down vote).
CHARTER BILL WOULD ELIMINATE ACCOUNTABILITY
Although present statutes effectively support charter schools in South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford and legislative allies proposed a bill to remove local school boards from the process of granting charters, eliminating accountability from these schools. Under Sanford's charter proposal, charter sponsors who are denied charters by a local school board could apply directly to a statewide charter school board to have their charters granted.
Early drafts of the bill included some curious language specifically excluding employees of the State Board of Education, the State Department of Education and any public school district from serving on the proposed statewide charter school board; only people with no experience in public education could serve.
In 2003-04, nine applications for new charters were received by local school boards and seven of these were granted. This reflects a success rate of 77 percent in the most recent year using the current process for granting charters with local accountability.
TERI PRESERVED FOR 2004, UNDER ATTACK IN 2005
The state Teachers and Employees Retention Incentive (TERI) program weather attacks this year by Sen. Greg Ryberg of Aiken County and Governor Mark Sanford, thanks to The SCEA and the South Carolina State Employees Association.
TERI offers qualifying veteran educators an incentive to remain in the classroom for up to five additional years, which helps South Carolina through the present teacher shortage. The success of the TERI program has helped to carry South Carolina to the top of a national ranking for improvement to teacher quality for two consecutive years (Education Week magazine, Quality Counts edition, December 2004).
But Sanford, Ryberg and others argue that keeping expensive teachers on the state's payroll is not cost-effective to the state or its retirement system. State Retirement System Executive Director Peggy Boykin testified to Ryberg's subcommittee that eliminating TERI wouldn't net great savings to the state, but Sanford and Ryberg maintained their opposition to the program. They asserted variously that removing veteran teachers from payrolls would free funds to hire new teachers at lower cost to districts, thereby saving the state money.
While The SCEA and SCSEA were successful in preserving TERI in 2004, it is likely that Sanford and Ryberg will pursue its elimination again in 2005, when lawmakers are not threatened by election-year concerns. The SCEA will keep members informed of developments through The SCEA Dateline.
2004 LEGISLATIVE REPORT CARD ON WEBSITE
The South Carolina Education Association has posted its 2004 Legislative Report Card on its website, www.thescea.org. Copies of the report card were mailed to lawmakers, education leaders and administrators statewide, in addition to the association's own members.
Votes on ten bills, amendments or motions in the S.C. Senate and fifty-nine in the S.C. House are reflected in the report card. While several entries reflect votes on state education and employment policies, the majority of votes were taken from the budget debates in both chambers.
While forty-four members of the legislature earned single-digit scores in 2003, most showed improvement in 2004, when only five legislators earned a score lower than 10 percent. Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, who earned a score of zero in 2003, earned a 70 percent score this year; retiring Sen. Bob Waldrep of Anderson County leaped from a five percent score in 2003 to a perfect score in 2004. Two Senators -- Sen. John Kuhn of Charleston and Sen. John Hawkins of Spartanburg -- hold the distinction of earning scores of zero in both years.
