Midlands schools open, many veteran educators gone

The State published an item on Sunday that carried an aroma of relief, though it noted that the relief isn't felt by everyone.

As Midlands public schools open this week, the disaster scenarios that swirled during debates over the state budget have given way to a slightly rosier outlook. Still, most districts are opening schoolhouse doors with fewer teachers, a situation that commenced with the recession of 2008. And there is heightened awareness of the uneven nature of the economic downturn and recovery.

There are bright spots — Lexington 1, for example, is adding teachers and Richland 2 still has some vacancies as it opens two new schools, Catawba Trails Elementary School and Muller Road Middle School.

“A year ago, I didn’t see light at the end of the tunnel at all, but now I can see some light,” Kershaw County Superintendent Frank Morgan said Thursday. “Obviously, the additional funding we were able to get at the end of the General Assembly was very, very helpful.”

Still, he said, his district’s $63 million budget is 5 percent below funding levels of three years ago, when the budget hovered at $72 million.

Several administrators told the paper that things weren't as bad as they could have been, which is code in South Carolina for "be happy with what you've been given, because it could be snatched away next year."

That’s the sense among other school district officials who are grateful for the additional funds but still aware that per-pupil expenditures are well below levels of even three years ago.

“In 2009, it was $2,578,” said Richland 1 chief budget officer Ed Carlon, who oversees a $246 million budget. “Now it is $1,880.”

We're not a full year into a four-year Haley-Zais administration. The $1,880 per pupil approved by the legislature in June might shrink to $1,500, or $1,000 per pupil, next year. As Carlton said, consider what the per-pupil expenditure was in 2008-09, during the halcyon days of that grand underminer of public schools, Mark Sanford.

Many education veterans have gotten the message.

In Richland 2, many “working retirees,” teaching under annual letters of agreement, will not return to the classroom this year, part of an exodus that began in 2009-10.

Those departures have alarmed district residents like the Rev. Brad Smith and his wife, Nancy, parents of three, who took the unusual step of addressing a letter this month to other parents questioning, among many issues, whether such layoffs were necessary.

“Together these teachers embody not only enormous leadership, wisdom and experience; they also help embody the culture of Richland 2,” the Smiths wrote. “While billed as a ‘cost-saving’ move, it is also a ‘culture-shifting’ move.”

Bottom line: Experienced teachers cost more, they have amassed large constituencies, and they're intimidating to their employers. Newer teachers are cheaper and can more easily be told what to do. And, as an added bonus, they're so worried about losing their jobs in the current economy, they'll accept all the committee assignments, extracurricular work and non-instructional duties an administrator wants to pile on them.

In fact, that's true of all the survivors of job cuts:

If there is a silver lining to the years of austerity, Kershaw County’s Morgan said it has come in the willingness of employees and the community to shoulder the additional work and share the burden.

“I’m so absolutely impressed and grateful for the work our folks have done during very difficult times,” he said.

Yes, hard times are a true test of (every)one's character.

Haley's "less talk, more jobs" platform abandoned

A year ago, we all saw the signs. "Less talk, more jobs," read then-Rep. Nikki Haley's campaign signs.

Last week, our unemployment rate bounced back up to 10.5 percent. The Spartanburg Herald-Journal's headline called it the "highest increase in the nation."

So, at what point do we get to officially declare the Haley jobs agenda a bust?

For public employees, anyway, that moment is upon us.

Public employees have taken the biggest hit in job losses over the past year, as the number of government workers plunged by more than 16,500 jobs since June 2010 and fell by 4,500 positions since May.

Public employees: That's teachers and other school district personnel, policemen and other law enforcement personnel, firefighters and other public safety personnel, social workers and other public services personnel.

If memory serves, the Associated Press reported in the middle of June -- when the Haley-era unemployment rate achieved double-digit status at 10 percent -- that "[G]overnment jobs posted a loss of 1,900 jobs over the last month, with that sector losing 24,000 jobs in the past year. Education jobs, up 3,100 since May 2010, showed losses of 2,400 from April to May, as schools began letting out for the summer months."

That's a spectacular dive.

A month ago, South Carolina was in seventh place nationally in unemployment. Clearly, Haley's administration believes that seventh place is unacceptable and has initiated a campaign to be first in the nation; in a month, South Carolina has jumped two places to tie for fifth with Michigan.

South Carolina's jobless numbers have consistently outpaced the national rate, which was 9.2 percent in June. The state's unemployment was tied with Michigan for the country's fifth-highest rate in June, ranking behind Nevada (12.4), California (11.8), Rhode Island (10.8) and Florida (10.6).

Watch out, Nevada: Luck is a lady, and your governor is not.

“There's really very little positive spin you can put on this,” said Frank Hefner, an economist at the College of Charleston. “Just because there are a lot of other people having a more difficult time doesn't really make our situation any better.”

With sustained high unemployment, Hefner said the nation's economic picture is becoming more grim than after previous recessions. In 1992, after a recession two years earlier, the nation's unemployment had rebounded from 8 percent to 5.5. More than two years after the end of the recession that began in December 2007, Hefner said he's concerned that double-digit employment could mean the country is now in for a much longer recovery than in times past.

“Is a 10 percent unemployment rate going to be considered normal? It should not be considered normal, but say we go into a third year of lackluster job growth,” Hefner said. “We've had jobless recoveries, but this is worse than a jobless recovery.”

State government leaders have been bracing for the impact of a threatened Aug. 2 federal government default unless President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reach a deal on the debt limit.

This week, Moody's Investors Services also warned that it would likely lower the credit rating for South Carolina and four other states if it downgrades the U.S. government's credit rating.

A spokesman for Gov. Nikki Haley, who on Thursday said a door-making company was investing $14 million to create 150 new jobs in Bamberg County, where unemployment is 16 percent, said the Republican is determined to bring new jobs to the state.

“The Haley administration is working daily on the business climate — recruitment of new companies and to support expansions of existing businesses,” spokesman Rob Godfrey said. “During this tough time in our country and with these unemployment numbers, it only strengthens our commitment to bring more jobs to South Carolina.”

This is precisely what worries me. Haley's man Godfrey says she's been "working daily on the business climate." And the result of her "working daily" is that we're rapidly putting people out of work. Perhaps, in order to reverse the damage, Haley should stop -- halt -- bring an end to -- whatever it is that she's doing, and go back to the drawing board.

It's noticeable that Godfrey said Haley's "working daily on the business climate — recruitment of new companies and to support expansions of existing businesses." But if South Carolina is losing jobs by the thousands in the public sector, then maybe the highest-ranking public official in the state ought to focus a little bit of attention, maybe a few hours a week, on addressing the problem of all those unemployed public sector workers. Clearly, "recruitment of new companies" and "expansions of existing businesses" ain't getting the job done.

Here's a thought: Haley might help herself substantially by urging her lackluster education superintendent to apply for the federal waiver and automatically collect $144 million in federal dollars to preserve and restore jobs in public schools.

That is, unless she's dead-set on having the highest unemployment rate in the nation.

P.S. What message does it send that the governor only addresses the news of rising unemployment through "an email statement attributed to her press secretary"? What, does Her Excellency not want to address bad news herself, in front of cameras?

Gov. Nikki Haley, who has made job creation a priority but has been accused of inflating jobs numbers, responded to the bad news with an email statement attributed to her press secretary.

Zais focuses on presidential politics rather than schools

I have to believe that May was an extraordinarily slow month for Superintendent of Education Mick Zais.

After initiating a 50-person purge that would play out over the next several weeks; and after scrambling to keep certain federal funds for special education; and after deciding absolutely not to ask for other federal funds to which South Carolina's public schoolchildren are entitled; and after watching the legislature dispatch with a voucher-and-tuition-tax-credit bill for the umpteenth time; and after talking a little more about his desire to privatize student transportation statewide so he wouldn't have 450-plus transportation workers and bus drivers on his payroll, Zais must have found himself without anything to do.

And everyone knows that idle hands are the Devil's workshop.

So our state superintendent, whose constitutional responsibilities have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with presidential politics...

Our state superintendent, who has never spent a day on the payroll of a public school district, or in a public school classroom...

Our state superintendent, who presumably is not now, nor has ever been, a member of the largest professional association for public school educators in America and the world, the National Education Association...

Our state superintendent, who has never before held elective office and, in late May, had occupied his current position for only four months...

...decided that the best thing for him to do on behalf of South Carolina's hundreds of thousands of public school children, their parents and their educators, was to write a letter to the president of the National Education Association and tell that man not to endorse President Barack Obama for a second term of office.

Bugs Bunny said it most politely, folks: What a maroon.

According to the CNBC poll measuring a state's suitability to attract business, South Carolina ranks 46th out of the 50 states in education, which is probably why the state's overall score dropped to 37th in the nation.

Yet Mick Zais's highest priority at some point in late May was to write a letter to a man sitting 500 miles from Columbia, the president of a union that Zais surely hasn't joined, who leads 3.2 million educators across America, and to tell that man, and that union, and those 3.2 million educators, not to tend to their own business at their annual convention this year.

What a spectacular maroon.

South Carolina stands to collect $144 million in federal funds to protect public educators' jobs if only Mick Zais would file for a waiver, just as Texas did, knowing that filing for the waiver takes no effort and is likely guaranteed to have that money in South Carolina by the first day of the school year. Yet Mick Zais, our illustrious superintendent, finds it too taxing to his political ideology to ask Barack Obama's Department of Education for the waiver, while districts across our state cut 2,400 jobs between April and May alone, helping to pump our unemployment rate back to 10 percent.

Instead, he felt it necessary to express his "concern" to the nation's organized educators -- who gave his "concern" the correct amount of attention, none -- about their own relationship with the President and his administration vis a vis America's system of public education and who may have influence over that system from January 2013 to January 2017.

What a shiny, gleaming bright maroon.

Acknowledging that various groups of students in various states take the SAT, and that in some states only college-bound students take that test, South Carolina's students taking the SAT ranked second-worst in the nation in 2010, according to the Commonwealth Foundation. And our governor, apparently no fan of programs to help students prepare for the SAT and presumably improve their scores, took the opportunity to veto state funding for just such a program in her letter to House Speaker Bobby Harrell last Tuesday. And our lawmakers on Wednesday, when given the opportunity to override that veto, let that one stand, depriving our state's high schoolers of one more chance to improve their lot in life, all apparently without a peep from our venerable Superintendent Mick Zais.

Yet our superintendent, who by now may crave the endorphin rush that comes when state media cover every burp or hiccup his digestive tract proffers, presumed it squarely within his bailiwick to release an advisory that, at last report, no other state superintendent of education was arrogant enough to suggest.

One wonders if this has to do with Zais's attitude toward Inez Tenenbaum, the tremendously popular two-term state superintendent of education -- in fact, our last two-term superintendent -- who did begin her career as a classroom teacher and who now serves in the Obama administration as an agency chief. Can it be that Zais is jealous of, or bitter toward, a state superintendent who was widely respected as a powerful advocate for South Carolina's public schools?

Whatever motivated Mick Zais to bloviate beyond the borders of his portfolio and his state, obviously the elected delegates to the NEA's representative assembly didn't bother to sniff at his advice. According to the NEA's website,

CHICAGO—Delegates to the National Education Association’s (NEA) 2011 Representative Assembly (RA) voted overwhelmingly to support President Obama for a second term today, making NEA the first union to recommend the President for next year’s election. In addition, the delegates adopted a policy statement that observers agree will establish a clear course for overhauling teacher evaluation and accountability systems.

“Today our members have stated loud and clear that they will no longer allow the voice of teachers and educators to be silenced and marginalized by people who don’t have a clue what teaching is,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “This policy statement puts NEA on the record in calling for a comprehensive overhaul for both teacher evaluation and accountability systems.”

The body also heard from Education Support Professional (ESP) of the Year Ernest “Jameel” Williams, a bus driver from North Carolina. Williams spoke passionately about the critical role that support professionals play in the daily lives of students.

He also spoke about the need for all professionals in schools to work together—he compared educators to a football team. “If the blockers don’t block the quarterback, or the tight ends or running backs don’t work together, the team is set up to be defeated because the opposing team senses weakness and that gives it an extra edge. We don’t need to show division in the ranks!”

On the fourth and final day of the 90th RA, delegates will hear from the 2011 Teacher of the Year, Michelle Shearer, from Maryland. RA delegates will also use the last day to say goodbye and convey their appreciation to retiring NEA Executive Director John Wilson. Wilson has led the national organization’s staff for 10 years, and will retire on September 1, 2011.

Did you notice who was mentioned as a speaker at the NEA's convention? A school bus driver from North Carolina.

What message does that communicate? Let's see: In NEA, bus drivers get respect and attention; in South Carolina, their jobs get privatized by Mick Zais and Nikki Haley.

And after the outright stupidity of his letter the NEA president about presidential politics, Zais had the incomparably poor judgment to pout about it to The State newspaper.

Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, a Republican, is expressing disappointment after the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union, voted July 4 to support Pres. Barack Obama's 2012 re-election bid.

In late May, Zais wrote to the organization, saying it was a bad idea to endorse a candidate so early.

“I am deeply concerned that this action sets a terrible example for the students across the country because only one possible candidate will be considered for endorsement by your labor union,” Zais wrote to NEA president Dennis Van Roekel. “This decision, if approved by your membership, effectively slams the door shut to all other presidential candidates before a single one has been duly nominated by a political party or filed necessary legal documents.”

The NEA sent a response letter to Zais, expressing appreciation for his input.

Please tell me these letters exist somewhere on the internet. Educators in South Carolina have a right to see exactly what earns their state superintendent's "disappointment" if emaciated funding for public schools, apathy toward a constitutional obligation to support public schools in our state, underpaid and overworked education professionals losing their jobs, and more children being packed into fewer classrooms doesn't do the job.

We don't have a superintendent of education in South Carolina. We have an unvarnished political operative bent on eliminating the last best chance that poor children in South Carolina have to escape low-skill, low-wage fast-food-and-factory jobs and make something of themselves and their communities.

Purge at DOE concerns education leaders

News that Superintendent Mick Zais has initiated a purge of staff members at the Department of Education has left state education leaders concerned about the loss of programs and services, not to mention the loss of more jobs.

Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, the first Republican to hold the post since 1998, is evaluating and overhauling the department and consolidating two of its five divisions.
...
Those 50 employees represent nearly 13 percent of the agency's non-transportation employees. Their jobs ranged from administrative assistants to office directors to deputy superintendents.

Zais has not released "a breakdown of employee positions by division." But word is circulating, naturally. Each "voluntary resignation or retirement" represents an educator without a job.

"We're very concerned that personnel in the Office of School Safety are gone," said Molly Spearman, director of the S.C. Association of School Administrators. "That affects mentoring, character education, bullying prevention, federal rules to make sure homeless students are being taken care of."

Ragley said the functions of the department will not be impacted by the cuts.

"The work is still going to get done," he said. "The responsibilities have been added on to other people's jobs."

That's a long-revered strategy among overseers of labor in South Carolina, one called "the stretchout." Cut your workforce as a cost-saving measure AND as an intimidation tool against those left with jobs: Do the extra work, or you'll be cut in the next go-round.

It's why we'll likely not hear anyone still employed at the Department complaining of their predicament. No doubt this round of cuts has put a chill on any dissent there may have been. No doubt, too, that Zais has eyes and ears on every floor of the Rutledge Building.

Those outside the building aren't afraid to speak up, however.

Debbie Elmore, spokeswoman for the S.C. School Boards Association, said her organization wished the department had done a better job of communicating news of the changes to school districts.

"It's not unexpected for personnel and other changes to occur anytime there is a change in leadership," Elmore said. "However, what has been disappointing is the department's lack of transparency and communication about the state superintendent's ongoing restructuring plan, personnel changes, and more importantly, how they may or may not impact support services to districts and schools."

The South Carolina Constitution guarantees that the state will provide a system of public education to all the state's children.

This is what happens when apathy and ignorance on Election Day installs at the helm of that system someone without experience in South Carolina's public school classrooms, who has never supported public schools and who actively works to dismantle the programs and services they provide to children.

And we're only seven months into his four-year term of office. If Zais can inflict this much damage in seven months, will there be a system left when his term ends?

Is that his goal?

Purge of DOE employees recalls Ferguson doctrine

Very few people today may recall Homer L. Ferguson of Waynesville, North Carolina, but Ferguson was once a big wheel on the right end of America's political spectrum.

A few more people are familiar with Howard Phillips, who founded Young Americans for Freedom, a right-wing group that organized and trained college students in the 1960s.

Ferguson and Phillips, though they were not contemporaries, are linked in a way that sheds a bit of light on news of the purge under way at the state Department of Education.

Ferguson, though born in Waynesville, North Carolina, made his name and his fortune in shipbuilding in major American port cities. While in the U.S. Navy, he served as Assistant Naval Constructor during a year at the Columbian Iron Works in Baltimore; three years at the Navy Yard at Portland, Oregon; and a year at the Navy Yard of Bremerton, Washington. He rose to Superintending Naval Constructor during two years at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, and continued in that capacity for two years at the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Newport News, Virginia, and finally made his way to a year-long assignment in Washington, D.C., with the Bureau of Construction and Repair.

All of this training and experience was accomplished by 1905, when Ferguson resigned from the Navy and became Assistant Superintendent of Construction for Newport News Shipbuilding, one of the largest -- if not the largest -- contractors in Newport News, adjacent to the major port at Norfolk, building warships for the federal government. He remained in the Tidewater region of Virginia for the rest of his life.

It was here, in a region and industry flooded with federal defense dollars, that Ferguson matched his training and experience with his developing political philosophy. And it served him well: He became president of Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company in 1915, and remained so until his retirement in 1946.

So Ferguson was a major industrialist by the time he became president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1919, serving a one-year term. He maintained his ties with that organization long past his presidency. In November 1928, the month that Herbert Hoover was elected president, Ferguson published an article in the form of an interview in the Chamber's magazine, "Nation's Business." In it, he lamented "if government was ever staffed with talented people, it might be able to build its own warships, and [Ferguson] would be out of business."

Ferguson wrote,

The best public servant is the worst one. A thoroughly first-rate man in public service in corrosive. He eats holes in our liberties. The better he is and the longer he stays, the greater the danger. If he is an enthusiast -- a bright-eyed madman who is frantic to make this the finest government in the world -- the black plague is a housepet by comparison.

Author Thomas Frank, who uncovered Ferguson's old article, interpreted his words this way:

In short, business needs a lousy government so that no one will consider giving it more and greater responsibility; business itself can manage responsibility, and make a profit from those who have need of it.

Frank also found a reader's response to Ferguson's text, published in a later edition:

If public officials are and remain inefficient, the public will sicken of incompetence and rely exclusively on corporate enterprise. That means less competition and more profits.

The Hoover administration certainly approved of Ferguson's philosophy. But by the time Hoover was replaced by Franklin Roosevelt in January 1933, America was well into its Great Depression, and Roosevelt sought to staff his administration with precisely the sort of "thoroughly first-rate" people Ferguson feared, including one James F. Byrnes of South Carolina.

Ferguson never served in government, but he maintained a presence in business and industry. In 1929, TIME magazine found him railing against organized workers at a symposium at the University of Virginia. The TIME article is edifying

Repugnant — unfair — rotten — archaic — unjust — unacceptable — deplorable —

With such adjectives educated Southerners, gathered last week at the University of Virginia's Institute of Public Affairs, denounced the South's labor conditions. Southern industrialists were excoriated for working women and children long hours, were criticized for opposing unionization, were advised to take warning from upheavals in the textile mills in the Carolinas and Tennessee (TIME, April 15 et seq.). Chief critics were West Virginia's W. Jett Lauck, chairman of the Bureau of Applied Economics, and Virginia's Bruce Crawford, Norton publisher. Declared Publisher Crawford:

"Southern industrial leaders are still clinging to the discarded and discredited wage theories and working conditions of the pre-War period. It is still believed and practiced that low rates of pay are synonymous with low labor costs. . . . The labor union has not been accepted as a permanent and inevitable institution in modern industrial life."

Up in defense of Southern industrialists rose Homer Lenoir Ferguson, president of Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding Co., onetime (1919-20) president of U. S. Chamber of Commerce, employer of 7,000 non-union men, stockholder in four textile mills. Mr. Ferguson's company is one of the South's great industrial concerns. It reconditioned the Leviathan after the War, built the turbo-electric Panama-Pacific liners Virginia, California, and Pennsylvania, as well as many a vessel for the Navy. Strongwilled, strong-spoken, Mr. Ferguson declared:

"Industrialism in the South . . . is undergoing a series of growing pains.

. . . The condition of the Southern cotton mill worker is very much better than it was a generation ago when he had no work at all. . . . When they talk about $12 a week, they do not tell you about the free homes, the good country food, water and light for nothing and the palaces they live in compared with the mountain homes from which they came. . . . You are dealing with a backward people who had to learn industry from the ground up. . . . Perhaps children do work, but in juvenile vagrancy North Carolina is so far ahead of Ohio there is no comparison. . . . The hours may be long and the pay small but [the textile industry] is a most highly competitive industry. There must be a profit in any industry or it will cease to exist. . . . Unionization is not the universal and complete panacea the American Federation of Labor would have you believe. Anyway, the unions aren't as strong as they used to be. . . . If the Southern textile owners and operators tie up with the labor unions, then they will see the textile industry move elsewhere, as it already moved once. . . ."

Ferguson died in 1952, but his philosophy lived after him and influenced a young man named Howard Phillips. Phillips founded an organization called Young Americans for Freedom to organize and train conservative college students in support of Sen. Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign of 1964. Goldwater lost, but Phillips remained an influential organizer and earned sufficient regard among his party leaders that President Richard Nixon appointed him Acting Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in February 1973.

Again, author Thomas Frank has described the purpose of the OEO. It had been established by President Lyndon Johnson to administer his "War on Poverty" programs. Johnson had intended it to be a muscular, useful agency, focused on serving the needs of America's poor. To demonstrate its importance, he had appointed Sargent Shriver -- brother-in-law of President John Kennedy, and founder of the Peace Corps -- to head the office. Frank writes that the OEO included legal aid for the poor, which led to lawsuits against landlords, banks and employers.

But Nixon appointed Phillips "acting director" of the agency. Once in the position, Phillips put Ferguson's philosophy to work in a hurry. In one month, Frank writes, Phillips "purged the office" and replaced its employees with "friends from the Young Americans for Freedom, paying them a hundred dollars a day."

He withheld budgeted funding from the office's programming, specifically those that benefited minorities and the poor. He issued termination notices to OEO employees around the country and closed legal aid offices in small cities and towns. He drafted a memo -- which was leaked -- in which he explained that if he and his aides acted quickly enough, they could dismantle the agency altogether before its supporters could stop him.

Community Action Associations and the union representing OEO employees had to sue to block Phillips's dismantling of the office. In April -- Phillips's third month on the job -- a federal judge granted an injunction against Phillips's actions, and one month later ruled that Phillips could no longer serve as acting director because he'd never been confirmed by the Senate.

Of course, Phillips was a hero to his followers: He had demonstrated what could be done using Homer Ferguson's philosophy to dismantle and eliminate a government agency from within. Two months after being ousted from his position, Phillips spoke to the Young Americans for Freedom at its national convention in Washington, saying, "I consider myself a very fortunate man. Relatively few Americans have the chance to participate significantly in the shaping of their nation's history."

The assault on OEO was an important landmark in the continuing struggle for individual rights against unaccountable bureaucratic power.

Its creation represented a culmination of forces which began, to a large degree, with the New Deal. Its intended demise was at the heart of Richard Nixon's plan to fulfill the mandate of the 1972 election and carry forward the historic turnabout which could mark him as the century's greatest force on the institutional trends of the American polity.

In November 1996, Phillips said in an interview with National Review, "At OEO, I was confronted with evil, pure and simple. I was not there very long when I discovered that OEO was the war room for those that were trying to overturn what had once been America."

Does this week's news of the purge of 50 staff members at the state Department of Education represent another example of the Ferguson doctrine being applied here in South Carolina? It's hard to tell. Superintendent Mick Zais, through his spokesperson, said the "reduction in force" was accomplished through "voluntary resignations and retirements."

But purging 50 staff members at one swipe -- 13 percent of the department's workforce, excluding the department's transportation workers across the state -- is a red flag to South Carolinians who want a strong, effective system of public schools administered by advocates for public education. Zais is clearly not such an advocate; nothing in his history suggested he would be. And Zais has installed by his side a deputy superintendent with no experience in education whatsoever, one whose resume includes being executive director of his political party.

We certainly know what's next on the agenda: "Zais and Gov. Nikki Haley are considering privatizing school bus operations. That could affect the Education Department's 456 transportation workers."

Is it possible that Haley and Zais will preside over the active, public dismantling of our state Department of Education? Haley already wants the constitutional authority to appoint the education superintendent, and the legislature seems poised to give her that opportunity.

With this governor in control of the state's public schools system, appointing a superintendent to follow in Zais's footsteps, with no functioning Department of Education, and no advocates working within government to rebuild it, do our children have a chance to succeed?

Zais purges 50 from the Department of Education

Google the word "purge" and you may find a definition that looks like this: "In history and political science, to purge is to remove people considered by the group in power to be 'undesirable' from a government, political party, a profession, or from community or society as a whole, often by violent means. Restoration of people from a purge is known as rehabilitation."

Ask for examples of purges throughout history and you may dig up a summary like this one:

Rome
In the era of Republican Rome, Gaius Marius proscribed Sullan supporters after he and Cinna ousted Gnaeus Octavius; Sulla followed with even more brutal proscriptions against Marian supporters when he came into the dictatorship. The Second Triumvirate instituted more proscriptions some forty years afterward after taking control of Rome from Caesar's murderers.

England
The earliest use of the term itself was the English Civil War's Pride's Purge. In 1648, the moderate members of the English Long Parliament were purged by the army. Parliament would suffer subsequent purges under the Commonwealth including the purge of the entire House of Lords. Counter-revolutionaries such as royalists were purged as well as more radical revolutionaries such as the Levellers. After the Restoration, obstinate republicans were purged while some fled to New England.

France
The French Revolution saw revolutionary factions purging each other. The most famous purge was Robespierre's Terror which ended with him being purged as well. After the fall of Napoleon, all those associated with revolutionary activity were purged.

Soviet Union
Purges are often associated with the Stalinist and Maoist regimes. Those who were purged (among them artists, scientists, teachers, people in the military, but also many long-time communists who dared to disagree with the party leadership) were sent to labor camps or executed. The most notorious of CPSU purges was the Great Purge initiated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s. Deng Xiaoping was known for the distinction of returning to power multiple times after surviving multiple purges.

Germany
The Nazis also engaged in purges, most notably in the Night of the Long Knives (1934) and the mass reprisals against Adolf Hitler's opponents following the July Plot (1944).

France
After France's liberation by the Allies in 1944, purges were processed by the Free French and mostly the French Resistance against former collaborationnists, the so called vichystes, its legal phase was known as épuration légale.

Japan
Under the instructions by the American Occupation Force as part of its directions to democratize Japan, the Japanese government purged over 200,000 individuals, including former military leaders, members of the parliament, high-ranking bureaucrats, regional politicical leaders, labor union leaders, business leaders, educators, journalists, and spiritual leaders, who had been associated with the nation’s efforts to establish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The purge was carried out in one year period as of February 1, 1946, and most of those who were designated as war-sympathizers were banned from holding public offices until the end of occupation on April 28, 1952.

United States
In the United States, the events that took place during the period of McCarthyism in the (1950s) were anti-communist purges. A valid argument can be made that the United States engaged in the systematic purging of Native American people. Evidence for government participation in Indian removal can be found in many official state and historical documents.

That's only a sampling of large purges. Another, more recent example, is found in the final months of the Bush administration in 2008, when agency heads purged dozens of employees in the federal government, people known as whistleblowers, people suspected of disloyalty.

Patricia Caperton Parent, writing in "Texas Politics Today," explains how a purge works:

In the plural executive and at the board and commission level, aggressive agency directors can employ 'reduction in force' campaigns. This tool, developed to streamline and get rid of waste in state agencies, requires employees to re-apply for their positions and can be used by adroit supervisors to purge entire departments of political undesirables. Once the old workers are gone, new sympathetic workers can be installed at various levels. New workers can easily be recruited from party and personal networks.

This week brings news of a new purge, right here in South Carolina.

State Education Superintendent Mick Zais is restructuring the department's administrative offices in an effort to improve efficiency and it has involved the elimination of about 50 positions since May.

Twenty-three of the job reductions came from voluntary resignations or retirements, but 27 others were reductions in force. Local school leaders may have different contacts at the state level, but the services and programs in schools shouldn't be affected, said Jay W. Ragley, the department's deputy superintendent for legislative and public affairs.

What I know of "voluntary resignations or retirements" is that they are rarely "voluntary." Give someone the choice of resigning -- with the possibility of getting a cordial letter of recommendation for future reference -- or being fired and having a gaping hole shot through your employment history, and most victims will opt to resign. Similarly, target an employee who's eligible to retire and threaten to demote or re-assign them to your department's Outer Egypt branch, and they'll likely take retirement. "Voluntary resignations and retirements" don't fool anyone.

And it's not over, according to Zais's minister of propaganda. "The reorganization happening now will help the state fulfill its budget mandate, and Ragley said more changes are to come."

Apparently, the dear leader has been studying closely those in his charge, and making two lists: "Zais has been studying the department's operations since he came into office in November, so these decisions weren't hasty, Ragley said. He didn't know how many more positions would be cut or how much Zais hoped to save, but Ragley said Zais planned to exceed the required amount of cuts."

And the purge isn't a piecemeal affair. It isn't as if each department or program was asked to make cuts themselves. Zais's master plan involves wholesale closing and consolidation of "main" Department of Education functions.

Two of the department's five main divisions -- Standards and Learning was one and Innovation and Support was the other -- will be consolidated, and those employees' duties will be shifted to other areas. The names of the new divisions haven't been decided, but services in those divisions included: Developing requirements for what students must learn, charter schools, school buses, youth services, and facilities.
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Ragley said the changes should help the department focus more on effective teaching, accountability for schools and the department, and technology.

Having departments called "Standards and Learning" and "Innovation and Support" might have helped the department focus more on effective teaching, accountability for schools and the department, and technology. Purging the Department of Education of 50 out of 393 department staff probably doesn't. Cutting jobs and whole departments merely helps those remaining staff members focus harder on saying the right words to keep their jobs until they're eligible to retire and leave.

Does anyone know the names of the victims?

Company's recommended job cuts causing fallout in Richland 2

Today's edition of The State includes an indepth look at the controversy stirring in Richland 2 over the recommendations of Evergreen Solutions to eliminate scores of veteran educators, and the superintendent, Katie Brochu, who is implementing the cuts.

The criticism comes on the heels of an efficiency and effectiveness study Brochu commissioned this year. Among other things, the study recommends laying off roughly 140 assistant principals and other staff and streamlining some schools. Some parents fear Brochu wants to diminish some of the selective academic programs aimed at high-achieving students to focus more on disengaged students.

Brochu said that is not her intention.

Others parents, such as Gina Janvrin, who has children at three district schools, are alarmed that the study says “it’s a bad thing that all our schools are different.” But that is what has kept her and many other families in the northeast Richland County district, where a number of high-end subdivisions have been built in the rapidly growing area in the past 10 to 15 years.

The school board is publicly united behind Brochu, though member Melinda Anderson cheered some parents last week, noting the board will move slowly on study recommendations by the Tampa-based Evergreen Solutions.

“It is going to be a collaborative effort to make this thing work,” Anderson said. “We are not going to rush through anything.

Part of the controversy involves the "phasing out" of retired educators who returned to work at district schools.

Those retirees, working under annual letters of agreement, have been departing in large numbers over the past two years. The Evergreen study, released in April, recommends phasing out about 145 such teachers over the next five years. Brochu and Burgess have said that will create a smoother path for younger teachers to gain experience.

“Katie’s hand on this is not great at this point,” he said.

Flemming acknowledged there are concerns with the study’s recommendations, including its finding that schools in the 25,000-student district are too individually distinctive.

He said he does not intend to back all of the study’s recommendations.

But he added, “I think as far as getting the budget right, getting people in tune to what she wants to do, getting the design team to look at the district as a whole, it’s very positive. It has been only one year and I think, at this point, I am pleased at the progress we’ve made, even though I’m disappointed about the things that people were upset about.”

Still, two former Richland 2 school superintendents — Brochu’s immediate predecessor Steve Hefner, now the Lexington-Richland 5 chief, and his predecessor John Hudgens, who retired in 1994 — took the unusual step of writing a letter to the school board in the wake of the Evergreen study.

They emphasized the importance of retaining the choice and magnet programs that have distinguished the district for many years and made it one of the top in the state.

2,400 school district jobs cut in May

Call it what you will -- attrition, retirement, right-sizing, down-sizing, anything else that helps you get to sleep at night -- but South Carolina's school districts cut a total of 2,400 positions from April to May, contributing to the return to double-digit unemployment in our state.

The legislature, meanwhile, passed a budget this week giving tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to big business in the form of tax breaks. Again.

Writes Meg Kinnard of the Associated Press:

The May jobless rate was 10 percent, up from 9.8 percent in April, according to seasonally adjusted data.

South Carolina's jobless rate was seventh-highest in the country, behind Nevada (12.1), California (11.7), Rhode Island (10.9), Florida (10.6), Michigan and Mississippi (both 10.3).
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[G]overnment jobs posted a loss of 1,900 jobs over the last month, with that sector losing 24,000 jobs in the past year. Education jobs, up 3,100 since May 2010, showed losses of 2,400 from April to May, as schools began letting out for the summer months.

Marion County continued to have the highest jobless rate in South Carolina, at 19 percent. Unemployment was lowest in Aiken County, which had a rate of 7.9 percent.

On Thursday, a budget conference committee agreed to a $6 billion spending plan that would give businesses a break on millions of dollars in those collections, a respite that comes after businesses complained about soaring tax rates needed to cover nearly $1 billion in federal loans. The loans were needed after the state's unemployment trust fund went broke in 2009, depleted by years of too-low tax collections that left it unprepared for the recession's layoffs and firings.

Budget cuts will close two Lee County schools

The Sumter Item requires a subscription to read the fine details, but the general idea is bad enough: Thanks to diminishing education funding, Lee County students and parents are going to lose two schools.

The Lee County School District will have to close two schools, eliminate the district's visual arts program, cut more than 20 jobs and raise property taxes to balance its 2011-12 budget.

Director of Finance Kristi Stokes said the significant cost-saving measures are needed to make up for a reduction in $2.8 million in federal stimulus and state funding.

Why are working retirees disappearing at Spring Valley High School?

Early this week, The State published an item about parents' disenchantment in the Spring Valley High School community.

It reported that Sally Tryon, a parent and president of the Spring Valley High School Student Improvement Council, "was one of the first parents to raise concerns about the departures of working retiree teachers at her children’s school."

When veteran teachers -- especially ones who have dedicated their entire active careers to teaching, then return at lower pay to give years of their retired time to teaching too -- are pushed around, it bears noticing by all of us.

The controversy seems to come from an "effectiveness and efficiency" study commissioned by Richland 2 Superintendent Katie Brochu and conducted by Evergreen Solutions of Tampa, Florida -- yet one more out-of-state business interest profiting from South Carolina's public education budget -- that recommends baldly to "phase out" the 145 working retirees who are giving extended service to students at Spring Valley High and elsewhere.

I have a feeling that "phase out" is a euphemism for "fire." And apparently, I'm not the only one sensitive to it. Because they're officially retired, working retirees are at-will employees anyway; they work for less pay than active teachers, they have no employment rights and they are only hired year-to-year.

But according to The State's report, working retirees aren't the only targets of the efficiency experts' study: "About 140 other positions also would be eliminated, including assistant principals and school administrator positions, if the school board agreed to the bulk of the 161 recommendations in the task force study. The Evergreen study estimated about $57 million in savings over five years if all were implemented."

Active parents are ready to speak up about the proposed changes to their children's schools.

“I’m getting more and more concerned because of the way it was done and the way it was presented,” said Sally Tryon, president of the Spring Valley High School Student Improvement Council.

Lynn Roth, another Spring Valley parent concerned about the study, said she is urging more parent representation on the task force. If that does not work, she and others plan to create their own shadow panel. “I think we will go through every one of those recommendations and make our own recommendations,” Roth said.

Roth, Tryon and other parents are particularly incensed that site-based management would be eliminated at schools, ending what has been a longstanding tradition of developing distinctive programs and climates at the district’s 36 schools and centers.

“These changes so far do not give us student improvement or school improvement,” Tryon said. “It has taken us in the opposite direction.”

She and members of her SIC were never consulted during the period in early 2011 when the Evergreen consultants made visits to the district’s schools and Tryon believes no other SICs had input into the study.

Who are the people making these recommendations? What do we know about them except that they come up here from Florida to help us South Carolinians figure out what we can't understand on our own?

Google shows that Evergreen Solutions is a sophisticated enterprise, with a lot of business and municipal clients. Clients all over the country have hired and paid them tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to conduct focus groups, send out surveys, interview people and publish colorful reports, full of recommendations. A lot of those clients have been so impressed that they've posted the reports and recommendations online, where everyone can read them.

And because many of their clients are public agencies and municipalities, those reports and recommendations become public information anyway.

It only took a few minutes of Googling to learn that when a school district hires Evergreen Solutions to conduct its "effectiveness and efficiency study," people are likely to lose jobs. At least, that's one popular recommendation that surfaces time after time in the studies prepared for school districts since 2006.

In 2006, it was Evergreen's study for Monroe County, Florida, that recommended "Based upon staffing allocations and enrollment trends, MCSD should eliminate some assistant principal positions." And, "MCSD should eliminate some staff support positions to schools."

In 2007, Evergreen told the four local governments of Alleghany County, Virginia, to cut one assistant principal and 14 teacher assistants, to abolish annual contracts for classified employees, making them at-will employees without any job security, and to cut paid working hours for bus drivers.

In 2008, blogger Ernest Brown of Lithonia, Georgia, attended a meeting to hear Evergreen's recommendations to his leaders in DeKalb County. Brown writes that Evergreen's president, Linda Recio, delivered the recommendations in person, which included cutting salaries, eliminating up to 42 personnel positions in the district office, and "targeting" the 170 employees in the district who had at least 30 years' experience with an "early retirement incentive option."

When efficiency experts come offering an "option" to veteran educators extending their terms of service to their students, I get a little anxious.

The same year, Evergreen recommended lowering the boom in Needham, Massachusetts, on a number of support staff, declaring that "Needham had more full-time equivalent support staff members than any of the other communities at the elementary, middle school levels, and was only surpassed by Natick at the high school level," and apparently, that was unacceptable.

One area parent who blogs didn't share the efficiency experts' sentiments. Boston Kayak Guy wrote then, "Parents have come to rely on a certain level of 'customer service' and staff reorganization and elimination of positions will almost certainly impact parents' perception of "service'."

By late 2009, Evergreen had made inroads into the Carolinas. It delivered a study to the Burke County School Board and Board of Commissioners to consolidate "four elementary schools into two and two alternative high schools into one," and these decisions by the board led to more unpleasant ones, according to the superintendent's annual report of 2009-2010:

As the board attempted to ratify the budget by May 15 it was determined that the district had reached a point where job cuts were necessary. Every effort was made to reduce the list of those being laid off and ensure it was the absolute minimum. The administration started with a list of 126 employees that were to be laid off, they narrowed that down to 70 who received notices, and have since been able to rehire 48 (subject to continual change) employees at some level. From teachers going back to school or taking jobs elsewhere, only nine teachers were left.

The local newspaper covered the meeting where school board members agonized over Evergreen's recommendations and their outcomes:

The board clearly wants more data before eliminating people's jobs. Members voted 5-2 to rescind the board's previous decision to cut the number of instructional coaches from 15 to five (the board last week voted to postpone the decision until it had more facts).

The board also voted 5-2 to stop advertising 13 job openings, including seven for content coordinators in a new table of organization the board adopted based on recommendations from the consultant, Evergreen Solutions.

"We have to focus on keeping teachers, not adding Central Office administrators," insisted Susan Stroup.

However, Tim Buff said Stroup's motion seemed to him to be the kind of micromanagement "that SACS CASI ripped us for" — referring to the schools' accreditation council.

"The Evergreen (Solutions) report brought us a bunch of recommendations," Buff said. "There's a person, people, jobs and the education of our school children behind every one of those recommendations. I don't want to see one person lose a job. But we're facing some big decisions."

The same spring, Evergreen made its way to Rock Hill.

The Rock Hill School Board heard Monday night that current revenue projections for the 2010-11 school year, best case, will be around $1.5 million dollars short of the cuts already approved by the board. This could mean an additional reduction of 16 positions. Final numbers will not be known until the legislature finishes up - probably in June.

Dr. Linda Recio representing Evergreen Solutions made a report on their findings of the school district's Operations Department. She presented a number of recommendations which the administration will review and report back to the board in a couple of months. Some significant findings were:

District owns unnecessary equipment (should be rented instead)
District has too many custodians and not enough employees for grounds maintenance (both should be outsourced)
Energy costs are excessive (compared to other districts)
External communications need to be improved
Cleanliness of the schools and facilities management were some of the best seen

After an executive session for personnel discussions, the board voted 5-0-1 (Douglas abstaining and Silverman absent) to approve the administrations recommendations for Reduction in Force (RIF). The administration will now begin notifying employees who will not be returning next year because of revenue reductions.

A column in the Rock Hill Herald put it more bluntly:

Cut down on custodians, hire private grounds crews and get rid of your dump trucks, a cost-cutting expert told the Rock Hill school board Monday night.

Custodians emerged as a key focus on a list of suggestions to help school officials deal with a massive budget shortfall that could bring 100 job cuts, fewer programs and other changes.

Rock Hill could reduce its custodial staff by 43 full-time positions and still remain above the national average for custodians per square foot, said Linda Recio of Florida-based Evergreen Solutions. Currently, 95 custodians clean halls, classrooms and bathrooms, in addition to more hired through private contractors.

"Custodians is an area where you are significantly overstaffed," Recio said.

And in a final example from early this year, Evergreen's Recio herself returned to Massachusetts to tell the leaders of Hamilton-Wenham to cut teachers, to increase the teacher-to-student ratio, and to cut the remaining teachers' planning periods.

According to the Hamilton-Wenham Patch,

Recio also said the district could save $100,000 annually by reducing the amount of teacher planning time.

“It’s extensive, it’s probably double what it should be and it’s not coordinated,” Recio said about teacher planning time.

High School senior Brad Kippen, who is the student representative to the School Committee, said teachers often spend planning periods working with students.

No matter, Brad. It's inefficient. It costs money. Students can work with one another. Hallways can keep themselves clean and lawns can keep themselves mown. Teacher-to-student ratios can rise to unimaginable heights, if necessary. You see, it's all about the bottom line, and what doesn't make money, costs money. Teachers cost money; teacher assistants cost money. Custodians and secretaries and assistant principals all cost money.

And working retirees at Spring Valley High School, despite collecting lower pay than active, full-time teachers, cost money.

Efficiency experts cost money too, and they don't get paid to tell superintendents how to spend more money; they get paid to tell superintendents how to spend less money while getting the same results.

It doesn't surprise me that an efficiency expert has recommended cutting jobs to save money. This is South Carolina, where no administrator needs an efficiency expert to exercise that right. We're a right-to-work-for-less state, after all.

What surprises -- and impresses -- me is that a group of concerned parents is organizing themselves to fight it.

More power to them.