Spartanburg doesn't want unfunded bus mandate

Editors of the Herald-Journal last week detailed their skepticism of Governor Nikki Haley's scheme to privatize the state's school bus system, declaring that they don't want another unfunded mandate sent down from Columbia.

I doubt that Haley will suddenly reverse course upon reading the editors' commentary; after all, they endorsed Vincent Sheheen against Haley in 2010, cautioning their readers against Haley's "platitudes."

Still, the editors in this instance -- as in that instance -- make perfect sense.

If state lawmakers decide to divest themselves of the state’s school bus system, they must do so in a manner that doesn’t place an unfunded mandate on school districts.

South Carolina is unlike other states in that the state owns and operates the school bus fleet. Gov. Nikki Haley and some lawmakers have been pushing to change that. They want to create a system that allows school districts to operate the buses on their own or hire private companies to operate their buses.

The state House was too divided on the issue to pass the proposal. Instead, lawmakers voted to form a study committee to look into the issue.

There is much room for improvement here.

The General Assembly rarely approves money to buy new school buses, so the average age of a bus in the fleet is about 14 years. The state often maximizes the money it does have by buying used buses from school operations in other states.

It is likely that there are efficiencies and improvements that privatization could bring to the school transportation system. Allowing districts control over their transportation systems might also allow them to better provide for their students’ needs.

But there is danger in changing the system as well. Many school district officials are afraid of an unfunded mandate — something state government requires them to do but fails to pay for. That is a legitimate fear.

School officials know it is likely that lawmakers will turn over the bus system to them and initially turn over the money that ran that system. But will that state allotment keep up with inflation?

As the buses age and need to be replaced, where will the money come from to buy new buses? That money isn’t in the annual budget. The General Assembly makes a special appropriation every so often. Will it give up this money when the buses are no longer a state concern?

As fuel prices continue to rise, will lawmakers increase the budget given to school districts to run the bus system? Or once lawmakers have washed their hands of the bus system, will they leave school districts to solve that problem on their own?

If bus service becomes a local issue, wealthier school districts will put more money into their systems than poorer districts. How long will it be before lawmakers are denouncing disparity in district bus systems and calling again for change?

Transportation is a critical element of our education system. South Carolina’s children need safe and reliable buses to take them to school and back home. They don’t need another political football tossed between Columbia and school districts.

As the study committee examines this issue, it should focus on enabling improvements, empowering school districts and avoiding saddling districts with a new financial burden they are ill-equipped to bear.

Privatized bus drivers vote to unionize Dorchester

Hurray for exercising one's federal rights to organize with one's co-workers into a union, and negotiate the terms of one's own life, livelihood and career path.

This is called taking control of one's own destiny, and Dorchester's bus drivers deserve recognition for their courage and tenacity.

It happened a week or more ago, but it's worth the attention still, as our lawmakers seem dead-set on privatizing the rest of South Carolina's school bus drivers -- a step that opens the door for even more privatized drivers to invite union representation.

Reporter Jim Tatum framed the situation in the Journal-Scene on April 13:

Bus drivers and monitors for Durham School Services, the private corporation that currently operates the Dorchester District 2 school bus services, will vote today on whether to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters labor union.

Union organizers Annette Hill and Sabrina Isom, both bus drivers for Durham, say they believe most of their co-workers, some 160 strong, are ready to go union.

Fifty percent plus one of the employees must vote yes for the drivers to unionize, they said.

“I think we’ll get that and more,” Hill said. “People want to be treated with dignity on the job.”

Hill says she has been a bus driver for four years, first with the district, then with Durham when the company took over bus operations in July 2011. She says she believes the union can only be a good thing for the employees.

“I don’t see a downside at all,” she said. “We want to drive up the standards; we want job protection; we need a voice in the workplace. We want someone to have our back. I’m a single mother of three and I just can’t see myself coming in one day to tell my children I don’t have a job anymore.”

Organization efforts have been ongoing since the beginning of the year and feedback seems to be strongly pro union, they said.

“We really got on the ball the first of the year,” Isom said. “We’ve been working very hard to get the word out.”

Hill and Isom also said the company, for all its rhetoric of not hindering union activity, is actively campaigning against them.

“We’re seeing all this anti-union material around the office,” Hill said. “Everybody got a packet in the mail at home over the holiday. If they say they don’t oppose it, then why are they putting out all this anti-union material everywhere?”

Most Durham employees nationwide do not belong to unions, but the company does not oppose employees engaging in union activity, Dave Brabender, Durham School Services Regional Manager said.

“The company feels it is very important for employees to vote – and to vote how they honestly feel,” Brabender said. “The company would never hinder that.”

Nonetheless, Brabender noted that, while a union can make promises, it can’t actually deliver on them – that ultimately falls to the company. When Durham Dorchester District 2 contracted with DD2, the company hired the drivers at the same wages the district paid them, and gave them a pay increase, he said. They also have benefits through Durham as well, Brubender said.

Currently, drivers are paid $10.50 per hour for driving their regular assigned routes and are paid $9 an hour for driving any extracurricular activities, he said. The reason for that is because extracurricular activity driving is voluntary extra duty, not assigned responsibility.

Brubender also said that each contract is based on a separate set of circumstances and one must look at the entire picture rather than individual parts.

“There are a lot of things that play into it,” he said.

The Teamsters have a strong and growing presence in South Carolina, L.D. Fletcher, president of Local 509 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said. Thus far, the Teamsters have unionized Durham drivers in Beaufort and Charleston counties. Since that time, the union has successfully negotiated contracts to increase wages and bring added protection to workers who otherwise would not have a voice, Fletcher said.

Fletcher noted that the union does not solicit membership; workers who believe their employers are disparately treating them seek out the union.

DD2 officials say the district does not have an interest in whether the drivers unionize; that is an issue between Durham and its employees.

DD2 outsourced bus operations to Durham in July 2011. The current bus fleet is still owned and maintained by the state of South Carolina.

The contract runs year to year, in this case from July 1, 2011 until June 30, 2012, and calls for the district to pay Durham $136.19 per bus per day to operate the fleet. At the end of the contract year, the DD2 board of trustees can renegotiate with Durham or seek another provider.

If the Durham drivers join the Teamsters, then the District will have to recognize and negotiate with the union, Fletcher said. If thedistrict decides to contract with another bus service provider whose employees are union members, the district would have to recognize and work with that union as well, Fletcher noted.

“If they were to happen to choose a contractor that is not unionized, we’ll just start the organization process again,” he said.

The election will be held today at Durham offices on Boone Hill Road. Polls close at 5:30 p.m. and the results should be known shortly after, Hill said.

Tatum's colleague, reporter Judy Watts, delivered the update later that day:

Teamsters Local 509 is celebrating tonight after winning the vote to unionize Durham Bus Services workers who drive the buses for District 2 Schools.

The vote was 85 to 66, according to organizer Sebrina Isom.

“There were bus drivers and supporters there very happy and hugging each other. They were saying ‘ain’t no stopping us now,’” Isom said in a telephone interview at about 6:30 p.m. tonight.

“Some of them gave me a hug and said they really appreciated all the work I and the others had done to make this happen,” Isom said.

School bus drivers across South Carolina, take note: If the legislature follows through on its promise to privatize your jobs, which leaves you without state health and retirement benefits, this is your alternative. I recommend getting in touch with your co-workers Annette Hill and Sabrina Isom now, to begin preparing yourselves and your co-workers for the transition.

Darlington finds cheaper bus fuel solution

Again, a good idea comes from the Pee Dee region.

While lawmakers look for ways to privatize the state's school bus system and turn another part of public education into a profit-making enterprise, the leaders in Darlington County's school system are innovating and solving problems within the public school system.

Which seems to prove the old notion once again: Empower professionals to solve problems, and they'll do it.

From the Florence Morning News online:

The Darlington County School District is going into the oil business.

Not crude oil, cooking oil.

District officials announced a plan Monday to convert used cooking oil gleaned from the district’s 19 cafeterias into “biodiesel” fuel that will be used to power DCSD activity buses. Those are buses that ferry students to athletic events and other extracurricular events, not the familiar yellow buses used for daily transportation.

The plan helps the district both go green and save some green. Recycling the old oil is good for the environment and because the district can make the fuel for about 75 cents a gallon, it’ll save almost a dollar per gallon in fuel costs. The district would save more, of course, if it could burn pure biodiesel, but that’s not recommended by engine manufacturers due to biodiesel’s increased viscosity. Biodiesel fuel needs to be burned in an 80-20 mix (80 percent regular diesel).

Still, district officials said they’ll save up to $17,000 per year, with regular diesel at its current price of around $4 per gallon.

Dr. Rainey Knight, Darlington School District Superintendent of Education, said she is excited about the innovative qualities of the program.

“I think it’s really neat,” said Knight. “We know it’s saving us money and we’re going green with it and we want to take it to the next level. Buses are expensive so if we can help reduce those costs and reduce the cost to our schools that’s our ultimate goal.”

The district said that it’s the only school district in the state that’s using biodiesel in its school buses.

And why is that? Why can't other school districts accomplish the same thing, and realize the same level of savings?

Here's a suggestion for the folks in Darlington: Ask the professionals who made this innovation a reality to draft a summary of their process, and post it on the Darlington public school district's website. Email it to other transportation officials across the state. Trumpet this document to everyone who will read it.

Not only will Darlington get tremendous credit for innovation, but the state's public school districts will benefit from the increased savings.

The whole project was made possible by a one-time grant from the United States Department of Energy in the amount of $40,000. The district will use the funds to pay for setting up its own “refinery.” No bus engine modifications are necessary.

See what happens when we allow federal funds to get into our state?

Are more of these grants available?

If not, this is a perfect opportunity for Darlington's legislative delegation to propose a pilot program to legislative allies, and get several of these refineries set up throughout the region and across the state. What a boon to local economic development!

The National Biodiesel Board defines biodiesel as a clean burning alternative fuel produced from domestic, renewable resources such as plant oils, animal fats and used cooking oil. Biodiesel contains no petroleum, but it can be blended at any level with petroleum diesel to create a biodiesel blend. It’s in use by a number of organizations and businesses around the country. The key component for most is access to a ready supply of used cooking oil.

Darlington County School District Transportation Director Eddi McKenzie came up with the idea for starting the program in the DCSD. McKenzie has been using biodiesel in his personal vehicle for three years.

God bless this man, and someone give him an award today.

“When I saw how well the biodiesel worked in my own personal vehicle and how much money we saved as a family, I thought it would be worth exploring for the school buses as well,” he said.

McKenzie said that some people have expressed concern about the chemicals involved in making the biodiesel but he said there’s nothing to be worried about.

“When we make it we feed the chemicals, such as lye, into the processor individually and the machine mixes them together,” McKenzie said. “By themselves they are not dangerous. It’s a pretty safe and easy process.”

The oil processor is about the size of an industrial-sized ice machine. McKenzie and company used part of the grant to install some solar panels that will help power the machine – yet another tip of the green hat.

Darlington has a budget of some $60,000 per year for activity bus fuel, so the new fuel will save nearly a third of that.

“You figure $17,000 saved each year over a five year period will add up,” said McKenzie.

That's money that can be converted to salaries to hire more educators in Darlington.

The district could save more if it burned biodiesel in its regular school buses (assuming it could produce enough fuel to do that). But it’s prohibited from doing so because the state owns those buses.

Legislation is currently before the House and Senate that would change that, but for the time being those buses are off limits.

Why, South Carolina?

Why does it take so long to move a single step in the right direction, but we're ever ready to race backwards in fifth gear?

Calhoun hears concerns over bus privatization

Concerns about the proposal to effectively privatize the state's school bus system were heard at a recent meeting in Calhoun County, according to the Orangeburg Times and Democrat.

The proposed state bus transportation bill that would transfer the financial responsibility and maintenance of school buses to the local districts is like “a grenade waiting to go off,” says Jerry Sullivan, Calhoun County School District chief financial officer.

A grenade that would likely explode a local school budget, I presume.

Sullivan at the school board’s March 19 meeting said he’s concerned about Bill H4610 which has been sent to the S.C. House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Taxation. He said the proposed legislation appears to be “on the fast track” for passage.

The legislation, if approved, would require the district to either operate and pay for its own fleet of school buses or privatize the transportation of students.

Isn't that clever? The bill offers local school districts an option: Buy these aged school buses from the state and continue to run your own public school bus system under rigid new state regulations without state support, or contract out your transportation services to a private company.

Sullivan said 16 of the district’s 24 buses are more than 15 years old and, by law, can no longer be used to transport students. The district would have to replace those buses at a cost of approximately $1.3 million, he said. The state, however, has been operating the same buses even though they are more than 15 years old, Sullivan said.

That's funny. The state operates these old buses, but once this bill becomes law and districts are forced to buy the state's buses, the state won't let districts operate the same buses because they'll suddenly be too old.

The district would probably have to privatize transportation due to the cost, he said, with the changeover being done over a three-year period.

Bingo! Privatization will be achieved.

Board Chairperson Joyce Parrish said, “My biggest scare is money taken from the classrooms and given to buses.”

Sullivan noted the bus maintenance shop is used by the Calhoun and Swansea school districts, saying that brings other unknowns into the equation.

Follow the money, folks. It leads somewhere, I guarantee.

McLeod opposes bus privatization bill

The Newberry Observer reported recently that Rep. Walt McLeod has announced his opposition to the proposal to effectively privatize school buses across South Carolina. Reporter Natalie Netzel explained the bill and let McLeod outlines his opposition to it.

The bill known as the School Bus Privatization Act of 2012 would turn over the ownership and purchasing of the school buses from the state to the individual school districts.
...
District 40 Representative Walt McLeod is opposed to this bill citing problems with private enterprises, the high costs and how the school bus and maintenance shop on Airport Road in Newberry may no longer operate.

McLeod says, “the school bus system is working extremely well and we are lucky to have it,” and points out the state run system provides better service for less money.

McLeod wants what is best for the school children and the school district and doesn’t believe this bill is beneficial. He also cites when the Council on Aging in Newberry privatized their buses and the quality of the bus service diminished.

Senator Ronnie Cromer also cites this issue and says that he and other legislatures are inundated with complaints about the Newberry Council on Aging’s privatized bus system.

Cromer is not sure that privatization would save more money which is his primary concern.

He does point out that in most cases whenever privatization normally happens, it is better than the federal government.

However, he is not absolutely convinced in this case. Cromer does mention that perhaps if counties could choose whether to privatize buses or stand by the old system, that would be an option to consider in amending the bill.

Netzel consulted Newberry's director of student services, Dr. George Suggs, who expressed concerns that Newberry County would be forced under the proposed legislation to purchase more buses to replace aged ones.

The additional cost will likely force Newberry leaders to consider other transportation options:

The school district would have to research private companies.

Which is likely the true motivation of the bill.

Suggs also points to their transportation budget which for this year, their budgeted expenditures were about $1.38 million and they also have to consider bus drivers salaries, benefits, insurance, etc.

The school district’s 2012 budgeted revenue for bus drivers salary, benefits, insurance, etc. was about $5.65 million.

When is public information not public?

Today, it's Summerville; tomorrow, South Carolina.

The Post & Courier reports that in Summerville, the rules about public information appear to be different from the rules elsewhere in the state and nation.

I reckon we can expect more of this bobbing and weaving as Governor Nikki Haley pushes for a statewide school bus privatization plan. As she seems to define transparency, we'll all have free and open access to absolutely nothing.

Three people who asked for a copy of the Durham School Services bus contract from Dorchester District 2 schools were told it would cost $150 — an apparent violation of the state Freedom of Information law.

The requests came over the last few weeks as Teamsters union representatives try to organize bus drivers in the district.

District officials say the fee quote is policy. One of the requesters said it was an attempt to withhold information.

A South Carolina Press Association official called the fee quote “smoke.”

Durham School Services Regional Manager Dave Brabender confirmed that “there’s an organizing event going on, and there will be a vote in a couple of weeks.”

Allyson Duke, the district’s chief financial officer, said the $150 fee was quoted for copying a 22-page document because that fee is called for under a district “commercial use” policy, and staff understood the contract was requested for the Teamsters.

One hundred fifty dollars to copy a 22-page document? That's $6.82 per page. I knew it was expensive to live in Summerville, but this seems a little exorbitant.

“No, no. There’s no specification for that in the law. District policy does not trump state law. I think there’s smoke there,” said Bill Rogers, S.C. Press Association executive director.

The requesters are state residents and are treated the same as anyone else under the law, he said. “Above all, financial contracts are open. They should be available at minimal cost,” Rogers said.

Two of the requesters were a bus driver in the district and a bus driver from another district who is a union representative. They were told they could view the contract without charge.

Asked to assist by the Teamsters, activist Rob Groce of Knightsville pushed the district on the fee, and the contract was copied for him for $5.

Groce said he was told at first that it would take two weeks to produce the copy.

Okay, they knocked the price down from $150 to five bucks, but then said it would take two weeks? This is a request for a photocopy; it wouldn't take two weeks to typeset the entire 22 pages by hand, letter by letter, and print it using an old Ben Franklin press.

Are there no high-speed photocopiers in all of Dorchester County?

It boggles the mind, how difficult it seems to be to get public information.

“We didn’t deny anybody. We do have to have policies in place” to compensate for employees’ time and protect taxpayers’ dollars, Duke said.

She said she would speak with the district’s attorney about whether the commercial use fee is proper.

“The fact that I had to go through such rigamarole to get information ... it’s my opinion she was deliberately trying to withhold information where my tax dollars go, and I don’t appreciate that,” Groce said.

Duke said that was not true.

The district outsourced its bus services to Durham at the beginning of the school year.

The contract copies were requested because of drivers’ concerns that they are paid less per hour to drive to extracurricular events than they are to drive routes, Groce said.

Privatization bill catches national attention

South Carolina's costly and unnecessary proposal to dissolve and privatize the state's school bus transportation system has attracted the attention of a national publication that focuses on student transportation.

Ryan Gray of School Transportation News reported on Friday that the school bus privatization bill under consideration in our legislature has been amended but the issue is still unresolved.

Gray begins, "County school districts remain unsure of what will be expected of their transportation services next school year as the state legislature has yet to vote on a bill that would require the South Carolina Department of Education to turn over school busing to local district control."

Amendments to H. 4610 were approved earlier this week to no longer subject homeowners to paying taxes benefiting school operations. This is one sticking point among opponents of the bill who feared taxpayers would be left footing the bill for the fleet transition. Meanwhile, others have feared that school districts would be saddled with new costs in the millions when being forced to take over school bus operations from the state or outsource.

Starting this July, school districts would have one year to prepare and publish RFPs to solicit bids from school bus contractor companies to provide service per state and local procurement provisions, beginning with the 2012-2013 school year. Contractors would be required to consider employing existing school bus drivers and maintenance staff if taking on the service for a local district. But districts could also choose to own and operate their fleets.

A main advantage of the bill would be to reduce the age of the state's school buses, considered among the oldest in the nation, within six years. Between July 1 of this year and June 30, 2015, school districts would only be able to operate school buses less than 20 years old. This requirement would fall to 15 years of age until July 1, 2018 date, at which time all school buses in service would have to be less than 12 years old.

Legislators also amended the bill to remove a reimbursement fund that was initially marked up because the state was going to have to sell nearly 6,000 school buses, equipment, maintenance shops and other facilities. The bill now essentially hands all assets over to the county systems, with the state Department of Education required to complete the transfer of facilities by this July and all school buses by Jun 30, 2013.

As such, the state no longer would receive revenue in return to fund local transportation. Instead, a state funding formula would need to be put into place beginning with the 2013-2014 fiscal year to reimburse districts per bus and per mile driven. Exact percentages would be determined and approved by the legislature in the annual state budget, said a source familiar with the legislation.

Comments made in the School Transportation News Linkedin group indicate ongoing concern over proper state reimbursement funding to school districts.

The source added that the legislature delayed voting until members had a chance to review the large amendment that was adopted. The bill was introduced as a “skeleton bill,” according to lead author Rep. Jim Merrill at the meeting.

Gray's summary is solid and creditably fair to the privatization crowd.

This footnote caught my attention, and I have to say that School Transportation News is awfully optimistic to seek comment from our ambitious, absentee chief executive.

Editor's note — At this writing, STN had approached representatives of Gov. Nikki Haley, a vocal opponent of unions, to obtain comment on the relationship of school bus contracting and organized labor. What unintended consequences might a law create? How might this affect the funding formula for county school districts? We hope to bring that conversation to our readers in the near future.

Haley doesn't speak to journalists representing her own state's largest regional newspapers.



I'd say it's a safe bet that STN shouldn't expect a return call.

Profit motive fuels forced privatization

Today's online edition of The State newspaper includes a reader survey on the bus privatization issue; go here to weigh in, and be sure to forward the link to friends and family who will vote, too.

Reporter Gina Smith catches the crux of the issue in her opening statement: "South Carolina school systems are fearful they are about to be handed a bill for tens of millions of dollars by the S.C. Legislature."

Unnecessarily so, because the system as currently run is pretty doggone efficient, given the age of South Carolina's school buses -- which, let's remember, include a good number of buses discarded and sold to us by Alabama, Tennessee, maybe even Kentucky -- and the territory they are tasked to cover.

That bill, they fear, could start coming due this week as S.C. House members begin work on a proposal to require the state’s school districts to operate their own school bus systems or contract those operations out to private companies.

Currently, South Carolina is the only state in the nation that owns and operates its own school bus fleet. That fleet, all agree, is in pitiful shape. The average bus is about 14 years old and has more than 200,000 miles.

Advocates say getting the state out of the school bus business will benefit both the state – in over its head, running a massive bus system – as well as the local school districts, who will gain control over bus routes, bus stops and get new buses. It also will get the state out of business that it has no business being in.

“For the state, it gets us out of the bus business that we’re running so poorly right now. There will be big savings in efficiencies for the state,” said state Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley, the bill’s primary sponsor. “For the school districts, they get more local control. They can sit down with a bus company and work out the details of a bus system that works for their specific district.”

More local control. That's funny, really. Lawmakers like to give local control to local school boards when it benefits the lawmakers -- like pushing a privatized school bus system on local boards -- but it likes to snatch local control away from them when it suits a political ideology.

Remember why we have a made-up statewide charter school district? It's because local school boards had the authority to approve or deny charter applications. That was called local control. But lawmakers who want to use charters as a weapon against traditional public schools, and who love to prate about local control as public policy, were all too happy to take local control away from local boards in that case. Now we have an unaccountable statewide charter school board issuing charter approvals willy-nilly, and the little charters are growin' like kudzu.

And read this part one more time: "For the school districts... They can sit down with a bus company and work out the details of a bus system that works for their specific district." Doesn't that sound an awful lot like collective bargaining, in which a school board negotiates the terms of a contract "that works for their specific district"?

If we're moving in the direction of empowering local school boards to negotiate all of their business, let's call it what it is -- collective bargaining -- and get out of the way altogether. After all, what's the difference between a school district's workforce and a school district's business partner? It's all in the label we attach, isn't it?

Gov. Nikki Haley supports privatizing the bus system and outlined a plan to do so in her executive budget. Her office says she is in “broad stroke” agreement with Merrill’s bill but has not been involved in working on its details.

I doubt anyone is surprised by this. Haley's got her eyes on bigger prizes. Her book drops on April 3, which means she's gunning for the New York Times best-seller list, one more stop on the road to total world domination. Details of school bus privatization are way beneath a governor who campaigned on bus privatization.

But some school districts are crunching the numbers and say they cannot afford the change.

School districts – looking into a future of ever-higher fuel and vehicle costs – fear the state’s contributions to school districts will not keep up with their rising costs.

Earlier this month, the Florence 1 school board passed a resolution opposing Merrill’s privatization bill.

School board chairman Porter Stewart said Friday it will cost his district about $10 million to buy new buses and about $6 million a year to operate a bus system.

“It’s a lot of money and, of course, there’s no guarantee this doesn’t become an unfunded mandate or a not-fully (paid),” Stewart said.

Also late last month, Horry County school board members expressed concern the proposal could cost their district about $39 million to buy a bus fleet and another $16 million a year in operating costs, according to media reports.

The school bus system cost the state more than $112 million to operate two years ago, the most recent cost figures available. School districts collectively pitched in an additional $138 million.

Under the privatization proposal that House members will begin work on this week, the state would continue to put the same amount of money into the bus system, giving it to local school districts that could operate their own bus systems or contract with private bus systems to buy and maintain buses as well as operate bus routes.

Initially, the state is likely to send even more cash to the school districts to help with the transition, Merrill added.

But it’s an unnecessary change, Florence 1’s Stewart said.

“Nobody has brought to my attention that we’re having major problems with our (Florence 1) bus system. Why do we need to change that which is working very well at the local level?” he asked. “We haven’t asked for this change. We don’t need this change.”

Crystalline logic, you must admit: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

But what is obvious common sense in far-flung sections of the state carries no weight in Columbia, where ideology is all.

The privatization idea is part of Republican mantra that the private sector is more efficient and, thus, less expensive than government-operated endeavors.

Ah, ideology is all. When the civilization we've built is strewn in ruins, the ideologues will still have their ideology.

Does the idea accomplish anything? No, but why should that matter? Ideology is all.

But questions remain about whether privatization actually saves money.

A three-year study, released last summer by the state Department of Education, found it cost the state more in time and money to privatize a school bus shop than it had to run a state-owned shop. However, state Superintendent of Education Mick Zais, a Republican, dismissed those results, saying the private company involved lacked the experience needed.

I recall this vividly. There's always a reason to discount a study's finding when you don't agree with them -- and when a major donor to your governor wants a lucrative state contract.

Ideology is all!

Concerns that privatization is a way for the state to cap its costs and hand the responsibility for future higher costs to local schools and taxpayers extend beyond the Florence 1 and Horry County school districts, said Scott Price of the S.C. School Boards Association.

“Several districts are very concerned about the state punting it down to the local level and not providing adequate funding,” he said.

Price said small districts and rural districts would be hit hardest. “Some districts are not going to be equipped to handle the costs of maintenance shops and new buses,” he said.

A legitimate concern to local school boards, right? They're given meager funding, usually a restricted ability to raise more revenue on their own, and they have to balance the demands of their parents with their capability to meet needs.

How does a politician address the concerns of a local school district about a proposal that threatens to upset all their apple carts?

But Merrill counters it is still early in the process, and his bill can be amended to handle any concerns. For example, several, small districts could band together to form a consortium, making a private bus system more affordable.

“It’s disappointing to see some already working against the bill,” Merrill said. “We’re trying to work with everyone on this. Let’s first see how the bill needs to be amended and work together on this.”

Ahhh, all our problems can be ironed out -- and you'll still do what you're told. If necessary, a few of you poor districts will have to band together -- doesn't that sound like consolidation? -- because ultimately, you'll do what you're told. If we have to tweak a few words in the bill to say that we heard concerns and responded to them, we will, but in the end, you'll do what you're told.

Ideology is -- say it with me, boys and girls -- ALL! We're going to privatize this state, come Hell or high water, because Governor Nikki Haley says we will. Gone are the days when politics was the art of bringing people together in the marketplace of ideas; that was liberal pap from the start. Today, politics is the art of moving public money into the private sector to reward campaign contributors with profits.

And when private entities make bigger profits at the expense of public coffers, we all win, right? That's what the ideology says:

House Majority Leader Kenny Bingham, R-Lexington, said any savings at the state level would be shared with school districts.

“This bill is a starting point. No one should get hung up on any language in the bill,” said Bingham, a former Lexington 2 school board member. “Unless the districts buy in and take ownership of this, it will not happen. But I would think they would want this. It’s more local control. And there will be savings at both the state and local level. No one is interested in passing on a lot of costs to districts.”

Oh, we're not calling it profits anymore -- profits are bad -- we're calling it "savings" now. Savings is good. Right, judges?

Judges?

Oh, so it is profits, after all?

Yeah, you're right. Privatization is about profits.

Haley: I don't want to pay for your kid's education

If it weren't for simple mathematics, Governor Nikki Haley might've succeeded at portraying herself as a compassionate conservative. Unfortunately for her, thanks to hundreds of thousands of fine math teachers across the land, Americans -- even we South Carolinians -- can comprehend simple arithmetic.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said her proposed budget for 2012-13 increases money for public schools, but a closer look shows her recommendations would actually decrease state funding by nearly $80 million.

"You'll see education gets an increase," she said in releasing her first executive budget last month.

The Republican governor is partially correct, but only by disregarding some pots of money. Her proposal represents an increase in recurring money for K-12 schools, when factoring in all state revenue sources - chiefly, the penny of the state sales tax that goes directly to education programs.

However, Haley's budget proposal does not include anything funded this school year with one-time money.

That includes $56 million legislators added to the budget to boost the so-called "base student cost" to $1,880 per student - money they added over her veto. Superintendent Mick Zais has asked legislators to at least maintain that key funding source, which primarily pays for teacher salaries, by funding the $56 million through recurring sources, plus adding $15 million to account for student population growth.

By doing neither, Haley's budget would reduce that per-student amount to $1,766 - in a year the state formula calls for it to be $2,790.

Educators call it disappointing.

This is not new. Educators have been disappointed for a decade now.

If a condition lasts a whole decade, can't we call it chronic? Are we suffering chronic disappointment in our state's leadership? Are our state's leaders guilty of chronic neglect of public education?

And what a stirring demonstration of commitment to the rule of law in South Carolina! The Education Finance Act and its formula for a base student cost, adopted in 1977, dictates that this year's appropriation should total $2,790, is absolutely ignored.

An untrained monkey can observe that Haley's budget shows public education is not a priority for her. It reinforces the position that many educators put forward in 2010, in actively supporting Sen. Vincent Sheheen for the post Haley occupies, that when data demonstrates a woman hasn't supported public education in the past, we might reasonably predict that she won't suffer a blissful epiphany once ensconced in the chief executive suite. Better candidates deserve our active support.

Yet educators remained divided then -- oh, I don't like politics; it's so dirty. And, we can't get involved in partisan bickering and make people angry at us; there's no telling what they'll do in retaliation when they get into office. And, let's face it, we're a conservative state; best to ask for what you want, be thankful for what you get, and work with everybody.

Result: Governor Nikki Haley.
Base student cost: $1,766.
State of the education professions: Demoralized.
Quality of public education: Suffering.
Value to long-term right-wing agenda: Priceless.

Here's a prediction: When educators organize, educators win.

Legislators say there's no chance they'll restore the base student cost to $2,790, which would cost $553 million, but they could provide some increase.

"Some increase." This is laughable. A base student cost of $1,800 would represent an increase, and it would still leave us at education funding levels somewhere near 1996, the year that Bill Clinton was re-elected to the presidency.

The extra $913 million projected for 2012-13 follows several years of budget cuts due to the Great Recession.

It's due to a surplus from the fiscal year that closed June 30, along with more money coming in this fiscal year than legislators budgeted, plus continued growth. However, required increases - including property tax relief, health care and reserve funds - gobble up most of it. And those surpluses from the current and last fiscal year are what's considered one-time money. Former Gov. Mark Sanford long railed about using that to pay for long-term expenses.

Yes, we need property tax relief, because high taxes on beachfront property discourages wealthy retirees from relocating here to shelter their nest eggs; it's the primary reason we've seen in-migration drop off so precipitously in the past two or three generations.

Haley has long complained that more money needs to go toward the classroom, rather than administration.

As Zais points out, that's precisely where the "base student cost" - considered a bellwether for state support - goes, in the form of salaries: "We ought to try and at least maintain funding for classroom operations."

"While the governor and I disagree on the dollar amount directed to the base student cost, we're in complete agreement that recurring dollars should be used to pay for recurring expenses," Zais said.

Sophistry: the tool of confidence men, fortune-tellers, magicians and pickpockets.

Try this: While the superintendent and I disagree on the need for public education funding, the Constitution and I are in complete agreement that the legislature is specifically empowered to raise the revenues necessary to fully fund the state's essential obligations and institutions.

Haley's budget also does not annualize the $20 million in one-time "hold harmless" money sent to districts to cover shortfalls due to an adjustment to a state funding formula. And it reduces lottery money to K-12 schools by $11.3 million, in order to fully fund lottery-funded college scholarships.

Items Haley highlighted when releasing her $5.7 billion budget plan include further tax cuts - reducing revenue from state and corporate income taxes by $140 million - and the addition of about 100 law enforcement officers. She would put $75 million of one-time money toward encouraging counties to take over the maintenance of some state roads.

The conservative South Carolina Policy Council says Haley is right to insist that education by funded only with recurring money.

"If increasing base student funding is a priority, it should be treated as a priority, not a benevolent afterthought," said spokesman Barton Swaim, who formerly worked for Sanford. "All this confusion highlights the fact that our funding structure doesn't make sense. Our K-12 education system isn't underfunded - it's funded inefficiently."

Translation: It isn't that we're not feeding our children enough, it's that we're feeding them a little bit from four major food groups, three times a day, when one Flintstones chewable a day would be more efficient.

On the plus side of the equation, Haley would give the statewide public charter school district an additional $10 million.

"The problem that I think we've had in the past with government is we tend to just look at the dollars that go into education."

Yes, I can see where that's a problem. When citizens can look at a budget document and see how many or, har har, how few dollars go specifically to public education, it tends to impede the governor's ability to undermine, dismantle and privatize public education and other services. Apparently, parents want their schools to be funded at ever-increasing levels, similar to the annual increases in cost-of-living, inflation and the forces of the free market. It's as if they take to heart that old saw from the King James: "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

I don't want us to do that anymore. It's not what we get; it's how we spend it," she said, adding that's why she put more money toward charters.

Hm. Sage advice. It's not what we don't have, it's how we manage the void.

I can see Haley telling a poor family at Thanksgiving: It's not important that you have no turkey and dressing with all the trimmings, it's important that you have a whole afternoon free, since you won't be napping from turkey overload.

Or, telling poor children at Christmas: It's not important that Santa Claus brought you no toys, it's important that you swallow your disappointment at those in whom you previously placed your trust.

Or, telling slaves on our old antebellum plantations: It's not important that you're deprived of freedom, and of learning to read and write, it's only important that you have plenty of time and opportunity to get your work done.

Hilariously, even Haley's own charter-school lieutenant undercut her specious argument:

Superintendent Wayne Brazell said that money would only cover student growth in his statewide district, which consists of charter schools that chose not to organize through their local district.

Remember, several years ago, when local school boards were refusing to approve charters for fly-by-night bands and snake-oil salesmen to open charter schools in their districts -- and siphon precious public dollars from their district budgets -- former Governor Mark Sanford pushed lawmakers to set up a statewide charter school district with its own board of trustees.

So Haley's generosity toward charters in this budget proposal only benefits the charters who couldn't get approved by their local boards and had to resort to the Sanford dodge to open their doors. That's nice. It sends a good message to the children: Play by rules and lose; create loopholes and win! Yay!

The $10 million would be on top of the $25 million legislators added in the current school year, to help make up for the fact its schools get no local taxes. Ironically, since the district otherwise relies on base student cost, Haley's budget actually reduces per-student spending on its schools.

Haley redirected some money that comes in through the penny sales tax added under the 1984 Education Improvement Act. That penny funds specific things such as gifted and talented programs, summer school, student testing, 4-year-old kindergarten, and bonuses for teachers with a national certification. Both Zais and Haley recommend closing that incentive program to new entries.

The penny is expected to generate an additional $42 million over the recurring amount legislators budgeted for this year, to nearly $607 million. However, after factoring in a one-time allocation from a previous surplus, the extra is less than $9 million.

New programs she funds include $2 million toward Teach for America, which puts top college graduates who didn't major in education into low-income schools, and $1.75 million to launch a STEM curriculum, which stands for Science Technology Engineering Math, aimed at preparing students for careers in technology.

Education Oversight Committee director Melanie Barton praised the additions of those EOC initiatives.

"Having successful leaders in the classrooms of our most challenged schools is critical to change the expectations and culture of many of our schools," she said.

This hurts my brain.

The leader of the Education Oversight Committee affirms that "having successful leaders in the classrooms of our most challenged schools is critical." Yet she praises the Haley plan, which (1) reduces per-student spending, (2) eliminates incentives for National Board certification, a program to improve the quality of classroom professionals, and (3) diverts funding from four-year-old kindergarten to pay for Teach for America (aka Teach for A While), a program that "puts top college graduates who didn't major in education" into the most critical classrooms for only two years.

This is praiseworthy? I understand that the EOC isn't really a body of educators -- even some of its "educator appointees" are business people rather than education professionals -- but praising an anti-education budget for its scraps and crumbs is weak.

Haley also added $10 million for technology and $2 million to help failing schools while eliminating money for some university-sponsored programs. She puts $5 million toward leasing school buses, as she pursues legislation transferring bus responsibilities to districts.

"I don't want to buy any more school buses," Haley said.

Well, that's what it's all about: What Haley wants.

I don't want to look at how many dollars we spend, she says. I don't want to buy any more school buses. I don't want to pay for any more textbooks or dictionaries. I don't want to hire any more teachers. I don't want to keep SCETV on the air. I don't want to pay retirement benefits to our public employees. I don't want to provide health insurance to anyone. I don't want to build any more schools. I don't want to read criticism from newspaper editors. I don't want to talk to reporters who print what I say and make me look foolish. I don't want my support for Mitt Romney to count against me. I don't want to learn about Caesar's wife from John Rainey. I don't want Darla Moore to overshadow me. I don't want to hear any more about transparency. I don't want anyone to question me. All I want is to be obeyed.

Her spokesman Rob Godfrey used that as an example for how her budget increases money for K-12: "It doesn't burn tens of millions of dollars on buying buses, which are expensive, which rapidly depreciate, and which we don't need to own anymore," he said.

The state hasn't spent "tens of millions" on buses in years.

Oops.

Yeah, that's right. Scrapped school buses from Alabama and Kentucky and Tennessee don't cost tens of millions of dollars; those states may even pay us to come and take the buses off their hands.

The current budget designates up to $12.3 million for new buses from unclaimed lottery prizes - the first designation for buses since 2007. The education agency has received about one-third of that, said Zais, who added he's fine with decentralizing buses.

Zais did request $36 million to buy enough new school buses to comply with the state's 15-year replacement cycle law, to get buses from the mid-80s off the road. Legislators have ignored that law since passing it.

Of course they have. This is South Carolina, where the law is a mighty rubbery thing.

Roosevelt Institute exposes privatization's motives

The more I know about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, the more I love who they were, what they did for America, and the legacy they left behind.

One more example is the Roosevelt Institute, a nonprofit organization "devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt by developing progressive ideas and bold leadership in the service of restoring America’s health and security."

That's a mouthful, and there's no better time than now for such an institute to be doing this work.

This week, the Roosevelt Institute and Salon.com have teamed up to publish a series of articles on public policy, and the first of these is an incisive essay on privatization found here.

Educators especially, but all public employees generally, should pay close attention to privatization proposals, as essayist Mike Konczal explains.

Privatizing the government is one of the most active projects of the early 21st century.

Everything we once expected the government to do — from education to regulatory rule-writing to military operations to healthcare services to prison management — it now does less of, preferring to support markets in which these services are done through independent, profit-maximizing agents. Tools such as contracting out, vouchering and the selling-off of state assets have been used to remake the government during our market-worshipping era.

Does this sound familiar to public employees in South Carolina? Contracting out services that once provided jobs for public workers? Vouchers to pay for children to attend private -- for profit -- schools instead of public schools? Selling off state assets, such as timber in 40 counties, rather than letting public employees do the work?

Privatization is one of the few political projects that enjoys bipartisan support: Conservatives cheer the rollback of the state, and liberals like to claim that the virtues of the free market are being used towards the egalitarian ends of public policy. The fraud and waste that often come with outsourcing these services has been well-documented. The private management in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the lobbying efforts of corporate prisons have all provided horror stories of what happens when cronyism guides decision-making on behalf of the state. But privatization as standard government practice has problems that go far beyond the abuses of any single incident.

Rather than solving problems with government, privatization often amplifies those issues to new extremes. Instead of unleashing market innovation, it often introduces new parasitic partners into the decision-making process.

Are these the vulture capitalists that Rick Perry mentioned?

Instead of providing a check on the power of the government, it allows the state to circumvent constitutional and democratic accountability measures by merging with the private sector. And ultimately, the practice replaces the set of choices and constraints found in democracy, with another set found in the marketplace. Today’s political conversation is blind to these problems out of a mistaken faith in the efficiency and fundamental equality of markets, contrasted to the ineffectiveness and corruptibility of the state.

What advocates miss is that the logic of markets creates private-sector coalitions capable of extracting just as much from taxpayers as the state.

No kidding. Once private industry has tapped a vein of public revenue, it's a matter of time before that vein is stretched wide open to catch every dime of the state's life blood.

Corporations, lobbyists and other market actors can have just as much political agency as the government, and privatization can mobilize businesses to rewrite market practices.

This political process plays out in the quality of the services provided and the structure of the companies providing them.

Hey, school bus drivers and food service workers, this guy is talking about you, or the jobs you once had, or the jobs you're about to lose. When a privately-owned, for-profit bus service, or a privately-owned, for-profit food service company moves in and gets the contract in your school district, they MAY offer to hire you, but at lower pay, and with fewer health-care benefits, and little or no retirement benefits.

And the quality of the work? You know what happens to the quality of the work. We're talking about profit margins, the bottom line. Contracts go the lowest bidders.

Privatization has sometimes meant that the most lucrative and easiest parts of these government obligations go into private hands, creating private profit, while the most difficult and dangerous parts remain with the public. This can range from the “privatizing the gains, socializing the losses” of various parts of the financial sector to the “cream-skimming” that goes on in many other industries.

If privatization is meant to put a check on the size and power of the state it often backfires, as the practice can be used to circumvent normal mechanisms that exist to hold the state accountable. A whole array of transparency laws and constitutional checks don’t carry over when the government outsources its responsibilities and activities to independent businesses.

This is where "right-to-work" turns to "right-to-work-for-less-with-no-rights."

Privatization as a way of avoiding constraints and accountability measures has two particularly troubling consequences. First, the government can use independent agents to do things that they themselves cannot do, betraying the whole point of keeping government in check. Especially in the world of surveillance, this practice can act as a way to get around constitutional protections enjoyed by citizens.

Second, accountability measures that have evolved through decades of public law are jettisoned when a service leaves the public sector, allowing companies to do the government’s work in a network of secrecy. Ways the public keeps a check on the government, from the Freedom of Information Act to the Administrative Procedure Act to whole regimes of other transparency laws, do not bind outside businesses.

The Constitution prohibits the delegation of significant state powers, but the Supreme Court currently puts few constraints on the government to outsource many of its important duties. What today’s discourse ignores is an understanding of the liberal conception of what public and democracy itself is good for — as a way to check private and government power, and promote accountability and responsiveness.

These blur into dark scenarios where private-public relationships give public agents maximum discretion in exchange for giving private agents advantages over their competition. For example, after FedEx’s CEO announced that his company would be cooperating with the government following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the firm received a number of rewards. Ranging from special access to security databases, to a prize seat on a regional terrorism task force (the only private company represented) and special state licenses, these benefits amplified the firm’s power in the marketplace over noncooperative competitors like UPS, all in exchange for amplifying the power and reach of the state.

Defenders of privatization also argue that the marketplace creates innovation. Competition, the profit motive and the “creative destruction” of the market system can be deployed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government services. But what this outsourcing really does is move constraints from one space to another. It transforms the strengths and weaknesses, the limits and the constraints, from government to the market.

And leaves workers behind in the process. How many private companies doing business in South Carolina guarantee health insurance benefits and a defined benefit retirement plan?

That's the difference between public employment and private employment. And to tamp down the ambitions of private-sector workers to have better pay and better benefits, our leaders decide to undermine and dismantle the rights of public employees, so that nobody has nothin'.

Except the owners, the operators and the overseers, that is.

Privatization replaces the democratic role of citizens finding solutions to collective problems and transforms it into consumers trucking and bargaining in a marketplace. Finding solutions in a public space emphasizes accountability, voice, transparency, rules and claims through reasoning that goes beyond the self. The market emphasizes cost-benefit thinking, profit-seeking strategies, bargaining and the satiation of individuals’ wants; good things in many circumstances, but not necessarily when it comes to the powers of the state.

A regime of privatization shifts the debate away from the functions of government towards the allocation of those functions. For all the talk about innovation by outside contractors, what privatization largely does is preserve the scope of government services while looking for efficiency gains. And since the scope of what the government does is held constant, the real gains come from minimizing costs.

Take prisons, for example. With the addition of privately run prisons, the debate narrowly focuses on how much to spend on prisoners. Minimizing costs here will often be the result of simply providing less of a good at a worse quality, and the debate will focus on the optimal extent of these privatization contracts. Meanwhile, the greater question of when the state should imprison people fades to the background.

It's all about the money, boys.

How much work can we get out of these people, at how little a cost?

What’s actually public about these responsibilities disappears from the conversation. Privatization assumes that cost quantifying solutions are more fundamental to government than any discussion of ethics or values. The move away from democratic accountability is particularly worrisome because in many of these fields, the ultimate motivator of private markets, the profit motive, is in direct conflict with the public administration. The basic values, concepts and institutions of liberal democracy — political participation, elections, equal distribution of individual liberties, checks on concentrated power — do not work towards economic competitiveness.

The ideology that the government is just one among many providers of goods and services is a seductive one in this age of markets. But the government isn’t simply just another agent in the market, and firms that are empowered to carry out the role of the state can be as abusive as the worst bureaucracy.

But we never hear about corporate power being the problem; we hear about government being the problem.

Funny thing: When Franklin Roosevelt was president, government did a fine job of getting America back on its feet.

We need new arguments for the government, with all its strengths and weaknesses, to be allowed to do its jobs knowing that it won’t always be perfect. The alternative is government by cronyism, delegated marketplace winners exploiting what works about markets with none of the normal checks we expect on a functioning democracy. There are no doubt weaknesses in the current functions of government, but for those who resist privatization, that is a call to political reform rather than one of abandoning the public arena altogether.

Here's the lesson for the day: Private means profit. Public means people.

I put my faith in people, not profit.

Where do children rank among state budget priorities?

This is not a trick question: Of these three states -- South Carolina, Alabama or Kentucky -- which values the lives of its children most?

I'll give you a hint: The answer isn't South Carolina.

In fact, South Carolina won't even take second place out of the three options, given the choices made by our lawmakers in recent years.

This week, the General Assembly voted to override Governor Nikki Haley's veto of a plan to use $12.4 million in unclaimed lottery money to buy school buses. That's great. Nearly 400,000 public schoolchildren in South Carolina ride school buses. But will we be buying new buses, or used ones?

An item in yesterday's Bluffton Today raises the issue.

"A couple years ago I put my child on a school bus for a field trip, and I walked up and talked to the bus driver and said, 'How many miles do you have on this bus?'" said Sen. Joel Lourie, D-Richland. "He said, 'Sir, I couldn't tell you. The odometer is broke.'"

It's not a funny story, and I'm sure Lourie didn't tell it to get a laugh. It's tragic, and it's a perfect illustration of the immorality of our state budget.

It appears that when faced with the need to provide transportation for all of South Carolina's public schoolchildren to and from their schools, our state's leaders have done what they always do: They compare prices and look for the cheapest way out. It seems that not even the lives and safety of our children are worthy of being a first, or high, priority in state budgeting -- especially not when their lives and safety are competing against such proposals as tax breaks for corporate interests.

Consider:
In 2005, we bought 72 used buses from Kentucky. Kentucky appreciated our business and apparently kept our number for later reference.

In 2007, the Charleston Post & Courier published a series titled "School Bus Breakdown," concluding that our school buses are "the nation's oldest, most polluting and least safe."

--The average South Carolina bus is 14 years old, while the national average is nine years old. A substantial number of buses built in the mid-1980s are still transporting children to and from school.

--The state recorded nearly 12,000 bus breakdowns during the 2005-06 school year, many of which required children to get off the bus and wait on the side of a dangerous road until another bus arrived.

--Other state agencies have more modern buses than the Education Department. The Corrections Department's buses average 10 years in age, meaning prisoners enjoy newer buses than schoolchildren.

Read that again, with feeling: "Prisoners enjoy newer buses than schoolchildren."

When the Post & Courier published its series, a proposal was under consideration to adopt a plan to annually replace school buses.

Under the replacement cycle, the state would buy about 375 new buses every year at a cost of nearly $30 million. Many states and individual school districts around the country already have laws that force aging school buses into retirement.
...
The average age of a South Carolina school bus is 14 years, five years older than the national bus average age of nine years. Many of the state's buses are much older and lack modern safety features, such as additional emergency exits and anti-lock brakes. The average Palmetto State bus has traveled more than 200,000 miles, and many have clocked more than 400,000 miles.

Three guesses about how that plan turned out.

In 2007, lawmakers approved the plan to annually replace school buses.

In 2009, lawmakers appropriated no money to buy buses.

In 2010, lawmakers appropriated no money to buy buses. But we were lucky: Kentucky called us again. That state "discarded" scores of 18-year-old school buses -- meaning that Kentucky's leaders judged them unfit to transport Kentucky's little children to and from school, even one more day -- and Kentucky put these buses up for auction. We bid on 87 of them and won the right to buy 85 -- which means that Kentucky profited from our highest bids -- at an average price of $3,800. With these, we were able to "retire" some our 26- and 27-year-old buses.

In January 2011, we bought 24 used school buses, with an average age of 11 years, from an Alabama school district "that replaced them with new vehicles," according to The State. We used these to "retire" some more of our 23- and 24-year-old buses. Since the legislature didn't appropriate any funding for them, how did the Department of Education pay for them? The State tells us:

To buy the Alabama buses, the Education Department used money it raised from selling to scrap metal companies the skeletal remains of S.C. buses cannibalized for replacement parts.

And how did Alabama sell its buses? It auctioned them, which means that Alabama, too, profited from our highest bids. We bid on 44 and won the right to buy 24 of them, at an average cost of $8,000. Their mileages, The State said, ranged 44,000 to 110,500.

So it was against this backdrop that our governor this week vetoed a proposal to spend $12.4 million of unclaimed lottery money -- not new appropriations from the General Fund, which would represent a state funding priority, but from a pot of money that inattentive lottery winners never stepped up to claim; or, not to put too fine a point on it, but FREE MONEY, accidentally available to the state -- on buying slightly-safer school buses for our children. Her Excellency's reason for depriving schoolchildren of slightly-safer school buses paid for with found money?

Haley's veto message said she objected to the unclaimed lottery money being spent on school buses because the state should be focused on privatizing the bus system.

Privatization: A system by which someone profits from South Carolina's appropriations for public schools -- just as Kentucky and Alabama profited several times in the past seven years from our purchase of their aged, decommissioned vehicles at auction.

The answer to the question at the top of this note is both Alabama and Kentucky. If we cared as much for our children as they do, we wouldn't buy another state's cast-off school buses. We would appropriate the funding necessary and buy new ones.