Senate sustains Haley veto, condemns rural districts to poverty

Two things happened on Tuesday afternoon in the state Senate, and both were significant.

ONE: Senators voted to sustain Governor Nikki Haley's veto of a local bill -- approved under state law by one district's local delegation, because it affected only that district -- that would have allowed the county to issue bonds to raise the necessary funds to pay its debts. In so doing, they effectively condemned Florence District 4 to bankruptcy.

The Senate voted 18-17 to sustain the Republican governor's veto of a bill that would have let Florence District 4 issue bonds to meet its operation expenses. The tiny district has less than 800 students in three schools. It already has cut a quarter of its staff during the past three years and recently voted to raise taxes.

The district needs $800,000 to pay bills to the state and federal government. It planned to pay the borrowing back over eight years.

Sen. John Land said Florence District 4 owes for health insurance premiums and payroll taxes and its superintendent is retiring.

"For whatever reason - and I'd have to say it was bad financial management - they're about $800,000 in debt," said Land, D-Manning. "Yes, they were wrong. Yes, they should never have gotten into this financial problem and the blame rests with them - but the solution rests with us."

Their decision means that the ideologues pushing for school consolidation in the legislature will have one a back-door victory in this instance, too:

Without the money, the school district could be forced to merge into another nearby school district, officials previously have said.

Florence 4 was not the only district asking for this authority. The local delegations of Colleton and Hampton counties passed similar local bills this session, which were similarly vetoed by Haley. In the wake of the Florence 4 vote, it seemed clear that the Colleton and Hampton county bills would fail, too, leaving children in those rural districts condemned to institutional poverty.

Of course, South Carolina's lawmakers could have, during this session, addressed the problem head-on and appropriated funds to resolve those rural districts' debt without their having to resort to issuing bonds. But in South Carolina, lawmakers exhibit tremendous ease in appropriating funds for tax breaks and withholding funds from the educational needs of children in terminally impoverished counties, all in the same week. It is as it has always been in our state.

TWO: In voting to sustain Haley's vetoes of this local bill (and potentially the other two), Senators have baldly declared open war on a long-standing piece of state law -- and one another. Columnist Cindi Ross Scoppe of The State addressed this topic -- and sided with Haley in the matter -- last week, and quoted Senate Rules Committee chairman Larry Martin of Pickens County.

[W]hen it became clear Thursday that local senators would override the governor’s vetoes, tea-party senators revolted, insisting that it was not only their right but their responsibility to weigh in. Sens. Kevin Bryant and Shane Martin said they should vote to uphold the vetoes because the bills would affect their constituents who own property in the districts. Sen. Mike Rose said the bills went far beyond such traditional single-district topics as changing selection methods for school boards and pushed the Legislature onto a dangerously slippery slope that eventually would lead to exempting certain districts from, say, state student-teacher ratios. “At what point,” he asked, “are we going to step in and say, ‘you can’t do that’?”
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The most surprising thing about the debate was who championed the divine rights of local legislators: Senate Rules Chairman Larry Martin, who warned his colleagues to be careful what they did unto others, lest the same things be done unto them: “I want you to stay out of my business in Pickens County, and I’m gonna stay out of yours.”

The fact that this perversion of the Golden Rule would be enunciated by one of the most responsible senators demonstrates just how deeply ingrained the idea remains that the Legislature should control all aspects of life in South Carolina.

Mr. Martin said the three districts were being held to a different standard than seven others that had been given the same authority. That’s not an entirely illegitimate argument, but it perpetuates one of our Legislature’s worst beliefs: We can’t do things the right way because we’ve always done them the wrong way.

When we talked later, Mr. Martin noted that several senators who were in revolt come from counties with multiple school districts. “If we’re gonna start getting into other folks’ business, that gives me license to start consolidating all these school districts,” he said. “I can tell you, the very folks that were arguing today to sustain the veto would not want us arguing about how their board is structured.”

Now that Senators know their colleagues no longer respect the sanctity of local delegations' authority, it will be interesting to see whose ox gets gored first in next year's session, and to hear how loud grow their cries of mortal pain and righteous indignation.

I predict that if Sens. Bryant, Martin or Rose offer any local bills affecting their counties, we may see them fall the next victims to the war they declared.

Pickens budget funds reading teachers, books, supplies

It reflects a dark day in America when the headline above elicits the kind of overwhelming relief and happiness that it certainly is in Pickens County this week. Shouldn't a county's school budget fund the essential needs of schools, including reading teachers and books and other supplies?

Somewhere down the road, perhaps a century hence, when public officials take so seriously their obligations under the federal and state constitutions that they always raise the necessary revenues and always afford access to good quality education to every child among their constituency, such headlines won't be the source of such surprised joy.

But here in the early-to-mid-twentieth century in South Carolina, we have to take the good news where we can get it. And the Pickens Sentinel gave us some early this week:

The Board of Trustees of the School District of Pickens County passed a 2011-2012 budget of $94,772,925 Monday night.

The budget includes 750,000 in funding for 14 reading interventionists, which had previously been cut from the budget figures when it looked like less funding would be available. Twelve of the reading interventionists will work full time at the larger elementary schools, while the other two will split time among the four smallest elementary schools.

The budget also contains $40,000 in funding for buying books for the library at the new Chastain Road Elementary school and $300,000 to supply teachers with $275 charge cards for teachers for purchasing classroom supplies.

The budget includes $60,000 for the hiring of an internal auditor, $60,000 for an unexpected insurance payment, and $32,000 to payback the SCEO for a stimulus grant.

The additional funding came from unexpected funds from the state.

“I’m happy we are restoring the 14 Reading Interventionists that work directly with students on improving their reading skills, and the board is restoring the $275 classroom supply cards to classroom teachers,” Board Chair Alex Saitta said. “By and large the bulk of the additional funds are going directly in the classroom.”

Trustee Jim Shelton proposed adding two more reading interventionists, two guidance counselors, three media specialists and 2.5 assistant principals for an additional cost of $592,000.

I don't know Mr. Shelton, but he seems to understand that the role of elected officials who are responsible for public schools is to protect and strengthen those schools, not run them down and starve them of resources. According to the Picken County School District's website, Shelton's term on that board expires in 2014, which happens to be when the office of state superintendent of education is up for election again. Hint, hint.

That is, unless Governor Nikki Haley and her legislative allies are successful in taking that office away from South Carolina's voters.

Shelton noted that the district with a reserve fund of about 11 percent of the total budget.

Shelton said that he has been on the board when the trustees needed to be financially conservative and when the board has spent freely. Shelton questioned whether the board was so conservative at this point that it was hurting education in Pickens County.

“For the past five months, the board has been dedicated to financial affairs,” Shelton said.

Shelton noted that while the district was the 13th largest in the state had the 13th highest budget, pay for the Superintendent was 53rd in the state. Shelton also noted that the district is ranked 12th in the state in academic achievement. “We have been high in achievement, low in costs,” Shelton noted.

Shelton said he feared the magic Pickens County education professionals were achieving would be disrupted if the board continued to make such drastic cuts.

Shelton said that cutting the assistant principals and guidance counselors would cause disruptive students to remain in the classroom, affecting their fellow students’ education. “We have heard the public say they don’t want these positions eliminated,” Shelton said.

Shelton he felt that the cuts were extreme and unnecessary since more funding had become available from the state. “The cuts made already are taking away the meat,” Shelton said. “We’re starting to cut the bone now."

Sadly, Shelton seems to be in the minority on the Pickens County board, and his proposals failed in the final vote. Still, Pickens seems to be well ahead of most of South Carolina's districts in making resources available to schoolchildren, and light years ahead of the legislature in that regard.

Feds threaten to cut funds; Zais scrambles to keep them

Says The State newspaper:

Trying to head off the 11th hour loss of more than $100 million in federal money because it has not spent enough on special education in the past few years, the state could send a whopping $75 million to school districts by June 30.

The state’s failure to spend enough on special education in the past, according to federal formulas, also means the U.S. Department of Education plans to withhold $36 million from the state each year going forward.

At issue is a Friday ruling by the U.S. Department of Education that South Carolina has failed to spend enough on special education students in the past three years. Reduced tax collections cut the state’s income during that period and, in turn, the state cut the amount it spends on students with special needs.

Because the state has not spent enough, the federal agency plans to penalize it by withholding $111 million a year in federal money for special education: $75 million because the state did not spend enough in its fiscal year that ends June 30 and $36 million for not spending enough in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2010.

The takeaway from this little scandal is that, when faced with the prospect of losing more than $100 million in federal dollars, our federal-funding-averse Superintendent of Education suddenly found $75 million lying around and scrambled to figure out ways to get it into local school districts. Which begs an elephant-sized question: Where did this money come from and why wasn't it already in the hands of local school districts?

On that matter, Mick Zais is yet quiet.

One thing he's doing is re-labeling about $20 million from the Education Improvement Act Trust Fund -- did everyone know that the legislature sits on an "EIA Trust Fund," rather than sending that money on to school districts? -- as "special education" funds. The State reports that a legislative committee jumped on the case yesterday and quickly approved that motion, perhaps one of the quickest acts to occur this year. But the paper says the Budget and Control Board has to vote before June 30 to let this happen.

Will Governor Nikki Haley, who chairs the Budget and Control Board, vote for this move or against it? After all, she's followed pretty closely in the footsteps of her mentor, former Governor Mark Sanford, in badmouthing any funding that comes from Washington and any funding that goes to support children in public schools. Perhaps Treasurer Curtis Loftis, Haley's bete noire, will be the most relevant member of the BCB in this instance.

But $20 million is just a small piece of the money that Zais is hot to move.

The remaining $55 million will be squeezed from the state Department of Education.

Say what? The ultra-conservative Zais Superintendency, after claiming for the past six months alongside lawmakers that the state could only afford a base student cost of $1,617 per student, suddenly acknowledges that he can "squeeze" another $55 million from his department's budget? Is Zais's petty cash drawer that big?

Zais said that is doable because the General Assembly recently gave his department additional flexibility to use Improvement Act money. Also, in the last few months, the agency has paid lower-than-anticipated fuel prices for the statewide bus system that it operates.

This smells like low tide at Bowens Island in August. There's no way South Carolina "saved" so much on school bus fuel that it can afford to roll $55 million out of Zais's office into special education. Haley and the gang are going to love this news, and likely will use it next year to support her call to privatize student transportation statewide.

No, it's the "flexibility" part of Zais's answer that makes the most sense -- and represents the greatest danger. You see, this is precisely what happens when lawmakers -- who don't want to face their constitutional obligations and raise the revenues necessary to fund public education -- give a set amount of dollars to the department, and to school districts, and tell them to use those dollars in whatever way best serves the department's, and each district's, priorities. This is how they can stand before a judge in school-funding-equity lawsuits and defend themselves with a straight face: Your Honor, we gave them all the money we could, they just didn't all use the money the same way, which is their fault.

So $55 million that would otherwise have gone to every other kind of program under the department's control has now been re-labeled "special education" and shipped out. That's flexibility for you.

One interesting note arising from this new foolishness is that the lions are mauling one another over it.

State Rep. Brian White, R-Anderson, the incoming chairman of the S.C. House's budget-writing committee, asked: “If you had an idea (this would happen), why didn’t we include (a request for the money) in the normal budget process instead of having a train wreck at the 11th hour? I don’t understand why you didn’t put in a request earlier.”

Zais said he has been in communication with the governor’s office and legislative leaders since February, letting them know his office was in talks with the U.S. Department of Education.

But it was not until 3 p.m. Friday that Zais said he received word the federal agency would not grant the state waivers for its lower-than-prescribed special education spending for the past three years.

A new budget proviso should prevent future last-minute maneuverings.

It requires the state Department of Education to inform the governor and General Assembly each year by Dec. 1 of the amount the state must spend to get all of the federal special education money that it qualifies for.

Perhaps when we elect someone who views the role of superintendent as the state's chief advocate for public education and public schools, it won't require a new state law for that superintendent to tell the legislature exactly how much is needed, and when, to provide education access to all of South Carolina's children.

Orangeburg 5 budget includes raises; mayor honored for support

The Orangeburg 5 district school board adopted a budget that does something not many have done this year: It gives slight -- two percent -- raises for classified and support staff.

The O5 board accomplished this without tax increases and without furlough days for district employees, according to the Orangeburg Times and Democrat.

Why can't other districts do the same?

Trustees have also approved a resolution authorizing the district to issue a $3.1 million general obligation bond. These funds may be used for technology and to purchase a van to transport handicapped students.

The board also approved a $5 million tax anticipation note, or short-term loan. The TAN money will be available if it's needed to help the district meet expenses from September until December, when local taxes begin to come in.

Perhaps the O5 board feels additionally empowered to support Orangeburg's public schoolchildren because they have the vocal support of Orangeburg's mayor, Paul Miller.

Miller was honored earlier this month by the state School Boards Association with that group's "Champions for Public Education Award" for his "unwavering support of students and staff in Orangeburg Consolidated School District Five." Miller's nomination came from the O5 school board.

According to the Times and Democrat,

For more than a decade, Miller has been one of the biggest supporters and friends of the district's students and staff.

As a member of the district's foundation board of directors, he works tirelessly to raise funds and support for a teacher grants program to fund innovative classroom projects that enhance teaching and learning.

In fact, he single-handedly solicited and obtained prizes, including a 50-inch, high-definition television, and a $10,000 donation for the foundation's recent fundraiser.

In addition to his foundation work, Miller's leadership has assisted the district to address several safety issues, including new sidewalks for students who walk to school and parent pickup and parking at several elementary schools.

Finally, the mayor's help this past year during the board's superintendent search was invaluable, including his assistance with focus groups to provide input, city tours and packets for the finalists. Miller was one of the first public officials to congratulate the chosen candidate.

"Through his interaction with the district's schools, students, board of trustees, administrators, teachers and staff, Mayor Miller has made a marked difference in public education," the board stated in its award application. "OCSD 5 is a much better place because of Mayor Paul Miller."

Professionals look for jobs in public schools

National media published reams of coverage last month on the meager job prospects facing this year's wave of college graduates. The job market, to put it mildly, is tight.

Last week, state media published news that South Carolina's unemployment rate has now reached 10 percent again, thanks in part to the elimination of 2,400 educator jobs.

But today's Herald-Journal in Spartanburg features a state-sponsored program that helps mid-career or late-career professions prep for jobs as teachers in public schools. Twenty-three of them, who have already finished one year in classrooms, are participating in a training given by the South Carolina Program of Alternate Certification for Education (PACE) at Fairforest Elementary School this week.

PACE is a three-year program through the South Carolina Department of Education that allows college graduates who have not completed a traditional teacher education program to enter the profession. PACE students walk away with the same certification as any teacher completing a traditional program. Around 800 participants are in some stage of the PACE program.

Participants must have two years of work experience or have a master’s degree, and work toward full certification while teaching in their content area.

I can understand the interest that district administrators exhibit for mid-career professionals; they bring a little maturity and some expertise in particular private-sector fields. On the other hand, they're not the young idealists who choose and plan for a career in education from the beginning.

PACE student Stephanie MacLeod is now teaching elementary Spanish in Spartanburg District 7. MacLeod double-majored in English and Spanish at Columbia College and started a master’s degree at the University of South Carolina but wound up working retail. A friend told her about PACE.

“I was in the position of having all this education and not being able to find a job,” MacLeod said. “I never thought I would be an elementary teacher in my entire life. The job kind of fell into my lap, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

It's not clear how PACE compares to the university programs that education undergraduates experience. But apparently mid-career transfers stay in the classroom longer than brand-new college graduates.

During a combination of training sessions and nine hours of graduate coursework, PACE students learn to apply their professional knowledge to a classroom environment, as well as skills such as classroom management, establishing relationships with parents and making lesson plans. Tuesday’s lesson dealt with questioning techniques.

“It’s not the same training (as traditional teachers receive), but it is intensive training,” said Falicia Harvey, director of PACE. “These teachers perform as well as traditional teachers, and we are able to retain them longer than traditionally trained teachers.”

Budgets stop school improvements in Beaufort

From the Island Packet comes news of more fallout from school budget cuts. Editors take the position that local decisions are pragmatic, but pragmatism doesn't help the children who expect to attend school this fall. How long should they expect to defer a good-quality education before it's too late?

The board voted 6-5 on June 9 to immediately suspend about $1.3 million in capital improvements at schools that could close for the 2012-13 school year. Projects at Shell Point and Lady's Island elementary schools and Robert Smalls Middle School are on hold pending a decision on school closures, vice chairman George Wilson said.

The elementary schools are slated for possible closure on a list of options district officials are considering. The middle school could be consolidated with Battery Creek High School.

The work at those schools was to include projects such as computer lab and scoreboard additions and major painting projects, Wilson said.

"We don't want to do a lot of expenditures and then come around and shut down the school," he said.

The board will pay some penalties for halting the projects, but moving ahead would be foolish. The district has excess classroom space and likely diminishing revenue as a result of the economic downturn and reduced property values.

The board hasn't shown much stomach for the idea so far. In the face of public criticism, earlier this school year, it shied away from a proposal to close Shell Point Elementary. But consolidating schools to reduce overhead is one obvious way to cut costs.

The public also should be realistic about this prospect.

Lies, logic, and changing the rules when it's convenient

South Carolina's lawmakers like to say that we spend upwards of $10,000, $11,000, maybe more than $12,000 per student to educate children attending our public schools. They like to say it because it sounds spectacular and makes us look like we're spending money like water on a bloated, wasteful school system. The average citizen doesn't know the difference, so our electeds get to play both sides of the question, depending on their audience, saying, (a) See, we're downright foolish, we spend so much on our little ones and their fancy schools, or (b) See, we're downright foolish, spending too much on other people's little ones and their fancy schools.

Fact is, when the legislature left for home two weeks ago -- before Governor Nikki Haley demanded they return to pass her political agenda -- they were satisfied to spend only $1,617 per child from our state's treasury. That's roughly what we spent during Bill Clinton's second term, a truly pathetic and paltry sum for a state that pretends to support public education.

Yes, "pretends" is the perfectly correct word to use, when a state legislature funds public schools at so low a rate that districts cannot afford to keep a school's doors open and the lights on without issuing general obligation bonds to pay local basic school expenses.

Yet here we have another perfect example of the ineffectiveness -- or malevolence, for it must be one or the other -- of our General Assembly: When local delegations adopted local legislation granting school districts permission to do exactly this -- issue bonds to pay for operating expenses -- Haley vetoed those bills.

And now those lawmakers, representing three school districts, find themselves begging their colleagues for support to override Haley's vetoes. It is literally a matter of whether or not districts will be able to pay their bills through the summer and fall.

Sen. Clementa Pinckney is one of them, and his local newspaper in Bluffton noted his case in yesterday's edition:

Calling it his last local priority before the S.C. General Assembly finishes its work this summer, Sen. Clementa Pinckney is trying to save a bill that Hampton County school officials say will ease their budgetary crisis.

At issue is whether school districts should be allowed to issue general obligation bonds as a way to pay for operating expenses.

In Hampton County's case, officials say they need that option to offset lost stimulus money, Education Finance Act funds and future budget cuts. The alternative, according to Pinckney's bill, is to lay off teachers and staff, raise class sizes and and cut programs.

The Democrat's proposal, S. 877, is similar to Rep. Kenneth Hodges' bill, H. 4149, for Colleton County School District, and Sen. John Land's legislation, S. 785, for Florence County School District No. 4.

All were passed by local delegations, vetoed by the governor, and raised last week for an override by local senators. Traditionally with such bills, the rest of the 46-member body does not cast a vote.

But last week the three bills ran into intense objections from Sen. Greg Ryberg, R-Aiken, Sen. Chip Campsen, R-Charleston, and others.

"This is something that really does have a statewide implication on all the taxpayers in the state," said Campsen. "You don't incur debt to pay current operating expenses. That's like using your home as an ATM."

Notice that bit in the middle: "Traditionally with such bills, the rest of the 46-member body does not cast a vote." Yet two senators, neither of whom lives in the districts asking for this option: Hampton County, Colleton County or Florence County, raised objections and went on to orate with gusto on behalf of their party leader's position.

Why? Had not similar legislation been passed before, giving local districts the right to band-aid the wounds left gaping by the legislature?

Legislative records show that since 2003, six other similar bills passed into law, either by a local delegation's veto override or by the governor allowing the bill to pass without signing it.

They include school districts in Sumter, York, Orangeburg, Kershaw, Lee and Clarendon.

The newspaper asked Pinckney to speculate why his colleagues ignored the chamber's vaunted polity in this instance.

"I assume there may be some political things. Maybe there's blood in the water, and people are looking at it from a purely philosophical standpoint, just to make a point," said the Jasper County senator, who also represents Hampton County.

"I don't believe in making philosophical points. I am dealing with reality. Right now I have districts that are hurting," he added.

Just a day earlier, columnist Cindi Ross Scoppe of The State weighed in on the matter -- and sided with Haley.

Scoppe's argument was that the system itself -- rules that allow local delegations to pass single-county bills -- is "one of the most enduring and destructive vestiges of the Legislative state." Fair enough and maybe, but this is what we have instead of a conscientious legislature.

Supporters say the districts are in crisis and must make disastrous cuts without this admittedly irresponsible funding mechanism. The governor says the funding mechanism is fiscal folly and shouldn’t be allowed regardless of the consequences.

I agree with the governor, although the districts do need help that the state has failed to provide. But the debate is not simply about whether such an extraordinary remedy is justified; it is about whether state legislators finally will accept their responsibility to act as state legislators.

Scoppe is a knowledgeable columnist and keeps the attention of lawmakers with her incisive logic; that logic has caused legislators -- former Speaker David Wilkins was one -- to call her out by name from the podium or the chamber floor.

But that's the very problem. Logic is appropriately applied where logic is respected. This is South Carolina, where logic is no more than a political tool, used for some tasks and not for others, depending on who may be helped or hurt.

Scoppe writes:

By tradition, the only people who vote on a single-county bill are the legislators from that county. Except for school bills, they’re almost always unconstitutional. The single-county school bills are simply bad policy, because they buttress our practice of writing different rules for different districts, and prevent the Legislature from making the reforms we need to improve public education. The most obvious example is school district consolidation, which would benefit our state in countless ways; the Legislature refuses to order it because most legislators consider the districts to be the sole province of the legislators who represent them.

But when it became clear Thursday that local senators would override the governor’s vetoes, tea-party senators revolted, insisting that it was not only their right but their responsibility to weigh in. Sens. Kevin Bryant and Shane Martin said they should vote to uphold the vetoes because the bills would affect their constituents who own property in the districts. Sen. Mike Rose said the bills went far beyond such traditional single-district topics as changing selection methods for school boards and pushed the Legislature onto a dangerously slippery slope that eventually would lead to exempting certain districts from, say, state student-teacher ratios. “At what point,” he asked, “are we going to step in and say, ‘you can’t do that’?”

Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell said the bills likely wouldn’t be considered constitutionally acceptable school laws because they made findings in the name of the Legislature and exempted the districts from state law.

The most surprising thing about the debate was who championed the divine rights of local legislators: Senate Rules Chairman Larry Martin, who warned his colleagues to be careful what they did unto others, lest the same things be done unto them: “I want you to stay out of my business in Pickens County, and I’m gonna stay out of yours.”

The fact that this perversion of the Golden Rule would be enunciated by one of the most responsible senators demonstrates just how deeply ingrained the idea remains that the Legislature should control all aspects of life in South Carolina.

And it illustrates my point, while little children continue to get by on state investments of $1,617 each.

If a South Carolina high school has no athletics program, does it exist?

In August, South Carolina's fifth artificial high school is scheduled to open in Cyberspace.

Cyberspace, as geography lessons reveal, cannot be found on a map of South Carolina. Yet it already is home to four artificial high schools enrolling South Carolina pupils, none of which have faculty parking lots, teacher workrooms, cafeterias or, most importantly, basketball courts and football fields.

Which leads to an obvious question: What do students enrolled in these schools do on Friday evenings?

Let's be serious. Homeschooling has its place, just as private schools have their place. But just as taxpayers don't subsidize parents' decisions to homeschool and to pay private school tuition, should taxpayers pay to experiment with online schooling, where effective interaction between instructor and pupil depends upon your bit rate?

Is not something being purposefully lost in eliminating the face-to-face teaching and learning between and among educators and students?

Surely, introverted adults and children will appreciate this mode of communication. And not having to ride a school bus to the desktop computer is a boon. But online education -- fine for adults with careers who want to earn advanced degrees on nights and weekends -- seems to strip a large part of childhood learning from the experience.

Where, for example, do these online-school biology students dissect their frogs? Or is that an artificial experience, too?

Where does a pupil deliver class presentations? Or is the imagination restricted to Powerpoints?

Do these artificial schools host artificial science fairs? If so, who pours the vinegar into the volcano's top to activate the baking soda lava?

The Charleston Post & Courier, in announcing the opening of this school, doesn't mention issues such as these. But it does tell us there are considerations to make before enrolling a child in one:

Even if virtual schools are accredited, students should still consider their post-graduation goals before applying to one. The military does not accept more than 10 percent of recruits with nontraditional high school diplomas. Many colleges accept degrees from virtual high schools only if they are regionally accredited by organizations such as SACS, rather than nationally accredited.

One last question: If an artificial school that exists only in cyberspace is sufficient to meet the needs of a modern high school student, why do we need five of them? Why isn't one sufficient?

Please don't tell me this is another example of out-of-state business interests earning a profit from South Carolina's public school budget.

Yep: It's an out-of-state business interest -- Morgantown, West Virginia, is not contained with South Carolina's borders at the present time -- earning a profit from South Carolina's public school budget. When will we learn?

Anderson County parents: Act now to protect your schools

If you live in Anderson County, you still have time to speak up in defense of your children's public schools and the funding they need. According to the Anderson Independent Mail, your county council is hearing budget presentations Tuesday at 4 p.m. from District 4, District 3 (Iva), and District 1 (Williamston).

On Thursday, at the same time, the county council will hear from District 2 (Honea Path) and District 5.

These public meetings may be your only opportunity to hear the budget proposals from these school districts for 2011-2012 before the county council votes on them.

Will Haley veto a plan to grant public schoolchildren more funds?

The Aiken Standard published a note today optimistic that our schools may get $56 million out of a conference committee agreement that irons out differences in the House and Senate budget plans. But the Standard is well aware that Governor Nikki Haley issued a declaration last week that public schools should get none of the late spring's windfall tax revenues.

It happens that Aiken County stands to collect two million dollars from the total sum, if it escapes Haley's wrath. And if that happens, the local school board may not be forced to raise the local millage rate.

If a S.C. legislative budget conference committee deal holds up, school districts would get an additional $56 million to boost their per-pupil allocations, including more than $2 million for the Aiken County School District.

The additional statewide funding is roughly half of the $105 million that the S.C. Senate had inserted into its budget initially after the Board of Economic Advisors projected another $210 million in new revenue.
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Earlier this week, Gov. Nikki Haley said she would veto any additional funding for education.

As The Associated Press reported, the current per-pupil school allocation is $1,617 - more than $1,100 less than the state's own funding formula. Initial budget efforts improved the allocation to $1,788. The $105 million in extra appropriations would have move it to $1,959; the $56 million agreed upon by the committee will provide $1,880 per student.

Two of Aiken County's legislative delegation are tickled pink at the prospect of avoiding a millage increase: Reps. Bill Taylor and Roland Smith. But another two, Sens. Shane Massey and Greg Ryberg, take Haley's stand: In economic times such as these, children in the public schools have to suffer like the rest, and do more with less.

Ryberg, in fact, offered a colorful metaphor to illustrate his cold-hearted and cynical attitude toward the needs of children:

"The national economy is teetering toward a return to a recession," Ryberg said. "Squirrels have the sense to keep nuts for the winter."

Yes, summertime is precisely the time for Aiken County's children to forage for nuts and tuck them away in pencil boxes for those lukewarm Aiken County winter mornings to come. Ryberg assured the Standard he supports education, and the Standard gamely quoted him so:

"I'm fully supportive of education," said Ryberg. "But it's crazy to be in the same situation and face the same problems that we had four years ago when the downturn in the economy started."

He makes an excellent point. Many's the time during Senate budget debates past, when the state's economy was pink and the coffers were full, that our grave veteran Senators have intoned, Now is no time to spend money we have and commit ourselves to greater future obligations, even for the benefit of the little children of South Carolina.

Yet many's the time during Senate budget debates past, when the state's economy was bleak and the coffers were bare, that the same grave veteran Senators have moaned, Now is no time to spend money we don't have and commit ourselves to greater future obligations, even for the benefit of the little children of South Carolina.

It seems there is no good time to commit ourselves to a greater future, if doing it requires spending money.

Unless you live in North Carolina.

Andy Brack, publisher of an intelligent product called the Statehouse Report, included a noteworthy column in a recent edition. In it, he proposed that investing with perseverance in the things that matter can yield, over time, tremendous results. This is, of course, not new wisdom; Brack quoted the ancient philosopher Aesop, and used the fable of the crow and his pebbles to illustrate his point.

It seems entirely appropriate to offer Brack's example, given Ryberg's squirrels-with-nuts tangent, and another segment of his note:

If we want to do better on any of these measures, South Carolina has to make a sustained commitment to excellence and follow through like the crow. Two examples illustrate how perseverance pays off.

First turn to North Carolina. In the 1950s, some of Tarheel state's numbers, particularly on poverty and education, were as bad as -- if not worse -- than South Carolina's. But an inspirational leader, Terry Sanford, mustered the political muscle to invest big in public education, particularly at the university level. And a group of business, political and academic leaders worked together to create a research and development park that blended the resources of universities with the corporate sector. The result? Research Triangle Park, now the home to more than 170 global companies.

How did it happen? North Carolina's leaders dreamed, adopted a shared vision and persevered to make it happen.

A second example comes from the world of politics. Following Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the idealism of John F. Kennedy, Great Society naysayers concocted a political vision espousing government was bad for America. With the Watergate scandal injecting cynicism in a country still smarting from the clashes of the 1960s, the political environment was ripe for the message by Ronald Reagan that "government is the problem." In the years that followed, many politicians blindly adopted the mantra that the only way to get what's needed in America was to cut taxes, cut more taxes and cut more taxes -- to, in fact, cut government so much that conservative tax-hater Grover Norquist could "drown it in a bathtub."

The moral is that conservatives adopted a once-controversial political vision, but kept plugging away at it for years until that vision became the vision of the majority.

But in 2011, a vision to continue to cut taxes more is becoming ridiculous. With South Carolina having the dubious distinction of taking in the lowest amount of taxes per capita according to the Tax Foundation, we don't have much fat to cut. We're cutting into the bone.

Our state's leaders need to comprehend that South Carolina needs transformational change to survive. To persist in cuts on top of cuts will lead us to becoming a third-world state.

The root of the word "fable" is Latin and means "story." The word "fabulous" has the same root. If we want South Carolina's future story to be fabulous, we've got to become the crow and work hard to shrug off the hangovers of the past. Invest perseveringly. Dum spiro spero.

Of course, I prefer Brack's example to Ryberg's.

The question is, Is Nikki Haley going to be crow with wisdom, or a squirrel hoarding nuts?

Haley excludes retirees from meeting with bond agency

Back in March 2010, Rep. Nikki Haley delivered a speech to the Spring Valley Rotary Club in Columbia titled "Transparency in State Government." One presumes, as she was taking on several more-experienced opponents in her party's gubernatorial primary, that Haley was "for" transparency. But no record exists of the speech, so we're left to wonder.

It's a fact that Haley ran in that primary, and won, on a platform of transparency. But given all of what has happened since she won that primary, South Carolinians have plenty to question about Haley's definition of the word.

Here's what one online source tells us is the dictionary definition:

trans·par·ent (trns-pârnt, -pr-)
adj.
1. Capable of transmitting light so that objects or images can be seen as if there were no intervening material. See Synonyms at clear.
2. Permeable to electromagnetic radiation of specified frequencies, as to visible light or radio waves.
3. So fine in texture that it can be seen through; sheer. See Synonyms at airy.
4.
a. Easily seen through or detected; obvious: transparent lies.
b. Free from guile; candid or open: transparent sincerity.
5. Obsolete Shining through; luminous.

Read 4b again: "Free from guile; candid or open." That's not our governor's definition, apparently.

A high-level meeting was held by Haley this week with representatives from Standard and Poor, one of the nation's top three Wall Street-based bond-rating agencies. These are the agencies who set a state's bond rating, which determines its standing among state and municipal governments when borrowing money at interest. When a bond-rating agency delivers recommendations concerning a state's fiscal health -- including its investments and investment strategies -- this is huge news because state leaders often follow the agency's recommendation to earn or protect that almighty bond rating.

And when such high-level meetings are held that may impact the state's retirement system -- which invests billions of state employees' and retirees' dollars on behalf of those employees, retirees and their families -- representatives of those groups are usually present to hear the conversation.

But Haley, who uses transparency as little more than a flashcard, excluded state employees and retirees from hearing what Wall Street experts advised her about their money.

We know this thanks to Treasurer Curtis Loftis, who boycotted the meeting over Haley's lack of transparency. The State tells it in today's edition:

Remember that big financial summit with all the New York-based bond-rating firms that Gov. Nikki Haley organized and then trumpeted as open to the public through her press office? Did you read about the meeting with Standard and Poor’s this week?

No?

Well that’s because the meeting to discuss state finances, presumably including the billions invested to pay for public workers’ retirement benefits, was held behind closed doors.

That did not sit well with state retirees who were excluded from any potential discussions about their pensions. Nor did it please state Treasurer Curtis Loftis, R-Lexington, who boycotted the private discussion of public money.

Remember definition 4a from the dictionary citation above? "Easily seen through or detected; obvious: transparent lies." Now read this part of The State's note:

Haley spokesman Rob Godfrey said the meeting was private at Standard and Poor’s request.

“They requested the opportunity to have a meeting with state leaders where they were free to have open dialogue about the financial condition of South Carolina,” Godfrey wrote by email, “and we were happy to comply.”

Public employees have a right to know what advice is being sought and offered that will impact the investment of their retirement funds. To deny them that right, then to send minions to lie about it, is malfeasance on the part of Nikki Haley.

Here's another dictionary definition to ponder:

cor·rupt (k-rpt)
adj.
1. Marked by immorality and perversion; depraved.
2. Venal; dishonest: a corrupt mayor.
3. Containing errors or alterations, as a text: a corrupt translation.
4. Archaic Tainted; putrid.
v. cor·rupt·ed, cor·rupt·ing, cor·rupts
v.tr.
1. To destroy or subvert the honesty or integrity of.
2. To ruin morally; pervert.
3. To taint; contaminate.
4. To cause to become rotten; spoil.
5. To change the original form of (a text, for example).
6. Computer Science To damage (data) in a file or on a disk.
v.intr.
To become corrupt.
[Middle English, from Latin corruptus, past participle of corrumpere, to destroy : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + rumpere, to break; see reup- in Indo-European roots.]
cor·rupter, cor·ruptor n.
cor·ruptive adj.
cor·ruptly adv.
cor·ruptness n.
Synonyms: corrupt, debase, debauch, deprave, pervert, vitiate
These verbs mean to ruin utterly in character or quality: was corrupted by limitless power; ... perverted her talent by putting it to evil purposes; a proof vitiated by a serious omission.

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).
...
[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.

Moore resident weighs in on 'Spartanburg Six' votes

It's always nice to find Moore residents who appreciate and support their public schools. This one, David Turnipseed, was moved to write a letter in response to attacks on the six Spartanburg lawmakers who voted to support South Carolina's public schools and to keep public dollars out of private schools.

I am delighted to hear that recent letter writer William “W.T.” Clark is very annoyed by Rita Allison, Doug Brannon, Derham Cole, Mike Forrester, Steve Parker and Eddie Tallon for their support of public education. Anyone who would demonize public school teachers and administration by calling them “education union thugs” deserves to be annoyed.

Hopefully, Mr. Clark will continue to be annoyed.

David E. Turnipseed
Moore

Good for you, Mr. Turnipseed. I look forward to reading more of your work.

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.

Florence 1 budget stalls, Spartanburg 3 passes

What's wrong with Florence District 1?

The school board met last night and discussed its proposed budget for next year but apparently couldn't get past discussing it, according to the Florence Morning News. It seems that in past years, the school board heard budget concerns and requests from a parade of principals before getting down to drafting the document, and this year that didn't happen. So two board members blocked any further action on the plan presented by their interim superintendent, Dr. Allie Brooks.

Board members Alexis Pipkins and Pat Gibson-Hye Moore, who said they did not receive detailed information on items being cut throughout the district, blocked that second reading.

Pipkins and Moore said cuts to budgets for non-revenue producing sports, district landscaping, permanent substitutes, matters of attrition and other items were not presented in detail to board members as had been done in the past.

“Now, we only know what the administration tells us,” Pipkins said.

Before the motion to accept the budget as presented from board member Glenn Odom failed to receive a second, interim superintendent Dr. Allie Brooks addressed the concerns voiced by Moore and Pipkins, saying the budget was on the board agenda seven times before Thursday night’s scheduled second reading and that concerns about cuts or other issues should have been raised then.

Sounds like what we have here is a failure to communicate. Hopefully, sufficient communication will take place by next Tuesday night's meeting that some progress can be made. If not, the board may miss the June 30 deadline for adopting a new budget, in which case last year's budget will roll over into the next year, says the district's chief financial officer.

For a picture-perfect ending to a budget-writing process, Florence 1 and the General Assembly itself might take a note from Spartanburg 3, whose board and superintendent prepared and considered three different budget models before selecting the most conservative one at last night's meeting. Why three different models? Because the legislature hadn't yet decided whether to fund public education at mid-twentieth-century levels, middle-late-twentieth century levels, or late-twentieth century levels.

Optimism led the Spartanburg 3 leadership to imagine lawmakers might have adopted a budget by yesterday, in which case they could make decisions based on solid information. Reality -- and the legislature's various incapacities -- guided them to adopt the most conservative of the three models, just in case the legislature failed them.

Which, ultimately, it did, proving them wise.

In any case, Superintendent Jim Ray and his assistant superintendent for finance and operations, Greg Mack, presented budget proposals designed to restore some features that had to be cut in past years, thanks to the legislature's failure to provide twenty-first century levels of school funding.

After debating three different bottom line totals — one for each of three funding levels being discussed by state legislators — trustees approved a nearly $23 million general fund budget for the 2011-12 fiscal year. The total is a 1.5 percent increase over the current $22.6 million general fund budget.

The budget assumes a base student cost of $1,788 from the state level and was the lowest figure considered by the board. Base student cost is part of a weighted formula that funds districts for each student, depending on grade level and need.

District 3 Superintendent Jim Ray told the board that he expects base student cost to pass at a higher level, but administrators advised the board to act conservatively until a state budget is inked.

The board unanimously voted to pass the budget with a proviso that gives district administration authority to adjust the bottom line, should the base student cost rise.

Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Greg Mack said that if a higher funding level is approved, a few capital maintenance items will be moved out of “capital projects” into the general fund.

“This is what I would call a ‘restorative’ budget, in that we have been able to restore a couple of items we used to balance the budget this and last fiscal years,” Mack said.

One highlight of the adopted budget is the absence of furlough days. Another is a step increase for district employees. Retirees returning to work in the classroom won't yet see restoration of the 15 percent salary cut they suffered last year, but aside from that, there's a significant reason running through this budget plan that many of South Carolina's school districts would benefit from consulting Jim Ray and Greg Mack before drafting their local budgets:

The district will save about $90,000 by cutting the equivalent of 2.2 full-time positions next year. The cuts are part of $220,000 that will be saved in personnel by hiring teachers with fewer years of experience to replace retirees and resignees.

Mack said that all personnel reductions were decided based on an annual analysis of class size and came only through attrition — retirement or voluntary separations.

Only two positions were cut, and reductions in staff came only through retirements or vacancies.

What does Spartanburg 3 know that so many other school districts don't? Or, is the better question: What parts of Spartanburg 3's philosophy would also serve well the schoolchildren, educators and parents living elsewhere in South Carolina?