Gov. James Burns’ successful effort in 1951 to raise the sales tax by 3 percent to improve black schools, the motive behind the measure was overtly racial: Byrnes wanted the state to comply with the national “separate but equal” standard established by Plessy v. Ferguson. Once that ruling was overturned by Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka in 1954 and the federal government began enforcing desegregation in the South, progress stalled as “white flight” began in earnest, with an explosion in the number of private, mostly white schools statewide. The next time the achievement and funding gap was addressed didn’t come until 1977 with the passage of the Education Finance Act, which guaranteed tax-poor districts more state dollars but still required them to pay a local share based on property wealth — a move that would lead more than 15 years later to the landmark case of Abbeville v. The State of South Carolina, which, filed in 1993, is still awaiting judgment by the S.C. Supreme Court. It wasn’t until 1984’s Education Improvement Act, spearheaded by Riley, that the notion of improving education from the bottom up by adding 1 cent to the state sales tax to fund innovative programs over and above what school districts already receive from the state took root. “The whole idea in 1983 was to have people outside the government leaders around the state see what was working and what wasn’t to fund those that were making a difference and eliminate those that weren’t,” says Riley, who later became the U.S. Secretary for Education under former president Bill Clinton. “I think that was a very good concept in my judgment, we got it passed and the people supported it in a very strong way.” Twenty years removed from the EIA, however, the state of South Carolina finds itself back in a debate about public school funding, a debate not only about how to right the state’s historical wrongs but also about the future of public education itself — an argument that still evokes the specter of the politics of race. “There’s totally no way to separate class and race [from education],” says South Carolina Secretary of Education Jim Rex, who won the closest election in state history in 2006 when he defeated Republican challenger Karen Floyd, a proponent of school vouchers and Sanford supporter. “We have a history that’s kept us more divided than we’ve needed to be, and when you look now at the money poured in from out of state to create a dual system here, you can still see class and race embedded in those. “I don’t think South Carolinian’s DNA is any different from people in Georgia or North Carolinia or New Hampshire or Minnesota,” Rex says. “But if you haven’t had an emphasis placed on public education, you don’t understand how critical it is to the state’s overall economy. When you look at states with high percentages of degree holders, those
m free-times.com | May 13-19, 2009
Student Teessance Mills is overcome with joy as she sees the new school desks in her classroom at JV Martin Junior High School on May 4th in Dillon, South Carolina. “It’s great, we love it!” she said. Photo by C. Aluka Berry/The State/MCT
Jim Rex
understand the value.”
states place a higher priority on education than those with lower educational attainment. “We just don’t have that generational history of people who have done well in formal school settings, so we don’t always
A “Minimally Adequate” Place to Be “I’d say that anyone who loves this state and who believes in education and the future would not be satisfied with a ‘minimally adequate’ education; that’s not what our future should be about.” — Former U.S. Secretary of Education Dick Riley
W
hen a total of 40 rural school districts combined to sue the State of South Carolina in 1993, the grounds were whether or not the state was required to provide an “adequate” education to its students. South Carolina’s Third Circuit Court Judge Thomas Cooper initially dismissed the case, and by 1998 the case had reached the state Supreme Court on appeal.
In 1999, the Court finally interpreted the state’s direction to provide a “free” education as meaning “at least a minimally adequate education” in which 12 years of school would produce citizens who could read, write, do simple math and be employable. The Supreme Court then returned the case to Cooper for trial and in 2004 the case lasted some 103 days, making it the longest trial in state history. After a year of deliberation, Cooper ruled in December 2005 that while the state did not provide a minimally adequate education in early childhood education, it did meet the minimally adequate standard for grades K-12, which Cooper further defined as “the least thing that can be done.” In 2006, both sides filed motions to reconsider. In 2007, Cooper dismissed both sides’ motions. That same year, the plaintiffs (now reduced to 36 districts due to consolidation) appealed their case back to the state Supreme Court, where it still awaits an opinion, meaning that today those two definitions still stand as the sole measure of what the state of South Carolina promises its children. Leading the charge to change the wording of the state constitution — after all, the state Legislature doesn’t have to wait on the Supreme Court’s ruling to amend the constitution — are Sens. John Matthews (D-Charleston) and Phil Leventis (D-Sumter), whose bill, S.99, would change the “free” designation to include a “high quality” education, a move supporters say has worked in other states.
“I think it’s critical to change the language because our constitution is our mission statement,” says Matthews, a retired elementary school principal. “Changing to a ‘high quality’ education S.C. Sen. John Matthews statement, that is measurable and will be a clear message to the public that we take education seriously.” Whether or not progress gets made on changing the constitution this session, there’s no question that the “minimally adequate” stipulation has made the state an educational laughing stock. “If you had a life-threatening injury, would you want a ‘minimally adequate’ surgeon?” asks Tom Truitt, a former superintendent of Florence District 1 from 1987 to 1998. Truitt’s district was one of the original plaintiffs in the Abbeville case. Truitt went on to serve as executive director of the Pee Dee Education Center from 1998 to 2005 and has written a book about the case called Going up the River of Shame: The Struggle for Education Justice in South Carolina. “I understand the state’s legal position, but it’s an embarrassment that all our state wants to do for its children is literally the least that can be done.”
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