SC House speaker’s education task force includes districts that sued state

House Speaker Jay Lucas wants to take a hard look at how to improve the state’s public schools and prepare students for the 21st century job market, he said Tuesday, naming a task force to proposing policy changes by next January.

The House Education Policy Review and Reform Task Force is made up of lawmakers, educators, business leaders and representatives of poor, rural school districts that sued the state more than 20 years ago.

In November, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled in favor of those districts, saying the state had failed to provide children with a “minimally adequate” education.

Lucas said he felt it critical to include representatives from those districts in the search for solutions.

But, Lucas said Tuesday, “I don’t think anybody in the House needs a court order to know” that education “needs a complete overhaul.”

The task force, he said, is a House effort to come up with meaningful reforms in time for the 2016 legislative session.

On the panel are: Molly Spearman, the state’s newly elected education superintendent; Jimmie Williamson, president of the S.C. Technical College System; Lewis Gossett, chief executive of the S.C. Manufacturing Alliance; April Allen, director of state government relations for Continental Tire; Rainey Knight, former Darlington schools superintendent; and seven House members, including Rep. Rita Allison, R-Spartanburg, who chairs the House Education and Public Works Committee.

Five panel members will come from the districts in the school-equity lawsuit. The members will be announced later this week.

Workforce development — preparing students for tech jobs that require math and science skills — will be a major focus of the panel.

“The private sector, manufacturers ... are telling us they have openings, they have jobs, but there is a workforce shortage in South Carolina,” Lucas said. “As manufacturing jobs continue to come back into the state, we want to make sure that students that graduate from our South Carolina schools are ready to go into those jobs.”

Lucas also wants the panel to review:

This story was originally published January 20, 2015 at 4:22 PM with the headline "SC House speaker’s education task force includes districts that sued state."