Pernell: Stop stalling, provide decent education for all SC kids

My downtown apartment is a short way from the State House steps. Since moving back home after law school, my morning runs past those steps evoke the best memories.

One of my fondest recollections is joining inspiring teens of South Carolina’s public schools as a member of the Boys State program at the State House. I met many incredible young men and women, all with big dreams for how they would improve this state. Never before had I been prouder to be from South Carolina or more hopeful about its future.

That pride nearly was matched when I witnessed folks’ response to the flooding disaster that occurred after I arrived here in August. In countless ways, our state’s citizens acted quickly, with urgency and with compassion. The message was clear: We were willing to take care of our own. And we wasted no time figuring out how to do so.

In November of 2014, the S.C. Supreme Court recognized what has similarly been a disaster for some time: that children in our poorest communities are not getting a fair shot. The court wrote that our state’s educational funding scheme was a “fractured formula” that denied students in poor school districts their constitutionally required opportunity for an adequate education. Our state government was found to have violated its own constitution, for which our poorest children and families are paying the price.

On recent morning runs past the State House, I’ve found myself dismayed at the sluggishness with which our state leaders have acted to address this disaster, one many of us already knew for some time was upon us.

After an already lengthy 22 years of litigation, the court gave our state until this month to fashion a mere proposal — not final legislation — for how to fix this tragedy. Instead, our legislators successfully advocated that the deadline be pushed back to June, suggesting that constitutional violations against the children in our poorest schools are not the priority.

But they should be. The research is clear that when it comes to improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged students, money matters. Students from better-funded schools are more likely to go to college, get jobs at higher rates and lead more productive lives.

Indeed, it was this realization that inspired me to become a lawyer. The poor students and communities the Supreme Court describes are but a few miles from where I was raised, across from a cotton field 40 miles from Columbia. Like any parents, mine wanted a good public education for their children, but our community was severely limited in the resources it had for making that a reality. As a teacher years later at another high-poverty school across the state, I recognized that other families in similar circumstances wanted the same for their children.

I was lucky. But the reality is that many children and families in South Carolina’s poorest communities are suffering because of a resource divide. Plain and simple. And a strong work ethic often is not enough for these students and their families to succeed. Fortunately, the highest court of our state has recognized the unconstitutionality of this unfair setup. Yet despite that court decision, this month marks another opportunity our state leaders have actively avoided to remedy this crisis for South Carolina’s children.

I hope that one day soon when I take my morning run, I will feel the same pride I felt at Boys State, and the same pride I felt when I witnessed the response to that horrible flooding: the pride of knowing that when the communities of our state suffer, we take care of our own, regardless of ZIP code. And we waste no time figuring out how to do so.

As with any crisis, time and urgency matter. Every day that we delay improving the educational outcomes for the communities of South Carolina that need us most, our state suffers. Let us demand of our state leaders a focused haste as they make this right for all of us — lest all of us pay the price.

This story was originally published February 7, 2016 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Pernell: Stop stalling, provide decent education for all SC kids."