House Speaker says teacher march on SC State House fed by misinformation, doesn’t help
In an exclusive interview with The State Wednesday morning, House Speaker Jay Lucas, R-Darlington, expressed his disappointment that thousands of S.C. teachers took the day off from school to rally at the State House for better pay, smaller classroom sizes and more support.
“A walkout of the classroom certainly doesn’t help our ability to get support on the issue, which I think is critically important,” said a visibly upset Lucas, who authored a lengthy bill promising to overhaul education and shepherded its overwhelming passage on the House floor in March.
The bill has since languished in the Senate and likely run out of time to become law in 2019, which lawmakers previously dubbed the “Year of Education” at the State House. Now, the bill — with the entire General Assembly — has come under fire for not doing enough to stop the ongoing teacher shortage and pull South Carolina out of the bottom of national education rankings. More than 10,000 people, clad in red, swarmed the State House grounds Wednesday to advocate for teachers, students and schools.
Lucas and other top House Republicans said their proposal would address many of the problems those teachers are rallying over — if only the Senate will pass it.
Lucas said teachers who are criticizing the House’s bill have been fed misinformation about the proposal by outside interest groups with a financial interest in keeping the dismal education status quo in place. He would not name those groups.
“Them leaving the classrooms is a direct result of the misinformation that’s being spun by the people who don’t want education to change in South Carolina,” Lucas said. “I’m not going to condemn the teachers because they act on the misinformation.”
Lucas said he would urge teachers marching Wednesday to better understand what the bill does and to call their senators to ask them to pass it.
Teachers have complained about over-testing their students, which takes away valuable instruction time, Lucas noted. His bill would eliminate four state-required tests.
Teachers want better pay and smaller classroom sizes, Lucas said, but added the state can’t enforce the classroom size limits currently in state law because it can’t recruit enough teachers.
Lucas said the House has worked to improve both pay and classroom sizes this year.
Lawmakers have OK’d spending $159 million next year to fund the largest teacher pay raise in South Carolina since 1982. The plan would raise starting pay for new teachers to $35,000 — from $32,000 — and give all teachers at least a 4 percent pay raise, part of a plan to fill more S.C. classrooms with teachers.
Lucas said he wants to raise S.C. teacher pay to the national average in five years, a plan he acknowledges is ambitious.
Lucas also responded to charges from teachers that educators weren’t involved in the drafting of his bill, and that he should scrap it and start over.
He said the overhaul proposal stemmed from a five-year effort to study education solutions for South Carolina. That began when the S.C. Supreme Court ruled that South Carolina has failed its legal duty to provide a “minimally adequate” education to children in poor school districts, Lucas said, and it included a number of town hall-style hearings and individual meetings with teachers across the state to gain input.
Lucas said his door has always been open for teachers and teacher groups.
“Especially the group that organized the walkout today,” Lucas said of SCforED, the grassroots teacher group that organized the Wednesday rally. “They were involved in the bill. At points in time, they praised the bill on their Facebook page. We think we tried to bring them into the process.”
Lucas said he’s not sure why Wednesday’s march would take the place of teachers’ ability to come talk to him and other lawmakers overseeing education policy.
“In the past, we’ve shown we will listen to those concerns and modify the bill as appropriate.”
Lucas said he did not plan to address the crowd gathered on the State House grounds because he wasn’t among the lawmakers invited to speak at the rally. “I was not asked.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2019 at 10:44 AM.
