Education bill clears committee, heads to SC Senate floor
State senators on Thursday passed a massive education bill out of committee, which will allow the full state Senate to take up the legislation, billed as an overhaul of state public schools, when they return to work in January.
In the works for months, the bill included a tweak debated Thursday that could result in having teachers work a longer year.
The passage out of the Senate Education Committee took place after several amendments were added to the legislation. The education bill comes as there is a push from teachers in the state to cut back on testing and other demands they say take time away from teaching, and to increase their pay.
The bill touches on higher education, school board governance, and sets up processes for how interventions into failing schools and districts by the state would work, said state Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Horry.
“It’s wide ranging… it cuts across a lot of areas,” Hembree said. “The whole goal is to improve public education. We work on this every year, but we still have a lot of schools that are struggling. A lot of districts that are struggling.”
Among the amendments discussed Thursday was a proposal offered by Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, calling for teachers to have an additional five work days during the year. The amendment was passed on the condition there is funding approved to pay the teachers an additional 2.6% to cover the additional days of work.
Massey said the proposed added work days could be spread across the school year to allow teachers to have more planning time.
“Nobody wants the teachers to work extra days for free,” Hembree said after the committee hearing. “That’s reasonable. If you’re going to increase their work requirements, you have to pay them for the days they’re going to be there.”
If the proposal becomes law, the question will shift to whether there is funding to pay for the extra days. Whether that would be covered by the $3,000 raise proposed by Gov. Henry McMaster, or it would be in addition to the raise, or done another way still needs to be worked out.
“That will be up to the Senate, the House (and) the governor on how we want to pay for that. You could do that in addition to, as part of — there’s a lot of ways you could do it,” Hembree said.
Senate President Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, warned that the added work days could look bad to teachers.
While pointing to reporters in the room, Peeler said the proposal could be interpreted as “the governor and the House want to pay classroom teachers $3,000 (more). The Senate wants to make the teachers work five more days. That’s exactly what they’re going to hear if we don’t clear this up.”
Peeler said because the work-day proposal passed 7-6, there probably will be lot of debate on it later.
Peeler also said there will be questions about whether support staff should work the additional days as well.
An amendment also was passed to allow schools to start as early as the second Monday of August instead of the third Monday of August. This would allow for the first semester of the year to be completed before Christmas, Massey said.
