SC Senate education bill faces backlash over school district takeover plan
A provision in the education bill state senators are debating could violate the Voting Rights Act, the South Carolina School Boards Association says.
That’s why the group is objecting to how the bill calls for locally elected school boards to be dissolved if the school district is in a state of education emergency.
A takeover could take place if a school or school district is under-performing for three consecutive years, a school’s accreditation is denied, or there is financial mismanagement.
The School Board Association says dissolving school boards could violate the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting policies and practices.
The association says the proposed change would have a “racially disparate impact,” because in five of the six current districts where a school board could be removed, the percentage of non-white voters in those districts is higher than the state average.
“Removal in the local school board is a change in the voting practice,” said Scott Price, executive director of the School Boards Association. “It would eliminate the rights of voters in future school board elections.”
“We feel like there should be additional training in place to ensure the school board gets back… and you can sustain the improvements that have been made in the takeover process,” Price said.
The Association says the state should provide resources to make sure the school district continues to succeed after the state leaves.
“The concern we have, is once the state department relinquishes their supervision of the district, it goes back to the local control of the local administration and the school board, do they still have the resources to continue to be successful?” said Chuck Saylors, the Association’s president.
The state Department of Education has taken over three school districts: Allendale twice, Florence 4 and Wiliamsburg.
Allendale was taken over under Inez Tenenbaum in the late 1990s and returned to local control in the mid 2000s.
Allendale, Florence 4 and Williamsburg were taken over by the state under State Superintendent Molly Spearman’s administration. Spearman is currently serving her second four-year term.
The three districts were taken over because of gross negligence by the school board, said Ryan Brown, spokesman for the Department of Education. He added there has been progress in financial stability, gains in student academic achievement, and improved relationships and transparency with local communities where takeovers have occurred. Eventually control will transition back to the local districts.
“We need a clear path forward that maintains stability and does not jeopardize the progress that has been made by returning control to the same individuals who caused the district to be in this dire state in the first place,” Brown said in a statement. “The school board transition legislation in S.419 does just that, and we are committed to making sure it is written in a way that meets federal law while still allowing for board members to be removed for gross negligence of their duty to the students they were elected to serve.”
State Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Horry, who leads the Senate Education committee and has shepherded the Senate version of the education bill through the legislative process, defended the need for the school board dissolution provision.
“We know from experience in circumstances where the state Department of Education has gone into a failing school or district, and the school board is still in power, generally when (the state) leaves, the situation, whether it be school or district tends to devolve back to its previous state,” Horry said. “From those experiences, the department has learned it takes a longer, different kind of a transition period to (get back to) elected control.”
Under the Senate education bill, if the state superintendent decides to take over a school district, there would be an opportunity for the district to appeal the decision to the state board of education and an administrative law court.
Under state control, there would be a three-year period for the state to run the district to turn it around, Hembree said. Then an interim board would be appointed, with one person appointed by the local legislative delegation, one person by the governor, and three people by the state superintendent. After three years with an interim board, there would be a transition to an elected board.
The School Boards Association isn’t the only group objecting to the education bill.
SC for Ed, a group which organized a 10,000-person march on to the State House grounds last year, has been calling for senators to vote against the bill. They say it will not do anything to help retain teachers.
SC for Ed has argued the Senate bill adds more “formative” testing, adds five more working days with the possibility of no additional pay, does not fix Read to Succeed — a massive education law that focuses on reading — and creates added teacher duties, such as increased data collection.
Debate on the Senate’s education bill, meant to improve public schools in the state, continued on Tuesday as state senators began to discuss amendments to the legislation.
State Sen. Mike Fanning, D-Fairfield, has been arguing against the legislation citing teachers concerns.
“Not only did they not help write this 64-page document … every time they bring up a concern, the response is ‘teachers just don’t understand,” Fanning said.
