African American school board members say proposal in SC education bill targets them
As the state Senate continues debate on a broad education bill, a coalition of South Carolina African American school board members says majority-black school districts are being targeted through a part of the legislation that allows school boards to be dissolved.
Their objection is to a part of the bill that would allow the state superintendent of education to take over a school district and dissolve the school board if the district is in a state of emergency. A school district can be taken over if it is under-performing academically for three consecutive years, a school’s accreditation is denied, or there is financial mismanagement.
“We need to talk about fixing education the right way,” said Cheryl Harris, president of S.C. Caucus of Black School Board Members. “We need to talk about funding. We need to talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul, taking from bigger districts to take care of smaller districts.”
A Richland 1 school board member, Harris said they want the Legislature to communicate more with school board members.
“If a district is struggling and is not where it needs to be, let’s come in and support them. Let’s find out what’s the problem, what’s the crisis,” Harris said. “School boards are governance, they’re not operations.”
The South Carolina School Boards Association last week said it believed the dissolution provision would be a violation of 1965 Voting Rights Act because it would disproportionately affect majority non-white school districts.
“What the Senate should be doing is providing more resources to help those districts that are in trouble instead of trying to take them over and manage them,” said Jim Felder, a civil rights activist and former state legislator.
Three school districts have been taken over by the S.C. Department of Education: Allendale twice, Florence 4 and Wiliamsburg. However, the locally elected school boards remain in place.
The three districts were taken over because of gross negligence by the school board, said Ryan Brown, spokesman for the Department of Education and for state school’s chief Molly Spearman, who supports the legislation.
Brown said the language in the legislation is not targeting a particular group of people based on the color of their skin.
“It has nothing to do with race. It has to do when adults are not doing their jobs,” Brown said. “It’s certainly not targeting any particular areas of the state.”
On Monday, the black school board members group objected to how school districts are being judged academically.
Testing is not the best way to judge success, they said.
“Our children are more than a ranking and a test score in South Carolina,” Harris said. “They’re the future in this state. Testing should be used to gauge and measure growth of students of areas of potential opportunities or weaknesses we may need to work on, not to rank us in an effort to privatize education.”
Financial mismanagement can also be a reason for a school district takeover. Harris agreed people should be held accountable if that’s the case; however, each situation and circumstance should be looked at it independently.
The state Senate is in the midst of debating a broad education bill aimed at improving public schools in the state.
The 63-page education bill has not received support from educators, and the vocal teacher-advocacy group S.C. For Ed has called for the bill to be scrapped.
This story was originally published January 28, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
