After eight weeks of gridlock, SC Senate to send House its education bill
State senators voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve an education proposal aimed at improving working conditions for teachers, reducing the burden of testing on students and making it easier for the state to correct failing schools and districts.
The 41-4 vote also ends gridlock in the education debate which has gone on for eight weeks — since this year’s legislative session began. The bill requires one more final, perfunctory approval before it is sent across the lobby to the House.
The proposal still faces opposition. A grassroots teacher group, SC for Ed, has vocally criticized the bill in part for being drafted without the group’s input.
“Teachers were not allowed to be at the table when this bill was written, and it was a bad bill,” said state Sen. Mike Fanning, D-Fairfield, who had proposed hundreds of amendments to the bill and ultimately voted against it with three other state senators. “Over the last two months, teachers have given us amendment after amendment after amendment, and we have voted down amendment after amendment after amendment.”
Sens. Marlon Kimpson, D-Charleston, Shane Martin, R-Spartanburg, and Mia McLeod, D-Richland, also voted against the legislation Wednesday.
In eight weeks of debate, lawmakers successfully added to the bill an expansion of of the state’s free 4-year-old kindergarten program. That expansion is expected to provide access to 8,800 additional low-income students around the state.
State Sen. Vincent Sheheen, a Kershaw Democrat who has pushed for the expansion of free 4K for years, said the bill extends access to the program to children in need but who were previously ineligible for the state supported kindergarten.
“What has not been included is the bigger school districts because they are wealthier, but there are many poor children in those school districts, and this program would target those at-risk kids who live in those districts,” he said.
The Senate bill also provides some relief aimed at teachers. For example, it includes goals for creating a favorable work environment for teachers, but critics say there’s no way in the bill to enforce those conditions. The bill also would double the reimbursement amount for teachers to buy classroom supplies to $550 per teacher and require the S.C. Department of Education to pay certification costs for all new public school teachers.
Critics have other concerns.
Members of SC for Ed, which organized a 10,000-person march last year in part to oppose an education proposal adopted by the House, are demanding a more robust bill of rights for teachers, smaller class sizes and removal from the legislation of a provision that would make it easier to take over schools and districts deemed to be failing. That measure, said Lisa Ellis, founder of SC for Ed, would take “away a right to vote for who you want to see in office.”
“To be clear, S.419 will not do anything to positively impact teachers in the classroom, and the walkout will continue,” the group tweeted Wednesday. “You had an opportunity to make meaningful change, and you failed the children of this state. It’s a shameful day in South Carolina.”
The bill also has failed to win the backing of the Palmetto State Teachers Association, according to Kathy Maness, the group’s executive director.
Maness said some of the bill’s facets are positive: expanding 4K, providing stipends for teachers who have national board certification, and scholarship enhancements for college students who major in education, she said. However, a provision to allow some schools to hire non-certified teachers is a concern to the organization.
“We’re going to take some time and look at all the amendments and see exactly what’s in there, what we need to work on (and) what we need to work on getting out when it goes to the House,” Maness said.
The Senate bill also changes the school start date to start on Monday of the week of August that includes August 15. If the 15th falls on a weekend, school would be able to begin the following the Monday.
Starting school earlier in the calendar would help students finish first semester exams before Christmas break.
Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, said in a statement he is hopeful his chamber will give the vote final approval this week and send it to the House.
“The Senate made education reform its top priority this year and has worked diligently for eight weeks to craft a bill that provides many important improvements to South Carolina’s public schools,” Massey said. “I’m hopeful the Senate will give final passage to the bill this week and allow the House of Representatives to continue this important work of supporting our teachers and improving educational opportunities for our students.”
Debate on the bill was ultimately eight weeks long and moved slowly at times. However, Sheheen said the process was good.
“We spent a month and a half debating education, and you know what, education deserves to be the subject of long debate,” Sheheen said.
But the bill’s passage is far from certain once it reaches the House, which passed its own education bill last year, only to see it languish in the Senate.
However, state Rep. Rita Allison, R-Spartanburg, who chairs the House’s education committee, offered some hope: The Senate bill will go straight to full committee, rather than a subcommittee with fewer members, once it reaches the House, she said.
Gov. Henry McMaster called Wednesday’s vote a good step forward.
“We’ve been working on education as you know for some time. We’re glad to have the House and the Senate moving forward,” McMaster said, noting the state has nearly $2 billion in extra cash to spend this year that “we did not know that we would have.”
“This is our time. This is the year that we do a lot of things. ... Now is the time that we have to raise that teacher pay. We raised it last year. We need to do it again.”
Reporter Emily Bohatch contributed to this report.
This story was originally published March 4, 2020 at 6:04 PM.
