By Lindsay Street, Statehouse correspondent | S.C. Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey is frustrated and “not happy.”
It’s a sentiment buzzing around Statehouse hallways this week as South Carolina public school teachers prepare to leave their classrooms for a rally in Columbia on Wednesday. At least one school district — Chester County — has already announced schools will be closed that day.
“The frustrating thing about this is if we were just doing nothing, maybe a walkout is more understandable … (but) the reality is that we are not doing nothing. We are making steps in the right direction,” the Edgefield Republican said. “I know it’s not as much [money] as what some people would like, but that has to be seen as a good faith movement in the right direction.”
The Columbia rally is being hosted by SCforEd, a grassroots group of educators that popped up last year and seeks a better environment for teachers in South Carolina classrooms.
“We really have tried to go through the process that everyone has told us to go through,” SCforEd board member and Richland County teacher Dottie Adams said Wednesday to Statehouse Report. “We haven’t seen the action that we were promised … We need people to understand what it is going to look like when there are no teachers.”
According to teacher recruitment program the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, & Advancement, 5,300 S.C. teachers left the profession in 2018-2019 and districts reported 621 vacant teaching positions in SC public school classrooms in 2018-2019.
Wheel or nail
Some at the Statehouse are saying Wednesday’s rally has the potential to work against teachers. Essentially, it comes down to whether lawmakers will see teachers as a squeaky wheel or the nail that sticks up and gets hammered.
“A walkout is not going to be received favorably,” Massey said Thursday to Statehouse Report.
S.C. Senate Education Chair Greg Hembree, R-Horry, who sided with teachers and voted against the state budget because it did not authorize a 5 percent raise, agreed.
“I’m having a hard time seeing how it helps anything,” Hembree said. He added that it could negatively impact students in the classroom. On Thursday, Gov. Henry McMaster urged teachers not to leave their classrooms.
But longtime Democratic House Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter of Orangeburg sided with teachers who plan to attend the rally.
“If I were the teachers, I wouldn’t worry much about upsetting the lawmakers,” she said. “Teachers are the ones who should be upset with what has not occurred in the General Assembly so far based on the issues they brought before us.”
What’s been done so far
This year was marked as the “Year of Education” by top legislative leaders. A massive reform bill was ushered through the House, and the state budget also was tweaked to reflect leaders’ top priority.
In the House and Senate versions of the budget, public school teachers received the largest piece of the new recurring dollars coming into state coffers. About a third of the nearly $500 million million of new dollars will go toward an across-the-board 4 percent teacher pay raise and also will raise the minimum starting salary of new teachers by more than 9 percent.
According to House staff, the pay increase for teachers would the largest since 1984. The pay increase would put the state above the Southeastern average for teacher pay, according to lawmakers.
The proposed $159 million of new money that is set aside for higher teacher pay is on top of an annual increase for teachers that is equal to 2 percent. Then there’s an additional state increase to health insurance plans to help employees shoulder the cost of rising premiums. Bottom line: Current teachers will get a 6 percent raise, plus a boost to help with health insurance.
To deal with other classroom issues such as over-testing, mandated teacher breaks and more, House Speaker Jay Lucas drafted a massive reform bill, which easily passed the House, but was slowed to a near stop in the Senate where it was pored over in 15 subcommittee meetings.
Hembree said this week the bill will come out of committee but may not make a floor vote before end of session on May 9. That would carry the debate to January, the second half of the 2019-2020 session.
‘Get it right’
And that’s where rallying teachers and senators appear to agree: Don’t rush through the education reform bill.
Adams said SCforEd wants the bill “to be tabled, and for teachers and lawmakers to come to the table over the summer that everybody is ready to get behind.”
“We want to get it right so next year something is ready to go, instead of next year having to fight the same battles over and over again,” she said. And that’s what Wednesday’s rally is all about, not just teacher pay (though many in the group say the 4 percent is not enough).
Among the top priorities are class-size reduction and further elimination of state-mandated testing.
Massey agreed that fixing the class-size issue should be a top priority for lawmakers in 2020. Since the Great Recession, the South Carolina state budget has had a proviso suspending a state law that mandates smaller class sizes. But Massey said it’s not as simple as repealing it, and lawmakers need to work at phasing it back in.
Cobb-Hunter also agreed the House reform bill needs work. She was one of four in the House to vote against the bill. She said there are good elements to the bill, but that there should be more work in 2020.
“Let’s take what we’ve done and improve upon it based on that input,” she said.
Hembree said regardless of political fallout from Wednesday’s rally, he will continue to push reform.
“I want to pursue reform because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
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