BRACK: Lame-brained voucher program puts public schools at risk

By Andy Brack  |  Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once wrote true terror was “to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

In South Carolina, perhaps that should be modified:  True terror is to realize the South Carolina House of Representatives is in session.

Just this week, the Republican majority pushed the envelope yet again on one of the four hot-button social issues that always gets it salivating like a rabid dog – education vouchers.  The other three? Abortion, guns and anything related to LGBTQ people.  The GOP has been ringing these bells for years without significantly making life better for all South Carolinians who live in poverty or have two or three jobs just to make ends meet.

This week on a party-line vote, all but two House Republicans voted to pass a measure that would expand an unproven pilot program for up to 15,000 scholarships worth $6,000 each in public money to fund private school education.  That $90 million scheme hasn’t even passed constitutional muster yet, but the hellbent House went ahead and expanded the program to open it up dramatically, potentially ripping a $1.4 billion hole into the state budget.

Where do you think that money is going to come from?  Public education.  

These Republicans want to cripple and defund public education just so little Johnny or Janie can go to a private school – or be paid to learn at home.  This is wrong and puts all South Carolina children at risk, as we’ve written year after year.  Education vouchers that use public money for private purposes fly in the face of the common good and should not be allowed.  The end result will be underfunded public schools that already have too many challenges.

The ignorant voucher proposal is being slammed by the state’s public school teachers who understand how students are being used as pawns by state lawmakers doubling down in an election year as they pray they don’t get primaried by a candidate more conservative than they are.

The bill, H. 5164, sends the state “on a significant educational experiment with our students as the guinea pigs,” said North Charleston high school teacher Patrick Martin, director of Lowcountry Teacher Advocates.  “Despite its propaganda which claims to broaden educational choices, the adverse effects on the state’s educational system and budget can be seen as they’ve played out in other states. 

“Public money for private schools is bad news for our students. It will deplete resources and systemically contribute to underfunding an already underfunded system. We need to fund our public schools, not divert these crucial funding streams to untested private school systems with no accountability.”

Sherry East, president of the S.C. Education Association, sees the bill with a similar horror and hopes the state Supreme Court will throw out the pilot voucher program

“We haven’t implemented the first version of the voucher plan,” she said. “To expand it without knowing if or how it will work seems reckless to me. We are experimenting with a child’s education. We can’t afford to mess it up.”

And then she asks a key question that the 69 Republicans in Columbia who voted for this nonsense must have forgotten, ignored or are so blinded that they didn’t ask:  “Are we really doing what is best for ALL children when we take away funding from our public schools?”

Indeed.

Let’s not let the incessant yammering on vouchers win.  Let’s not let robotic House members use the same old partisan playbook to message their narrow agenda that says the hell with most people in South Carolina.

Contact your state senator today to let him or her know that you strongly oppose using public money for private and home schools. They’re the only thing standing in the way of a scam that will bankrupt public education by writing a blank check for vouchers.

Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper.  Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.