By Lindsay Street, Statehouse correspondent | The state’s first major education bill in decades is getting closer to the Senate floor, teeing it up for debate prior to the General Assembly’s slog as the two-year session ends in May, a key lawmaker says.
“It’ll be right across the desk on the first day with a favorable report,” Senate Education Chair Greg Hembree, R-Horry, told Statehouse Report. The session begins Jan. 14. Between now and the middle of December, Hembree said his committee will meet several times before voting it to the floor for debate.
The meandering and expansive package addresses a wide range of issues including bumping the starting pay of teachers, addressing how the state intervenes in failing schools, changing the state’s literacy program and more. In 2019, House and Senate leaders introduced the bill, which was quickly passed in the House.
In the upper chamber, Hembree and a bipartisan panel have pored over the package for 10 months with 20 public meetings.
“This is not a magic solution to the problems we have in education in South Carolina but steps in the right direction,” S.C. Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Camden, said during Wednesday’s meeting.
Hembree said the bill “incrementally” moves education forward.
Doubts remain for education advocates
But some education advocates remain skeptical.
“It’s not the sweeping reform they want to act like this is going to change the South Carolina school system. It’s a step forward, though, because we haven’t talked education in 40 years,” South Carolina Education Association President Sherry East said, adding she worried it could lessen the appetite for further change in the Statehouse.
Another advocate worries it does too much in the wrong direction.
“We see a lot of paths toward privatization and a lot of paths that turn kids into widgets and we don’t see a lot of much else,” SCforEd board member Nicole Walker said. “I do not have a lot of faith that it is salvageable (through debate on the Senate floor). I have seen so few indicators that educators are being valued.”
East and Walker agreed the bill had a few bright points, however. That includes bumping the base starting teacher pay from $32,000 to $35,000, mandating a 30-minute duty-free break for elementary school teachers, and changes to the state’s literacy program that provides early interventions for students. Some, but not enough tests have been tossed from the state’s mandates, they said.
East and Walker said the bill fell short on addressing class sizes in the state — a perennial top complaint among teachers, even trumping salary. East said the bill will also do little to address the current teacher retention and recruitment issues.
“It’s not really going to help out attracting and retaining teachers in the classroom,” East said.
She also expressed concern over the push for expanding non-certified teachers through the bill — a move aimed at bringing more people into the classrooms. She said teacher-specific certifications and training are necessary for students to learn effectively.
Walker said she didn’t like that the Senate version of the bill removed a teacher bill of rights and a student bill of rights. The House finalized its version with the teacher bill of rights intact.
“Those two things should function as that reciprocal agreement of what students can expect and a teacher can expect. This should be the bedrock of how you build that community,” she said.
Paring down the big bill
Hembree tried this week to get ahead of naysayers about the bill. During a meeting of the full committee, he said everyone would find something they would hate, but most would find they could agree with 80 percent or more of the bill.
“If you’re waiting for perfect, we aren’t going to do anything,” he said.
Hembree said his committee pared down the bill from 85 pages to 63 pages, mostly through removing duplicative ethics requirements that the panel felt was already covered by state law.
The panel also removed the Zero to Twenty committee, which sought to track children from birth to their early careers in the state.
“The last thing we need in state government is another committee, I can assure you,” Hembree said, adding that the work needed there could be covered by other entities.
Much of the concluding work by the committee has been on the procedure of what happens and when the state should intervene in a failing school district (and what the definition of a failing school district is). Under a Wednesday subcommittee amendment, school district takeovers would last six years, remove school board members from state-run districts and lay out how locals could regain control. The state has taken over three districts since 2017.
What’s next
Hembree has tasked a special study subcommittee to begin reviewing the way the state funds education in an effort to streamline and modify it. The last major change was with Act 388 earlier this century, which gave property tax relief to homeowners but meant local school dollars were raised through business and rental properties.
The committee will look at tweaking the current formula of how the state distributes money to the districts.
“(Changes to the funding formula is) not going to go out this session,” Hembree said. “That’s another boulder we are trying to move.”
Teacher pay raises will also be a part of the conversation in Columbia in 2020 — though not likely in this bill. Like this year’s teacher raise, it will likely come through the state budget-writing process. On Wednesday, State Education Superintendent Molly Spearman told reporters she has requested a 5 percent pay raise for teachers in next year’s budget.
East said her group will push for standalone legislation on other key issues for the end of session. She said that in December, the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention & Advancement will release its annual numbers of the state’s teacher shortage and that will likely spur more legislative action.
“That will be another big eye opener,” she said.
Hembree said his committee plans to work on other education bills through the session.
“The committee is not going to quit its work; we’ve got a lot to do,” he said. “You don’t quit education reform. You don’t stop … We will stay working on different pieces and parts of the system forever.”
As of publication, a date for the next meeting of the Senate Education Committee has not been released.
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