With families and students across the state preparing to return to school and brouhaha over Gov. Mark Sanford’s marital mistakes waning, now might be the time to ask an important question:

How has the governor improved or shaped public education since he took office?

“This is going to be a short conversation,” said Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, a member of the Senate Education Committee and husband of an award-winning educator.

“I’m having to think … give me a minute, I’m not being facetious,” said state Superintendent of Education Jim Rex, before passing on faint praise for Sanford’s support of early childhood education efforts and spending flexibility for school districts.

Few of the governor’s detractors would ever mistake Sanford for a public school advocate.
When he was campaigning for governor, Sanford railed against the state’s woeful academic rankings and offered school vouchers as a solution.

Far from a rhetorical device to get elected, Sanford has made the issue of education a cornerstone of his yearly priorities, focusing on school choice.

Let’s look at some of the governor’s education record:

• Sanford recently attempted to block acceptance of some $700 million in federal stimulus funding for South Carolina meant largely for public education.

• He has lobbied for drastically overhauling the state employee’s retirement package into a pay-as-you-go model that was criticized as a disincentive to teacher recruitment.

• The governor has made enemies within the public education community by supporting elimination of a $7,500 annual stipend for teachers who obtain national board certification.

• He even went so far as to name a woman who home schooled all of her children to be chair of the state Board of Education.

Of course, the state’s public school system has made itself an easy target, with South Carolina students ranking near the bottom in many important categories, such as SAT scores, and not helping matters by ranking near the top in many embarrassing categories, like teenage pregnancy.

Debbie Elmore, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Association of School Boards, said one of the main gripes she has heard about the governor is that he is always against something, and never for anything.

Like Rex, Elmore praised Sanford for championing a new law this year that allowed for spending flexibility at the school district level in the face of challenging budget situations. But Elmore said the governor’s support for fiscal flexibility has been basically philosophical, and that Sanford has yet to stake out a position on a more important issue: adequate funding.

“Sadly, regrettably, he is still really pushing for vouchers,” Elmore said, adding that Sanford’s continued support for diverting public money to private schools further underlined his “negative public bombardment on public education in South Carolina.”

Rex echoed Elmore’s complaint about Sanford publicly ostracizing schools. “At the best of times, he’s been indifferent,” Rex said. “At the worst, hostile.”

Joel Sawyer, the governor’s retiring spokesman, defended his boss’ legacy, saying that the state has “made some important strides there with the charter school legislation and the virtual schools legislation that we’ve signed. We also formed an incredibly successful dropout prevention program through the Department of Commerce called Jobs for S.C. Graduates. Our executive budgets have always made the base student cost and teacher salaries a high priority.”

The governor, according to Sawyer, believed that one of the biggest impediments to improvement was “people who only want to talk in terms of ‘public education’ or ‘private education’ rather than simply ‘education.’ Our goal should be well educating every child, regardless of the setting.”

In short, the governor was still steadfast in his support of vouchers/tax credits/school choice.

One change Sanford has promised lately, in the wake of his personal failings being aired, was to be more flexible and less strident.

Rex said a unique opportunity has arrived to test that mettle. He said the federal government has launched a $4 billion program to help states stay on the cutting edge of education. All the application process needs is two signatures, Rex said, his and the governor’s.

Rex said he worried that Sanford wouldn’t sign on, because the governor declined to sign onto a core standards program that was espoused by the National Governors Association. “If South Carolina isn’t going to get a piece of that money, some other states will,” Rex said.  
                      
Bill Davis is the editor of SC Statehouse Report; he can be reached at editor@statehousereport.com.

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