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What\u2019s at stake?
Story by ARIEL GILREATH
If passed, twin bills in the South Carolina House of Representatives and the Senate would be the state’s largest education reform since Gov. Richard Riley’s 1984 Education Improvement Act.
The bills lay out changes that range from eliminating some standardized tests to creating a “Zero to Twenty Committee” to analyze the state’s education to workforce pipeline.
But educators showed up in force at a hearing on the House version of the bill on Feb. 12 — a hearing that lasted more than four hours — largely to decry the bill’s proposals.
As legislators work on the massive, 80-page-plus legislation, tension is rising among educators, who’ve said they aren’t afraid to follow in the steps of teachers in West Virginia and Los Angeles and simply walk out of their classrooms.
Teachers in states across the country have walked out of classrooms in protest over low pay and large class sizes, among other concerns, in the last year.
But Paige Steele, a teacher and board member for education advocacy group SC for Ed, said a walkout is what the organization is trying to avoid.
“We’re trying to prevent something like that, which is why we’re really grateful for all the conversations we’re having,” Steele said. “Honestly, it’s not off the table, but it’s definitely something we’re trying to prevent.”
‘A WORKING DOCUMENT’
The House and Senate bills, filed on Jan. 24, introduce dozens of sweeping changes that even education officials aren’t entirely sure how some of them would look in practice.
“How they choose to implement and interpret these changes is critical,” said Teri Brinkman, spokesperson for Greenville County Schools.
Julie Horton, coordinator of government relations with Greenville County Schools, said the district appreciates the state looking into education reform and how amenable legislators have been to receiving feedback.
“The good thing is the state of South Carolina has decided that it’s time to look at education holistically,” Horton said.
A Senate education subcommittee has already recommended changes to a section of the bill addressing board ethics.
“The bill today isn’t the same as it was yesterday,” Brinkman said.
Rep. Rita Allison, R-Spartanburg, said it will be amended like every piece of legislation that goes through the committee process.
The key, she said, is getting the conversation started.
“The document is a working document both in the House and the Senate,” Allison said. “But it is a piece of work [intended] to start the conversation and to see where we were.”
But 61 people — primarily teachers — spoke critically of the bill during the Feb. 12 hearing on the House version, and SC for Ed has encouraged teachers to reach out to representatives who’ve signed on as co-sponsors.
Steele said she’s glad education reform is being discussed and that teachers are eager to come to the table to discuss it, but she wishes they had been involved before the bill was introduced.
“Having the discussions about education have been really beneficial,” Steele said. “I just think that if they had educator input on the front-end, it wouldn’t seem as if we were blindsided.”
