Senate panel gives key endorsement to public school choice legislation

COLUMBIA – The Senate Education Committee today unanimously approved and sent to the full Senate a bill aimed at increasing the number and variety of choices available to students and their families.

The committee approved the bill on a 13-0 vote. Co-sponsored by Republicans Wes Hayes and John Courson and Democrats Gerald Malloy and John Scott, it would establish public school choice committees in the state’s local school districts and require that they create new instructional choices at the elementary, middle and high school levels within two years.

Each district’s public school choice committee would adopt a proposal for at least one cross-district choice within three years and present that proposal to its local school board. Implementation would be at the discretion of local school boards.

“Today nearly 60,000 students are participating in some sort of optional instructional choice offered by a South Carolina public school,” said State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex. “Our goal is to make those kinds of choices available to every child in the state – and to let parents drive the creation of instructional programs within schools that are fully accountable to the public and fully accessible to kids.”

The state’s public school choice programs currently include single-gender initiatives, middle college/early college, Montessori Education, evening high school, language immersion, academic academies, arts integration and international baccalaureate programs. South Carolina is the nation’s leader in single-gender education with nearly 220 schools offering that instructional option. More than 30 public schools currently offer Montessori instruction, with at least five more schools scheduled to begin next fall.

Shortly after taking office two years ago, Rex created an Office of Public School Choice within his agency. That office is staffed by experts who help schools develop single-gender classes, Montessori programs and charter schools.

Before it approved the public school choice bill today, the Education Committee sent back to subcommittee a bill that would subsidize private school tuitions with public funds, effectively killing the legislation for this session of the General Assembly. Similar bills have been rejected by legislators every year since 2004.

“At a time when our entire nation is focusing on transforming public education, it’s disappointing that here in South Carolina we continue to be distracted by this idea of taking public money and sending it to private schools,” Rex said. “This bill would have created two school systems: one that’s fully accountable to the public for academic performance and financial performance, and one that’s not. One school system that’s fully accessible to every student, and one that can pick and choose which students it wants to accept.

“It’s the quality of our public schools that ultimately will determine our state’s overall quality of life. I don’t know of a single company that was considering a move to South Carolina and asked the question, ‘How good are your private schools?’ ”