Abbeville Lawsuit

Talking Points Abbeville Lawsuit

 The quality of our children’s education should never depend on their zip code.

 The SC Supreme Court’s ruling last year in the decades-long school funding lawsuit (Abbeville School District v. State of South Carolina) acknowledged our Legislature’s longstanding failure to adequately and equitably fund public education and to provide equal educational opportunity for all children in the state.

 Concentrated poverty and segregation are social problems, not school problems. We need to examine and address impacts outside of the classroom, including nutrition, health care, Internet connectivity, etc.

 South Carolina is now legally required to address its education inequities, and that’s a good thing.

 A 2014 report from the national nonprofit Rural School and Community Trust ranked South Carolina third out of states needing immediate action to rural education (behind Alabama and Mississippi).

 Forty out of every 100 students in South Carolina (40 percent) attend school in a rural district.

 SC adults in rural communities face the second highest unemployment rate in the nation (10 percent).

The South Carolina Education Association, Page 1  The Rural School and Community Trust study concluded that an increase in per pupil spending of 20 percent (sustained throughout a child’s entire K-12 schooling career) would:

o increase the high school completion rate by 22.9 percentage points; o increase adult earnings by 24.6 percent; and o reduce the incidence of adult poverty by 19.7 percentage points.

 Ensuring adequate, equitable, and sustainable long-term funding for education is a very necessary investment in our children and our future. Not only will it change individual lives, but it will boost state and rural economies, because educated and skilled workers will be more likely to remain in their communities, provide a strong workforce for growing business and industrial development. These educated citizens will buy homes, pay taxes, and contribute to an improved quality of life in their communities.

 According to research conducted for us by the National Education Association (NEA), investing an additional $200 million in our public schools would generate more than $400 million in revenue and create approximately 10,000 jobs. At 100 percent, that is an indisputably lucrative return on investment. (using Regional Economic Modeling Incorporated REMI model)

 As the high court pointed out, teacher quality is neither adequate nor consistent in hard-to-staff rural districts. In order to recruit and retain highly qualified teachers, these school districts must be able to compete. One approach is to establish a beginning teacher salary of $40,000, with the means and a plan to fund and reach the goal within a five-year period. (Note ─ this salary increase must not be paid for by eliminating the National Board Supplement.)

 We hope that lawmakers will undertake an exhaustive analysis of school funding to include comprehensive tax reform.

The South Carolina Education Association, Page 2  The 2006 passage of Act 388 did enormous damage to school funding by exempting owner-occupied homes from the portion of property taxes that fund school operations. The tradeoff was an increase in the unstable state sales tax, but that did not even remotely make up for the funding lost by schools.

 Since that measure passed, school funding has been cut by more than $140 million. It is critical that lawmakers consider repealing this ill-conceived law.

 One place to identify new sources for needed education funding is the $3.1 billion in special interest sales tax exemptions in the state’s tax code. Lawmakers must sternly review these exemptions and close these special interest loopholes by eliminating those that are no longer prudent or valid and apply previously lost revenue toward public education.

 Another promising strategy to bolster local economies is for school districts to adopt policies to “buy local” as often as possible, including developing a “farm to school” contract by which fresh local foods are served in schools.

 We must invest in South Carolina as a whole. We must take a holistic, systemic approach to addressing education inequity. That approach should include cooperatively utilizing currently available resources across all state agencies (DHEC, DSS, SC Department of Revenue, SC Department of Agriculture, and Head Start, etc), which have a presence in virtually every county.

 These agencies can cooperatively develop strategies to address non-classroom impacts, such as access to quality nutrition, early childhood education (Pre-K), health care (from prenatal months and birth), awareness of Medicaid eligibility and Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC), as well as affordable, high-speed Internet connectivity.

The South Carolina Education Association, Page 3  To fully address the issue of children in poverty, the General Assembly must continue to weight funding formulas to provide a higher level of funding for these children.

 If we truly believe that education is a major route out of poverty, then all public schools serving the most impoverished communities, by design, should be well-resourced, well-staffed, and well-funded.

The South Carolina Education Association, Page 4