At a time when other states are looking for ways to expand existing school choice programs, members of the South Carolina House voted last week to ensure that state-run schools will continue to operate free from the threat of meaningful competition. On the motion of Spartanburg Republican Doug Brannon, the House voted to table the Educational Opportunity Act (H. 3407) by a paper-thin margin of 60 votes to 59. The vote effectively killed the proposal and guaranteed that children in this state will remain shackled to the government school system for the foreseeable future.
Earlier this month, by contrast, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a historic bill that will significantly expand that state’s existing voucher funding and other financial supports for families who choose to opt out of the public system. The popular Indiana law creates a new voucher program for low and middle income families, doubles an earlier cap on the state’s scholarship tax-credit program, and allows families to take a tax deduction for out-of-pocket expenses related to private school or homeschooling.
Similar expansion efforts are underway under the leadership of Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin and Governor John Kasich in Ohio. Congress has recently revitalized the successful voucher program in the District of Columbia, while individual counties, such as Douglas County, Colorado, have begun offering vouchers at the local level.
But the winds of change aren’t blowing in South Carolina. In the still air of the Blatt Building last April, the Senate Education Committee voted to keep the Educational Opportunity Act off of the Senate floor. And just as the Senate Education Committee could not have acted without help from liberal Republicans such as Larry Martin of Pickens, the House could not have propped up the education establishment without the complicity of Republican members.
Despite the Republican Party’s clear stance in favor of comprehensive school choice, the following “Republicans”—nearly all of them from the Upstate—joined Rep. Brannon in voting against reform: Rita Allison (Spartanburg), Joan Brady (Richland), Derham Cole (Spartanburg), Dan Cooper (Anderson), Mike Forrester (Spartanburg), Marion Frye (Lexington), Mike Gambrell (Abbeville & Anderson), David Hiott (Pickens), Jenny Horne (Charleston & Dorchester), Steve Moss (Cherokee), Steve Parker (Spartanburg), Gene Pinson, (Greenwood), B.R. Skelton (Pickens), Eddie Tallon (Cherokee & Spartanburg), Bill Whitmire (Oconee).
In addition to voting against their party’s platform, many of the same Republican House members ignored the stated position of their denomination when they voted to kill the Educational Opportunity Act. For example, Representatives Allison, Brannon, Hiott, Moss, Parker, Pinson, and Tallon, all claim membership in a Baptist church (Hiott and Pinson are deacons). Yet since 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention has called on “legislators, at all levels of government throughout our nation, to develop the means and methods of returning educational and funding choices to parents.”
Finally, according to South Carolinians for Responsible Government (SCRG), a pro-reform interest group, Rita Allison and several others who voted against the legislation had previously made public commitments to support it.
The legislation would have begun to chip away at the funding monopoly currently enjoyed by the government school system by offering financial assistance to parents of students enrolled in an independent K–12 school. Poor families would have been eligible for a scholarship to defray the cost of tuition at a non-public school, while other families could have claimed partial reimbursement for tuition expenses in the form of an income tax credit.
The House’s failure to pass the Educational Opportunity Act also means that homeschooling families will not receive the proposed tax credit of $1,000.00 per student. Parents who teach their children at home could have used the credit to assist with the purchase of curriculum and school supplies.
In the end, the taxpayer-funded lobbyists from school districts around the state were able to exert just enough pressure to ensure that the public system’s privileged status as a state-operated monopoly will continue—at least for the time-being. But school choice supporters, aware of the traction the movement enjoys in other parts of the country, refuse to concede defeat. In a statement released after last Wednesday’s vote, SCRG reminded supporters that “school choice remains a long term fight for educational freedom in South Carolina.”
