During his two terms as governor, Republican Mark Sanford has been, at best, indifferent to South Carolina’s public schools. At times, he has appeared to be downright hostile to the very concept of public education.

Then, several weeks ago, a mail piece featuring all three announced GOP candidates for governor in 2010 came across my desk. And there they were – Andre Bauer, Gresham Barrett and Henry McMaster – all advocating for a voucher and tax-credit scheme that would take badly needed resources out of our public schools and give them to private schools with little or no accountability, little to no evidence that the scheme will actually improve student performance and no way to guarantee accessibility to South Carolina’s most disadvantaged students.

Now, Karen Floyd, the GOP candidate for state superintendent of education in 2006, has been elected as the new state Republican Party chair with no opposition.

And so it seems that with Floyd’s election, the out-of-state, school-choice groups that have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into South Carolina over the last few years have cemented their hold on South Carolina’s GOP.

Ms. Floyd has colorful history, and I predict she will make a highly interesting state party chair. She was once a Democrat. She even made campaign contributions to former Sen. Fritz Hollings and former State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum.

Curiously, her “conversion” seems to coincide with her interest in running for statewide office in 2006. That’s when tens of thousands of dollars began to flow into her campaign from Howard Rich, a wealthy New Yorker more interested in undermining public education and scoring political points with school choice advocates than in actually improving student performance in South Carolina’s public schools.

And now, Ms. Floyd and voucher advocates have become a dominant presence in the Republican Party – due in no small part to the generosity of wealthy out-of-state voucher financiers like Howard Rich. We know that she took tens of thousands of dollars from them to run for state superintendent of education, but we will never know how much they doled out to help her become state party chair because she will never be required to report it.

Given the vast amounts of campaign funds that have been channeled to elected officials who have expressed support for the voucher and tax credit scheme, one must ask what really drives voucher supporters – the desire to support an issue that will fill their campaign accounts or the desire to find workable, viable solutions to improving student performance. Because so little of the conversation around the vouchers scheme has been about children, citizens who care about the state’s public schools are justifiably concerned that the stake Mr. Rich has purchased in the state GOP will ultimately be at the expense of our children.

Unfortunately, defeat does not deter the voucher advocates. They come back stronger and more resolved to do everything they can to dismantle what they have called “godless, government schools” – the same schools you attended, the very ones your kids attend now. And they are willing to dismantle public schools irresponsibly with little evidence that vouchers will actually work to improve the quality of South Carolina’s public schools or the performance of South Carolina’s children.

South Carolina’s public schools are making progress. In just two years, we’ve become the national leader in single-gender education. We are improving on the SAT at the fastest rate in the nation. We are poised to become the most innovative, choice driven public school system in America. No parts of Howard Rich’s or the state Republican party’s agenda acknowledges nor supports the progress that our public schools are making and this should concern all of us.

Fundamentally, the voucher debate should be about what’s best for South Carolina’s children, but much of the voucher debate has left children as secondary concerns and this is what concerns me most. As such, those of us who support public education must remain just as vigilant as voucher supporters, but we must make our case in terms of what best supports our children and what works, not what keeps our campaigns well-funded. And as many of you know, public schools can and will continue to effectively serve our state and we should not let outside influences driven my politics to distract us from doing what’s best for our children and continuing the steady progress that our public schools are making.

Rep. Bakari Sellers of Denmark is the first vice chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

You must be logged in to comment.