Teachers from certain other states could start working in South Carolina classrooms more quickly under a House committee advanced Thursday.

The bill, which passed out of the Education and Public Works Committee 14-4, would make South Carolina the to join a compact agreeing not to make teachers reapply for the certification they need before starting instruction.

“We’re doing our best to fill vacancies in our classrooms with safe, sound, well-educated people, not very, very kind but untrained substitutes who are filling our classrooms,” said Rep. Shannon Erickson, a Beaufort Republican who leads the committee and sponsored the bill.

Under existing law, anyone licensed to teach in another state must when they move. Approval from the state education department depends on how well their home state’s requirements align with those in South Carolina.

Automatically accepting out-of-state licenses could speed up the process and make things easier for teachers coming into the state, teachers’ advocates and supporting legislators said.

Educators who went through the process of getting a teaching license in another state shouldn’t have to start over just because they’ve moved, said Dena Crews, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

“They’ve done the work already,” Crews said. “That needs to count for something.”

The compact initially started in 2023 with the goal of helping military families, who often need to move with little notice.

For teachers married to military members, moving to a state with an agreement that accepts their licensure could reduce some of the stresses of relocating, said Patrick Kelly, a teachers’ advocate with Palmetto State Teachers Association. He gave Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, home of House Speaker Murrell Smith, as an example.

Moving is already a difficult process, and attempting to get the paperwork together to apply for certification can make it even harder, Kelly said.

“Anything we can do to diminish the burden on those families that are already serving our nation through uniform service, I think that’s just commonsense policy,” Kelly said.

The agreement would go beyond military families. Anyone moving into the state would be able to start teaching as soon as they found a job, potentially creating another avenue to fill the the state still had at the beginning of this school year.

That was a dramatic drop from the record-high number of vacancies schools reported after the COVID-19 pandemic, but anything the state can do to get more teachers is a good thing, Kelly said.

Plus, the state could then harness its recent influx of residents, said Ryan Dellinger, director of education policy for conservative think tank Palmetto Promise Institute. Many of those moving are retirees , but others might be certified teachers looking for a new job, he said.

And even more might decide to move into the state with the agreement in place, Dellinger said.

Neighboring states North Carolina and Georgia have not yet joined the compact, so a teacher looking to move to the Southeast without a specific location in mind might choose South Carolina because they know they’ll have an easier time transferring their certification, Dellinger said.

Under the agreement, “South Carolina is suddenly a very competitive place to live,” Dellinger said.

If North Carolina and Georgia did decide to sign agreements of their own, that could also help the state’s recruitment efforts, Kelly said. Teachers just over the South Carolina border might decide to start teaching in the state if they didn’t have to get another certification, he said.

“I’d love to make it even easier for their certified educators to come to South Carolina and work with our students,” Kelly said.

That could cut both ways.

Other states would recognize South Carolina’s certification in turn, potentially drawing some teachers away. But with the state’s growth and recent improvements in teacher salaries and working conditions, that’s not likely to make a major difference, Kelly said.

Last year, the Legislature passed the which, among other things, made renewals of teacher certificates easier, guaranteed planning time, and required districts to tell teachers their expected salaries before they sign contracts.

As for pay, the state’s minimum salary for first-year teachers has risen from $30,113 in 2017 to $48,500 this school year.

Following the governor’s recommendation, the House’s first draft of the state budget would increase state-paid minimums by $2,000 across the , which pays teachers by years of experience and college degree. That means no first-year teacher could make less than $50,500 next school year. Many districts pay above the minimums.

“This is a place where educators want to come work,” Kelly said. “Let’s make it to where they can come and do it.”

How much time and trouble the proposal would save teachers moving from a state within the compact would vary.

Under the existing process, the timeline depends on how quickly teachers can get together the information needed for the application. Kelly likened it to the process of getting a passport.

“How quickly you can do that is dependent on how quickly you can put your hands on the paperwork that you need,” he said.

Teachers with less than three years of experience must pass tests to gain additional certificates required. And all newly arriving teachers, regardless of their experience, must complete an evaluation of their skills before they can receive a long-term state certificate that renews with professional development, according to the Department of Education.

The proposal would erase those steps for teachers coming from a state within the compact.

‘Simply an option’

Most of the pushback on the bill Thursday came from several of the House’s most conservative members, who worried about the state giving too much of its authority to other states, especially those with Democratic majorities.

Teachers in Washington, for instance, are required to undergo training on diversity, equity and inclusion to earn their teaching certifications, which could influence their teaching, said Rep. Stephen Frank, a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. Or, the commission overseeing the compact might try to pressure South Carolina into accepting similar requirements, he said.

“While on day one I don’t see that posing a great threat to us, in this compact, it sets up this commission, which will then promulgate rules, and we have no idea what those rules may be or may become,” the Greenville Republican said.

While the bill makes it easier for out-of-state teachers to hunt for jobs, schools don’t have to hire them, Erickson said. And South Carolina keeps control of its licensing process, meaning the commission would have no control over how it certifies teachers, she said.

“It simply allows an open door in one piece — literally one piece — of their qualification to not have to wait,” Erickson said. “It’s not saying that they have to be hired. It’s simply an option.”

South Carolina has agreements to recognize out-of-state licenses for other professions, including nursing, physical therapy, mental health therapy, social work and corrections officers, Erickson said. Boating licenses also apply between states.

Teachers should get the same treatment, Erickson said.

“I think these partnerships are really important,” Erickson said. “They’re a good way of making sure that if you do have someone who’s saying, ‘Oh, well, I might want to move in this area of the country right now, we’re going to stand out.’”

“That’s really never a bad thing,” she added.

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was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of . .

In mid-December, Dr. Annie Andrews turned on her camera to record. The pediatrician — among a growing cohort of medical professionals who use social media to break down health care news and misinformation — had a public service announcement.

“As the entire country is aware, we have a measles outbreak in the upstate of South Carolina,” Andrews said. At the time, there had been of the highly contagious disease in the state, where she and her three school-aged children reside.

Andrews noted that the vaccine available to prevent measles — known as the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine — . She offered practical advice for adults who might want to check if their measles immunity had waned. And she cautioned people to be extra mindful amid holiday travel.

“Please stay home if you have a fever, stay home if you have obvious cold symptoms like a cough and a runny nose,” she said. “Certainly stay home if you have a rash along with that fever. Protect your loved ones and do what you can to stop the spread of measles here in South Carolina and in the other parts of the country where it is currently spreading.”

Her video ended with an image promoting her campaign for the U.S. Senate.

“I never in a million years, when I was in medical school, thought that I would be running for the U.S. Senate and also talking about measles nearly every single day,” Andrews told The 19th.

A growing measles outbreak — since start of the year, in the United States, with South Carolina being the epicenter — has become a cornerstone of Andrews’ messaging for her , which she balances while working at a children’s hospital and parenting.

And Andrews suspects that mothers are paying close attention to her campaign. She calls mothers of school-aged children her most loyal base of supporters. They leave positive messages on social media, stop her after campaign events and while she’s shopping at the grocery store.

“As we see our children under constant threats — whether it’s from or now sort of the politicization of HHS and vaccine recommendations — moms have had enough and they’re fighting back,” she said. “I think I’m tapping into something here in South Carolina and across the country. Moms who just get that ‘mama bear’ instinct — and now they understand that politics is a really important way to fight back and protect their kids.”

The Democrat faces an uphill battle as she challenges Sen. Lindsey Graham, a four-term Republican incumbent who’s held the seat for more than 20 years. While Andrews outraised Graham in the third and fourth quarters of 2025 , the senator has more cash-on-hand to spend. Both candidates are heavily favored to win their primaries in June.

Andrews first ran unsuccessfully for Congress against Republican Rep. Nancy Mace in the 2022 midterm election. in a race that centered . After her last congressional bid, Andrews did not plan to run again.

Then Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed as health secretary.

“The fact that it is 2026 and here I am in South Carolina, where we are in the midst of a measles outbreak because of disinformation and conspiracy theories spread by people like RFK Jr. — is just really mind-blowing to me as a health care professional, as a physician, as a clinical researcher,” she said. “And so it really was the reason I decided to get in this race.”

Andrews connects Kennedy’s actions on vaccines — his department has made , , to senators like Graham in part by noting their critical confirmation votes. A spokesperson for Graham did not respond to a request for comment about the senator’s stance on the measles outbreak in his home state. A review of recent public news releases on Graham’s Senate website does not appear to address the topic.

But Andrews’ campaign also focuses on health concerns more broadly: Andrews believes the political headwinds are shifting. Republicans, who control Congress, last year enacted massive budget cuts to programs like , and they allowed under the Affordable Care Act to lapse, sending premiums skyrocketing.

“South Carolina has a lot of health care deserts, folks who live in rural areas, who have to drive many, many miles and cross county lines to reach a hospital system and an emergency department and maternity care,” she said. “All of that is going to be made so much worse because of what we’ve seen from this Trump administration — of course, enabled and supported by Lindsey Graham.”

Andrews is tapping into a topic with massive implications on public health, said Shaughnessy Naughton, president of 314 Action, a political action committee that tries to elect Democrats with a STEM background to office and has endorsed Andrews. Before the record-setting cases in 2025, the United States had averaged 180 cases of measles annually since 2000, when the disease was declared eliminated. this year and the United States is on the brink of losing its elimination status.

“As a pediatrician in kind of ground zero of the measles outbreak in South Carolina, she is a voice of real credibility and authority,” Naughton said.

Doctors and health care professionals have increasingly declared candidacies ahead of the midterms, according to 314 Action. Last November, the group endorsed and supported 148 candidates in races that included seats in New Jersey and Virginia — 108 won.

314 Action launched a new last year aimed at electing more doctors, nurses and public health experts to state and federal offices. It has received 200 applications from doctors interested in running, according to Naughton.

“Americans overwhelmingly support childhood vaccines that have been shown to be effective and safe. Americans wanted the ACA subsidies to be extended so they could continue to purchase health insurance to keep their family safe and healthy,” she said. “You couple it with a cut to public health and research that provides future hope for people and cures — it’s just an administration that is not listening to what Americans want.”

Kayla Hancock is director of Public Health Watch, a health-focused communications initiative from the health care advocacy group Protect Our Care. She said the Trump administration’s health policies — led in part by Kennedy — have forced the electorate to pay attention. shows 75 percent of voters say the cost of health care will impact how they vote in the midterms.

“Every day, the consequences of the Trump administration’s policies around health and public health are mounting,” she said. “Between disruptive vaccine development and now deadly outbreaks of diseases that we had previously had under control, and then, of course, .”&�Բ�����;

Andrews is running for office while commuting between Charleston, where her children attend public school and she co-parents with her ex-spouse, and Washington, D.C, where she works at a children’s hospital. She said going back and forth between these two worlds — the campaign trail and her job as a doctor — has grounded her candidacy.

“I’m taking care of kids who are struggling with food insecurity. Kids who have asthma and live in a home with mold on the walls and can’t afford to move to a different apartment. Kids whose parents can’t afford their prescription drugs. Kids who can’t access mental health resources in their community, and kids who have a past medical history of gunshot wounds, which is really only something you see in America,” she said. “It reminds me of all the reasons I’ve sacrificed so much to run for office. Because these problems are so urgent.”&�Բ�����;

Andrews’ campaign platform extends beyond health care. Through her lens as a parent, she talks about addressing gun violence, making groceries more affordable for families and restoring federal abortion rights.

Still, disease prevention has been a central issue for her. Even before the outbreak in South Carolina, Andrews featured an X-ray of a kid with measles pneumonia and noted the condition could be prevented by vaccines. It’s a point she often brings up now both online and on the campaign trail, partially because the outbreak in her state has worsened since her December PSA: As of early February, cases in the state , mostly involving children 17 and under.

More than 240 cases involve children under the age of 5, some of the most vulnerable to infection since children under the age of 1 are typically too young to get the MMR vaccine. Most of the infections reported were among people not vaccinated.

The consequences to children only crystallize Andrews’ decision to run. She pointed out that while doctors have served in the Senate, a pediatrician has never been elected into the centuries-old chamber. (Rep. Kim Schrier of Washington state, a Democrat elected in 2018, .)

This week, Andrews focused on measles and related resources for parents.

“There’s never been a more important time for people who have an understanding of our health care system and basic medical principles to be in the room where decisions about our health care system — decisions about the public health guidance that is coming out of the federal government — are being made,” Andrews said.

The , led by the University of California-Riverside, followed more than 54,000 South Carolina students from the time they entered ninth grade at low-performing schools — primarily between the years 2000 and 2005 — until 2017, when most were in their early 30s.

The arrest rate for graduates of unsatisfactory schools was 19.7%, versus 22.4% for below-average schools. 

The study also found improvements in student academic performance and school climate, but no changes involving teacher turnover, per-pupil spending or the replacement of principals.

“It appears that accountability pressures prompted schools to implement policies that led to changes in school climate, which, in turn, manifest as improvements in short-term success and long-term reductions in criminal involvement,” the study said.

In , schools can be labeled unsatisfactory, below average, average, good or excellent. Low-performing schools are often required to create an improvement plan and set by the state. If schools don’t make progress, the state may replace their leaders or even take over. 

Researchers have of school accountability systems — another recent study found that only 29% of school leaders across the nation said the ratings help improve student outcomes. 

But other that turnaround programs are associated with better attendance, test scores and graduation rates.

The California researchers measured school climate by the percentage of students who felt satisfied with their learning, social and physical environments at school. The student satisfaction with the learning environment at unsatisfactory schools was nearly 65%, compared with 60.6% in below-average schools. Satisfaction with the social and physical environment was about 71% for unsatisfactory schools but 66.4% for those that were below average.

More than 64% of 10th graders passed standardized tests in unsatisfactory schools compared to 61.6% in below average schools. 

“Improving low-performing schools is a perennial problem,” the study said. “Policymakers have implemented various strategies to turn around struggling schools. Our findings are intriguing in that they suggest the existence of policies and practices that low-performing schools have implemented when they faced increased accountability pressures.”

If such a change goes into effect, “pediatric hospitals will be overwhelmed with [childhood] infections that have virtually been non-existent for the last 40 years,” said Florida-based infectious disease specialist Frederick Southwick. Southwick attended a Dec. 12 public comment workshop on the issue hosted by the Florida Department of Health. 

“We’re in trouble right now,” he added, pointing to and the likelihood that some diseases could become endemic. “We’re getting there, and this [ending the mandate] would just do-in little kids.”

The session delved into the proposed language the department has drafted for a rule change that would do away with vaccine mandates for four key immunizations: varicella, more commonly known as chickenpox; hepatitis B, pneumococcal bacteria and Haemophilus influenzae type B, or HiB. Currently, children cannot attend school in Florida without proof of these four immunizations, among others, including the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. 

Although Florida is not considering removing the mandate for the MMR vaccine, health experts see the move it is contemplating as eroding childhood immunization generally. It comes when in South Carolina because of a burgeoning measles outbreak.

Rana Alissa, president of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was also in attendance to express her concerns. She told ����Ӱ�� this week that thanks to the success of vaccines, she’s never had to treat some of these “horrible diseases,” including HiB, which can lead to meningitis.

“Don’t make our kids — Florida’s kids — guinea pigs to teach me and my classmates and other pediatricians how to manage these diseases,” she implored.

Tallahassee parent Cathy Mayfield lost her 18-year-old daughter, Lawson, to meningitis in 2009, a few months before she was supposed to leave for college and just before she was due for a booster shot. (At the time, the booster was not recommended until college, according to Mayfield.)

“You just don’t realize until it happens to you,” she said.

She hopes others will learn the importance of vaccinating their own kids from her family’s story. 

“All the information I learned through our tragedy about vaccinations made me very supportive of the safeguards [they] offer,” she said.

“You’ve also got to realize,” Mayfield added, “that your decisions affect your community, and that’s something I think has gotten lost in … all this conversation and hesitancy about vaccinations.”

Equating vaccine mandates to slavery

The workshop, which was announced the day before Thanksgiving, was held in Panama City Beach, in the Florida Panhandle, far from the state’s main population centers. About 100 people showed up to the session, which was characterized by attendees as but civil. Northe Saunders, president of the pro-vaccine advocacy organization and who was there, estimated that about 30 people spoke in favor of keeping the current vaccine mandates, while approximately 20 spoke in opposition.

Some speakers opposed to vaccine mandates included conspiracy theories in their arguments, according to news reports and numerous people present at the workshop, echoing language heard from the federal government since Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic, took over the Department of Health and Human Services.

One attendee argued that giving children multiple jabs in a 30-day period “accounts to attempted murder,” according to . A number of others questioned if this year’s reported measles outbreaks, which resulted in the in Texas, had actually occurred.

Florida leaders’ desire to become the first state to was announced in September by its surgeon general, Joseph A. Ladapo, standing beside Gov. Ron DeSantis in the gym of a private Christian high school. In sharing their plan, Ladapo claimed that “every last [mandate] is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”&�Բ�����;

Only four vaccines are mandated through a Department of Health rule and are therefore under Lapado’s purview. The remaining nine, which in addition to the MMR shot include polio, are part of state law and can only be changed through legislative action. 

Experts told ����Ӱ�� this is a much more difficult feat, one that state legislators — even conservative ones — don’t seem to have an appetite for. Richard Hughes, a George Washington University law professor and leading vaccine law expert, said such a legislative attempt would “warrant legal action.”

‘We really need to turn this around’ 

The debate in Florida and other states over mandatory childhood immunization comes as the country teeters on the edge of losing its measles elimination status. This year alone has seen nearly confirmed cases, the most since 2000, when measles was declared eliminated in the U.S. by the World Health Organization. Just over 10% of cases have led to hospitalization. The current South Carolina outbreak has infected at least , and among those forced to quarantine are students from nine schools. 

Significant educational implications from the outbreaks emerged in a by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, which found that absences increased 41% in a school district at the center of the West Texas outbreak, with larger effects among younger students.

The spread of measles is also a warning of the ramifications of dropping vaccine rates, according to William Moss, executive director at Johns Hopkins’ International Vaccine Access Center.

“Measles often serves as what we [call] the canary in the coal mine,” he said. “It really identifies weaknesses in the immunization system and programs, because of its high contagiousness.”

“Unfortunately, I see a perfect storm brewing for the resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases,” he added, “… We really need to turn this around.”

Earlier this week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , and in the preceding months changed policies surrounding the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) combination vaccine and this year’s COVID 19 booster — all based on recommendations from an advisory committee hand-picked by Kennedy. The universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine, in place for decades, was credited with nearly eliminating the highly contagious and dangerous virus in infants.

Lynn Nelson, the president of the National Association of School Nurses, fears that other, more conservative states will now look to Florida as an example.

“We already have seen outbreaks all over, and they’re only going to escalate if you have an area of the country whose herd immunity levels slip down further than they already are, which I think will happen if those [anti-mandate rules] come into effect,” she said. “That, in combination with some of the other misinformation that’s coming out, people will feel validated in decisions not to immunize their children.”

Florida’s Department of Health appears to be moving ahead to end requirements for the four vaccines it controls, despite indicating nearly two-thirds of Floridians oppose the action. Proposed draft language presented at the Dec. 12 workshop would also allow parents to opt their kids out of the state’s immunization registry, Florida SHOTS, and expand exemptions. 

Currently, all 50 states have vaccine requirements for children entering child care and schools. Parents across the country are able to apply for exemptions if their child is unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons and most states — including Florida — also have religious exemptions. Part of the proposed changes presented at the Dec. 12 meeting would add Florida to the 20 states that additionally have some form of , further widening parents’ ability to opt their kids out of routine vaccines. 

The public comment period remains open through Dec. 22, after which the department will decide whether or not to move forward with the rule change. In the interim, advocates are pushing state health officials to conduct epidemiological research around the impact of removing the vaccine mandates and studies on the potential economic costs. Florida is and out-of-state visitors. 

Without that information, pro-vaccine advocate Saunders said these critical public health care decisions will be made “at the whim of an appointed official.”&�Բ�����;

“The nation,” he added, “is looking at Florida.”

COLUMBIA — South Carolina high schools posted their highest graduation rate in a decade, but a quarter of students still aren’t ready for college or the workforce, according to released Monday.

Generally, South Carolina’s schools improved , according to the statewide data that gauges how well schools perform based on test scores, classroom surveys and student growth, among other metrics. Education officials applauded a 10-year high in the number of students graduating on time — meaning they graduated four years after entering ninth grade — while saying they would continue pushing for programs to improve how well those students were prepared for life after high school.

“We have to make sure that our diplomas are worth more than the piece of paper that they are written on,” said state Superintendent Ellen Weaver.

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Overall, 270 schools rated “excellent” this year, an increase from 232 last year. The bottom tier of “unsatisfactory” decreased from 49 to 31, and “below average” schools dropped from 186 to 145.

Any time the number of schools in the lowest tier shrinks, that’s good news, since it means children across the state are getting a better education, said Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist with the Palmetto State Teachers Association.

“There’s encouraging information here,” Kelly said of the report cards.

Officials from the state Department of Education and the independent Education Oversight Committee, which is tasked by state law with grading schools, announced the results at Annie Burnside Elementary School in Columbia, which jumped two tiers this year, from “average” to “excellent.”

At the Richland District One school, 83% of the 306 students live in poverty. The school’s big rating boost was due to significant student improvement, as shown by their test scores, and results on a survey about the school’s general environment, according to its report card.

“Our academic gains are no coincidence,” said Principal Janet Campbell. “They are the result of setting measurable goals, challenging our students to reach them and supporting them along the way.”

Graduation rates and readiness

This year, 87% of high schoolers graduated on time, up from 85% last year. That’s worth celebrating, Kelly said.

“Our goal should be for every student in South Carolina who has the ability to earn a high school diploma,” he said.

Three-quarters of students were ready for either college or a career after graduation, a gain of 3 percentage points, . Less than a third were ready for both.

Although the gap between students who are graduating and those who are prepared for what comes next continues to shrink slightly, state officials remain concerned about it, Weaver said.

“At the end of the day, we want our students, when they leave a South Carolina high school, to know that that diploma that they carry is a diploma of value,” Weaver said. “This is a diploma that is going to ensure that they are ready to go onto whatever post-secondary success looks like for them.”

All 11th graders in the state take a test assessing skills commonly needed for jobs, divided into four areas: math, reading, understanding data and “soft skills,” which include aspects of a job such as dressing professionally and working well with others. Results are graded from 1 to 5, with higher scores suggesting students are ready to pursue more careers.

Students are considered career-ready if they receive a score of 3 or higher on that test, earn a technical education certificate, complete a state-approved internship or receive a high enough score on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery to enlist in the military. This year, 73% of students met that benchmark, compared to 70% last year, according to report card data.

College readiness is based on a student’s score on the ACT or SAT college entrance exam, college credit earned through a dual-enrollment course and/or scores on end-of-course Advanced Placement tests.

One-third of graduating students were college-ready, which is on par with at least the past five years, according to state data. The rate of high school students applying for college also continued to decrease, with 59% reporting filling out applications this year, compared with 61% last year.

A gap between graduation rate and readiness for the next step suggests schools are sometimes passing students without actually imparting the skills they need to succeed in life, Kelly said.

For instance, district policies setting teachers can give makes it easier for students to pass their classes, even if they haven’t actually done the work, Kelly said. Alternatives for students who fail tests or classes are sometimes easier, meaning a student can catch up without actually learning the same skills as their peers, he said.

“We’ve put some policies in place that make it harder to evaluate what a student knows and can do,” Kelly said.

Beginning this school year, students can follow a so-called pathway to that build on each other every year, allowing students to learn more advanced skills meant to make it easier to find a job in the field they want to pursue, said , chair of the Education Oversight Committee’s governing board.

“At the same time, we recognize that strengthening the system must go hand-in-hand with addressing the barriers that keep students from wholly engaging in school,” said Allen, who’s also a government relations director for Continental Tire.

Chronic absenteeism and test scores

For example, the number of students who missed at least 10 days of school this year remained a concern, Allen said.

Around 23% of students were chronically absent, essentially the same number as last year. The more days of school a student misses, the less likely they are to perform as expected for their grade level on end-of-year tests, the committee put out last year.

Those tests, in turn, play a role in determining how well a school or a district is performing. Officials and teachers’ advocates credited the Palmetto Literacy Project and a change in how early educators for improving English scores, but , with less than half of third- through eighth-graders able to perform on grade level, according to state testing data.

Just over half the state’s high school students scored at least a C, which is a 70%, on their end-of-course Algebra I exams, often taken freshman year, according to report card data. Nearly 69% passed their English 2 exams, typically taken sophomore year.

While rooting for improvement, teachers’ advocates also warned against depending too heavily on a single exam score in deciding how well teachers and students are performing. A single, high-pressure exam at the end of the year is not necessarily the best indicator of school performance, said Dena Crews, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

“If people are making judgments based on that, they’re missing a whole lot about schools and districts,” Crews said.

Teacher support

The Department of Education plans to focus on teachers in 2026, Weaver said.

“The No. 1 thing that we have to do to support student learning is take care of our teachers,” Weaver said.

She is asking legislators to raise the minimum pay for a first-year teacher to $50,000, up from $48,500. Legislators have increased the pay floor in increments for years, with the stated goal of reaching $50,000.

Weaver is also asking for $5 million to continue a that based on how well their students perform on tests. She also wants to start a program that offers extra pay to exceptional teachers who mentor others. The additional responsibility would be another way to earn more money without leaving the classroom to go into school administration, she said.

Supporting teachers is key in improving how well schools are performing, Kelly said. The promising results in this year’s report cards came after the first since 2019, he added.

“It should not be a surprise to see school performance improve as teacher vacancies go down,” Kelly said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court allowed Maine private schools to receive public funds, at least five lawsuits have been filed by teachers unions, in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Missouri and South Carolina. Additional legal challenges have been mounted by advocacy groups and parent organizations.

The Supreme Court’s Carson v. Makin ruling, combined with growing interest among parents in post-COVID, has fueled the rise of voucher programs and led to a tug-of-war in state courts between public educators and school choice advocates. 

Heading into the 2025 legislative session, at least 33 states had some form of private school choice, according to the Georgetown University think tank . Most union lawsuits have focused on , in which public dollars pay for children to attend private schools —  including religious schools — and cover other education-related expenses such as homeschooling.

In Wyoming and Utah, judges ruled in favor of the unions — at least for now. In South Carolina, the program was retooled after a court declared its previous version unconstitutional.

The Wyoming Education Association, which represents roughly 6,000 public school teachers, landed a win in July after District Court Judge Peter Froelicher granted against the state’s universal voucher program. The union and nine parents had sued the state in June on grounds that the is unconstitutional because it violates a state regulation that it must provide a “uniform system of public instruction.”&�Բ�����;

The union decided to sue after lawmakers made the voucher program universal this spring. It was originally created with a family income cap of 250% of the federal poverty level.

“No income guidelines, in essence, means that you could be someone in Jackson who owns an $18 million property, and the state’s giving you money,” said union President Kim Amen. “Our constitution clearly says that we cannot give public money to private entities, so that’s why we challenged that.”

The injunction temporarily stops the distribution of — which are funded from a state appropriation of $30 million — until the court determines the program’s constitutionality. The state has since filed an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court.

“I am disheartened at the court’s written order granting the WEA’s injunction. As one of nearly 4,000 Wyoming families, you have had your lives unnecessarily upended through no fault of your own,” Megan Degenfelder, state superintendent of public instruction, wrote in to parents. 

The case is similar to the one in Utah, where a judge ruled a $100 million voucher program unconstitutional in April, following a lawsuit by the state teachers union.

The Utah Education Association last year, arguing the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program violates the state constitution by diverting tax money to private schools that aren’t free, open to all students and supervised by the state board of education. The Utah Supreme Court is set to later this year.

Lawsuits in other states are still working their way through the courts.

In July, the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which represents the state’s public school teachers, challenging the constitutionality of the statewide voucher program that funds private education expenses for special education students. 

“Even voucher programs like [this one] that are targeted to students with disabilities deprive them of crucial legal protections and educational resources,” the plaintiffs said in a .

In Missouri, the state teachers union is over the , which started as a tax credit scholarship in 2021. It currently relies on nonprofits to collect donations that are turned into scholarships. Donors can receive a tax credit amounting to 100% of their contribution, but it can’t exceed more than half of their state tax liability. 

This year, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe dedicated $50 million in taxpayer dollars for the scholarships and $1 million for program marketing, according to the suit. The Missouri National Education Association, which has 28,000 members, sued in June in an effort to block the appropriation.

“The General Assembly has far overstepped its authority and violated five provisions of the Missouri Constitution by using an appropriations bill to construct out of whole cloth a scheme to divert general revenues to what are essentially vouchers for the payment of private school tuition for elementary and secondary school students,” wrote Loretta Haggard, the union’s attorney, in the suit.

On July 30, — part of a national nonprofit that advocates for school choice — filed a motion to join the suit as defendants. Thomas Fisher, litigation director, said in a that the program helps Missouri families afford an education that fits their children’s needs. 

“The recent expansion of the program is constitutional and will expand education freedom for low-income families and students with learning differences,” he said.

In South Carolina, the ruled in 2024 that its Education Trust Fund Scholarship Program was unconstitutional following a lawsuit from the state teachers union, parents and the NAACP. The program resumed this year after to funnel money from the lottery system instead of the general fund. 

Unions have also been involved in school choice lawsuits in and . In 2023, National Education Association Alaska over a state system that sent cash payments to the parents of homeschool students. That same year, Wisconsin’s largest teachers union asked the state Supreme Court to hear its case challenging the constitutionality of the statewide voucher program, but the .

Carter was in first grade when the suspensions began. His mom describes it as the year “all hell broke loose.”

As he made his way through the public school system in York County, South Carolina, the now-15-year-old, who has multiple disabilities, continued to struggle.

The situation reached a crescendo in 6th grade, when Carter was suspended out of school for 7.5 days and in school about a dozen times, according to school district records and his mother’s estimates. This was in addition to numerous lunch suspensions — during which he was forced to sit at a table alone in the cafeteria — and bus suspensions, which meant Carter couldn’t ride school-provided transportation. His offenses, Kimberly Tissot, his mom, said, ranged from minor ones,  like “incessant talking” and “cussing,” to the more extreme, including breaking one classmate’s glasses and threatening another.

While Tissot understands why these behaviors needed to result in clear consequences, she argued that every one of them was a manifestation of her son’s disabilities, which include ADHD, fetal alcohol syndrome, a disability involving written expression and a mild intellectual disability. They could have been avoided, she said, if Carter’s school had followed his Individualized Education Program, which lays out the supports and services the school is legally mandated to provide Carter so he can progress and learn.

Ultimately, her son, who has difficulty connecting his actions to their ramifications, was left confused and convinced, “he’s in trouble because he’s bad,” said Tissot, who is also the president and CEO of , an advocacy organization. 

Carter is one of hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities across the country who are suspended from school each year. It’s long been documented that this population of kids is generally more likely to face exclusionary discipline , but because of where he happens to live, Carter is particularly susceptible: No state removes students with disabilities from school for 10 days or fewer at a higher rate than South Carolina.

There, some 15% of special education students faced out-of-school suspensions for up to 10 days in the 2022-23 school year — nearly twice the national average, according to ����Ӱ��’s analysis of the most recently available data.

These numbers may also be a substantial undercount, according to experts who told ����Ӱ�� they’ve witnessed widespread in South Carolina — in some cases to avoid the legal protections that kick in for students with disabilities once they’ve been kept out of the classroom for more than 10 cumulative days. Tissot said she was asked to pick Carter up from school without an official suspension on multiple occasions, a practice she knew to push back on only because of her advocacy work. And she said she only learned of some of Carter’s in-school suspensions, which weren’t all officially documented, from him.

Macaulay Morrison is assistant director of a at the University of South Carolina Law School who represents special education families in their legal battles with schools.

“It’s just reflective of the state of public education of South Carolina as a whole,” Morrison said of the IDEA suspension data. “Sometimes it’s easier for schools to exclude these students than it is for them to figure out how to support them.”

In response to ����Ӱ��’s findings, a South Carolina Department of Education official said they remain “committed to ensuring that all students, including those receiving special education services, are supported in safe and positive learning environments.”

The department has established a goal of working with districts to reduce suspension rates for students with disabilities to 9% or less — significantly lower than its current rate, but still higher than the national average — by working with advocacy and support groups, like the Behavior Alliance of South Carolina, to provide conferences, institutes and training opportunities.

And the department will continue to “closely monitor student discipline data to track progress toward this target … including assisting with district reviews of disciplinary referral data, revision of policies and procedures, and the development of targeted improvement plans at both the school and district levels.”

South Carolina was the only state whose numbers were not broken down by race after state officials notified the U.S. Department of Education of data quality concerns, according to federal Education Department staff. The South Carolina state education department official told ����Ӱ�� that they provided corrected data once they were made aware of the issue, but that update was not reflected in the final federal dataset. 

The federal Department of Education did not respond to repeated requests for comment from ����Ӱ��.

The IDEA dataset is particularly significant because it’s the first to document disciplinary rates among students with disabilities at the national level post-pandemic, a time when . The U.S. Department of Education’s more frequently scrutinized has long shown disparities in discipline between students with disabilities and their general education peers but the most current available complete numbers are from the 2021-22 school year — when most kids were back to in-person learning but some districts were still offering a hybrid model and still others were allowing kids to

����Ӱ��’s analysis of the more recent IDEA data of some 7.5 million students with disabilities across three suspension categories reveals the differences experienced within this vulnerable student group. For example, in addition to South Carolina, special education students living in North Carolina, Delaware and Nevada are far more likely to be excluded from school than students with similar disabilities living in Vermont, Utah and New York.  

The IDEA data, which is released annually, shows that race — also a well-established to suspensions — plays a role among students who are already facing disproportionate discipline. While Black students made up 16% of all students with disabilities nationally, they accounted for nearly a third (31%) of all those students suspended out of school for 10 days or less. 

In some cases, race and geography combined in striking ways in the IDEA data, such as in Nebraska, where almost 1-in-10 Black students with disabilities were removed from school for more than 10 days (a figure which includes in-school and out-of-school disciplinary removals) in 2022-23 — more than any other group in any other state.

Other key findings of the ����Ӱ��’s analysis include:

• Nationally, boys are more likely than girls to be identified as having a disability, and — even when that’s considered — are disproportionately removed from classrooms: While about two-thirds of students with disabilities are male, they account for about 75% of special education students removed from school for any duration of time.

• On average nationally, just over 7% of all students with disabilities received at least one out-of-school suspension for 10 days or fewer.

• Black students with disabilities are disproportionately suspended out of school for 10 days or less in every state, to varying degrees. In Georgia, for example, they make up 39% of those with disabilities, but 59% of those who were suspended. In Delaware, Black students make up just over a third of those with disabilities, but over half of those suspended.  In five states (Indiana, Nevada, Iowa, Nebraska and Wisconsin), at least 20% of Black students were suspended out of school for 10 days or fewer. 

• In both West Virginia and Pennsylvania, almost 1-in-10 Hispanic children with disabilities were suspended for 10 days or less outside of school — more than any other state for this group, though closely followed by Nevada, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin.

• In South Dakota, 17% of students with disabilities who identified as Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander were suspended for 10 days or less in school — a greater share than in any other state.

• California suspends students with disabilities for 10 days or fewer in school at the lowest rate (0.8%), and Vermont suspends them out of school at the lowest rate (3%).
  
• No state removes students for more than 10 days at a higher rate than Missouri (4%), 2.5 times the national average.

While supporters of stricter school discipline argue suspensions and expulsions are necessary to keep schools safe, research also shows that these measures are associated with a host of negative outcomes, including , and a lower likelihood of and greater involvement with the

exclusionary discipline, which children with disabilities are more frequently subjected to, does not seem to positively impact students’ future behavior and, for younger students, may even exacerbate it. 

For students with disabilities, the loss of instruction time can be particularly devastating, said Amy Holbert, CEO of , a training and information center for families whose children have disabilities. And especially when students receive out-of-school suspensions, it can put a strain on working families who suddenly have to scramble to find child care, she added.

These challenges have only worsened since the pandemic, according to Holbert, who said referrals to her organization for educational concerns have increased 128% since 2020.

����Ӱ��’s data analysis confirms “what advocates across the country have been saying over and over again about the students most likely to experience school pushout and get deprived of access to instructional time,” said Jennifer Coco, interim executive director of .��

It holds up an “important mirror” she added, “on who is getting appropriate interventions and who are the students that we still collectively need to do better by.”

‘The Wild Wild West of civil rights enforcement’

Keisha Sims-Williams’ son, Savion, was just 2 years old when she began to suspect he might have a disability. He was hyperactive and impulsive. Sometimes she’d call his name and he wouldn’t respond. And he would often walk on the tips of his toes — a characteristic more common in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Some of these behaviors made starting school particularly challenging. 

Sims-Williams said she told Savion’s Columbia, South Carolina, school as early as pre-K that he would need extra help. But instead of having him evaluated for an IEP they repeatedly removed him from school — both formally and informally — and ultimately relocated him to a transitional program, though not one for students with disabilities, she said. 

“His pre-K year it got so bad, he was out of school more than he was in,” she said, estimating Savion was suspended for at least 30 days that year. 

Ultimately, Savion was diagnosed with ADHD and autism by clinicians outside of school, but still he wasn’t evaluated for an IEP, which meant he went through his kindergarten year without the same protections around school removals as other students with disabilities. 

As a kid with a suspected disability, though, he should have still had access to at least some of those guardrails, according to Morrison, the South Carolina attorney, who later filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Sims-Williams family.

And so, Savion had another year filled with so many removals his mom lost count. 

“At some point it was like they were on a mission to get rid of him,” she said.

In November of his kindergarten year, Sims-Williams filed a formal written request for an in-school evaluation, but his IEP wasn’t developed until May or implemented until the following August.

“It took two years of me fighting and pleading in order for him to finally get an IEP and be heard and seen as he should,” Sims-Williams said. She believes if that IEP had come along sooner, her son’s early years in school could have looked a lot different.

“No child’s experiences in their education should have been as bad as my son’s,” she added. “They ruined his good years of school. They ruined it.”

Much of this was confirmed by the state’s response to the family’s lawsuit. The South Carolina Department of Education found that the district had violated a number of Savion’s rights as a student with a suspected disability — including by not evaluating him for an IEP in a timely manner and not officially recording removals or creating a behavior plan once he hit 10 days of removals. These failures ultimately led to even more suspensions, according to court records shared with ����Ӱ��.

Since extra supports were implemented, school has been significantly better for Savion. He’s been on honor roll, won awards and no longer cries when she drops him off each morning.

Still, “he’s had some bumps here and there,” she said, noting the now-7-year-old was suspended out of school for about eight days throughout first grade, but “compared to 20 or 30, that’s progress to me.”

“I’m hoping next year we’re down to five. Or none.”

Savion’s race, gender and disability status all make him particularly likely to be suspended, as does the fact that his family also lives in South Carolina. The Palmetto State leads the nation in , as well.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act provides protections to students who have been removed from school for more than 10 days, but much of the enforcement is left up to schools, districts and states, leading to a patchwork landscape, according to interviews with over two dozen advocates, experts, parents and attorneys. 

“Schools don’t seem to have any incentive to improve their processes and procedures because there isn’t anybody holding them to task,” said Mike Mathison, a juvenile justice resource attorney at the Children’s Law Center at the University of South Carolina Law School.

And in certain cases — like Savion’s — even if a student has a documented disability, it can be challenging to get schools to provide an IEP in a timely manner, leaving vulnerable kids unprotected. 

The disproportionate removal of students with disabilities — especially for boys and those who are Black — experts told ����Ӱ�� is the result of a confluence of systemic issues including discrimination, teacher and school counselor shortages and a dearth of training in positive behavior management techniques, like establishing strong relationships with students and clear routines. Added to that are administrators not understanding or enforcing students’ IEPs or the law, parents not knowing their kids’ rights, a return to top-down “zero tolerance” disciplinary policies and a lack of federal accountability.

This trend of disproportionality is well established: In the 2017-18 school year, 9% of students with disabilities were suspended, compared to 4% of their general education peers, according to a 2022 from the Learning Policy Institute — largely based on analyses of four years of Civil Rights Data Collection. For Black students with disabilities, that figure was even higher: 20% were suspended. 

Students with disabilities are also more likely than their peers to be punished for “broad and subjective categories” of behavior like defiance, according to a 2024 investigation by  .

“There’s disadvantages of being Black when it comes to disciplinary outcomes, and there’s a disadvantage of being a student with a disability as well,” said Richard Welsh, associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University and author of “You can times that together … and that’s the definition of intersectionality.”

While disparities are cause for closer inspection — and can be evidence of discrimination — they alone are not proof of bias, cautioned Paul Morgan, director of the at the University of Albany. That being said, he added, even when controlling for differences in behaviors, Black students appear to be more frequently suspended than their peers. And a recent GAO report determined that Black girls are more likely to be removed from class than their white female peers for similar behaviors in the same schools.

Regardless of whether or not active discrimination is at play, the disparities are at least “a sign of weak systemic practices” and “a call to action,” said Coco, from The Center for Learner Equity.

Despite this, in April, President Donald Trump released an saying he intended to roll back Biden administration discipline guidance, which encouraged school districts to collect, analyze and adjust their policies in light of disproportionate racial outcomes. Trump argued that approach actually weaponized federal civil rights laws in ways that discriminated against white students.

Critics have the executive order, titled Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline, will only further widen disparities for students of color and students with disabilities, especially as  more than consider a return to stricter student discipline policies, including four that have already done so. 

“Common sense is students in school every day learning, and students can’t learn if they’re not in school,” Coco said. “I recognize we need to keep schools safe, so to me a common sense investment is saying, ‘How do we ensure that schools are a place where students are getting access to what they need to thrive and be successful, both in terms of education and wraparound supports?’”

Trump has also been systematically working to dismantle the Education Department, which could mean even less federal accountability and data collection moving forward, said Dan Losen, senior director of education at the National Center for Youth Law.

“We’re in the Wild Wild West of civil rights enforcement,” he said.

A ‘huge oversight’ in IDEA enforcement

The federal law defining the rights of students with disabilities was first passed in 1975 and then updated and renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1990. IDEA mandates a “free appropriate public school education” for eligible students ages 3-21. In the 2022-23 school year that included or 15% of all those attending public schools — a two percentage-point increase from the 6.4 million students covered under IDEA a decade ago. The federal guidelines provide baseline regulations that states must follow, but some — like New Jersey — have implemented stronger protections as well. 

Under IDEA, states must submit annual data about students who receive special education and related services to the Education Department, including the data analyzed by ����Ӱ��.

And the law provides certain protections around disciplinary removals: If a student with a disability is removed from their classroom for more than 10 days, IDEA mandates a process called a Manifestation Determination Review, a hearing during which a group — including the parents and the student’s  IEP team — meets to determine if the child’s behaviors were either related to their disability or the result of a failure to implement their IEP. 

If the answer to either of these questions is “yes,” the school can’t move forward with the removal and has to instead make a plan to provide updated support.

Experts and parents told ����Ӱ�� that once a student is diagnosed with a disability, schools tend to become particularly cautious about hitting that 10-day mark and triggering the legal review process. In some cases, that means educators pay closer attention to implementing a student’s IEP. But, in others, schools attempt to skirt the system by suspending students “off-the-books.”&�Բ�����;

And when schools do implement the hearing process, they don’t always do so thoroughly or with intention, sometimes just “doing [it] to check the box,” said Morrison, the South Carolina attorney.

A recent , for example, found that New York City’s public schools routinely flout these federal guidelines by not properly considering a student’s disability during hearings. 

It can be challenging to hold schools and districts accountable for faithfully implementing these hearings, since the federal government isn’t collecting data around them, according to Losen, from the National Center for Youth Law.

“For monitoring the enforcement of these supposedly important protections, we don’t get to see any of that data,” he said. “Nothing. And I think that’s a huge oversight.”&�Բ�����;

Carter, the South Carolina student suspended multiple times throughout his school career, is now leading his own IEP meetings and learning to control his behaviors, his mother told ����Ӱ��. 

Tissot said he made it through the past school year without any suspensions — a first for him — and this fall he’ll start high school. His mom describes the teenager as a sweet, talkative kid who loves to try new foods — “He’s a little foodie!” — play video games and make people laugh.

While Tissot is proud of Carter’s progress, she also worries he’s still not where he needs to be academically, and his history of repeated suspensions has heightened his anxiety at school. 

“He has told me that he tries so hard to control himself that he’s unable to concentrate,” she said.

And she worries for other students with disabilities who don’t have the same resources Carter has — like a mom who’s an advocate in the field — a fear that’s only intensified under the Trump administration.

“The future is not looking good for kids with disabilities who require IEPs,” she said. “It’s very scary because they’re taking away the federal oversight right now so really relying on parents to enforce it. And, I mean, that’s not going to work at all.”

That finding comes from a hodgepodge of state documents and research reports. With the caveat that those sources may count things in slightly different ways and at different time periods, the pattern that emerges is consistent. 

In fall 2020, the country was still in the thick of the COVID pandemic. The economy was on uncertain footing, many schools stayed remote and teacher turnover rates fell. That is, more educators stayed put. 

But as the world began to open up, teachers started leaving in higher numbers, first in 2021 and then again in 2022. That fall, the country hit modern highs in the percentage of teachers leaving their positions. 

But those moves were temporary. Last year, Wall Street Journal (and former 74) reporter Matt Barnum found that teacher turnover rates in 2023 for each of the 10 states for which he was able to find data. Not all the changes were big, but the trends were all falling. 

For fall 2024, the current school year, I was able to find data from six states: Colorado, Delaware, Arizona, Texas, South Carolina and Massachusetts. All but Texas experienced year-over-year declines in teacher turnover. 

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey shows similar trends nationally. For a broad category that includes all state and local government education employees, employee quit rates surged in 2022, fell in 2023 and then decreased again in 2024. Similarly, the American School District Panel from found turnover rates falling among teachers and principals in the fall of 2023 and 2024. Notably, the biggest declines were seen in the places where turnover had surged the most during the initial pandemic years. 

You could squint at the data closely and note that turnover rates are still a bit higher than where they were pre-pandemic. But zoom out, and the numbers look broadly similar to historical trends. For example, Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald looked at from 1984-85 to 2021-22 and found that total turnover, including teachers who left the profession, switched schools, or left teaching but stayed in education, has ranged from about 14% to 20% in Washington since the mid-1980s. It did indeed hit a modern peak (of 19.8%) in 2021-22, but Goldhaber and Theobald’s in Washington showed turnover was again starting to fall in 2023.��

How should we put these figures in context? First, despite its recent surge, public education has maintained than any other industry except for the federal government. In any given month, less than 2% of public education employees leave their jobs, compared with rates twice that high in the private sector. 

Within public education, teachers tend to have lower turnover rates than other employees do. Colorado, for example, has published by role since 2007. The chart below shows the results. Teachers (in red) tend to have similar turnover rates as principals (light blue), but those are much lower than the turnover rates in other roles. Paraprofessionals, in dark blue, typically have turnover rates that are 10 to 15 percentage points higher than teachers do. 

How should we square this with soft data coming out of teacher surveys? Those results are messier, but they could fit the same basic trajectory. One high-quality study out of Illinois found that teacher working conditions worsened substantially from 2021 to 2023. And research looking at a range of survey and pipeline indicators suggested that the state of the profession was as of data ending a couple years ago. More recently, Education Week’s Teacher Morale Index a significant rebound in 2024-25 over the prior year.  

None of this is to say that policymakers should be content with the status quo. And indeed, there continue to be problem spots. Rural schools, those in low-income areas and certain teaching roles, especially in special education, tend to have higher turnover rates than others. But those call for more specialized and tailored solutions rather than universal policies.  

Moreover, policymakers can at least take heart that the worst of the teacher turnover surge appears to be in the rearview mirror. 

COLUMBIA — Hundreds of 4-year-olds across South Carolina are on waitlists to access state-funded preschool programs, even though there are thousands of open seats, presented Monday to the state Education Oversight Committee.

The state funds a dual system of full-day kindergarten for 4-year-olds deemed “at risk.” Students are eligible under state law if they qualify for Medicaid or free or reduced-price meals, or if they are homeless, in foster care or show developmental delays. Many public school districts use local property tax dollars to expand that eligibility.

The state Department of Education oversees programs in public schools, while First Steps, a separate state agency, oversees state-funded classes in approved private schools and child care centers.

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As of November, 400 4-year-olds were waiting for spots to open up to enroll at their local public school. At the same time, First Steps 4K reported more than 2,300 open seats, often in the same counties as the districts with the longest waitlists, according to the report.

“It’s just a matter of finding an open seat for a child on a waitlist or finding an eligible child for the open seat,” said Jenny May, a committee researcher who presented the report.

Because 4K is a one-year program, students who are on the waitlist are unlikely to end up in a preschool program before starting kindergarten. Children need at least 120 days of preschool to prepare, so even if a slot happens to open up toward the end of the school year, they will start kindergarten less ready than other 5-year-olds, according to the study.

It’s not clear why some 4-year-olds are on a waiting list for a public school when vacancies exist in private programs, May said.

In some cases, the issue could be that another preschool program isn’t available nearby. The four counties with the longest waitlists — Lexington, Anderson, Berkeley and Newberry — all have at least one First Steps 4K program with availability, according to the report. However, that doesn’t account for potential cross-county drives.

Other parents may not know that other options are available, May said. Having a person designated to help direct parents to other preschool options, such as the nearest First Steps 4K program with open seats, could help reduce that waitlist, May said.

“It’s likely that if we had a more efficient process, we could serve most of the 400 kids on a waitlist on one of the First Steps seats,” May said.

The state already has several websites meant to help parents figure out what programs they’re eligible for and how to enroll. , launched in 2020, tells parents whether they’re eligible for state-funded preschool programs. does the same but includes all early childhood programs with federal or state funding.

But having a person parents can call, or who can reach out to families with children on waitlists, could help reach some parents who might not know about the websites or have other concerns, the study suggests. That person, who the committee dubbed a 4K navigator, could then talk parents through the differences in programs, find available seats and answer any other questions parents might have, researchers said.

First Steps 4K has a similar program, in which applicants are directed to a central phone line or website that helps parents find the right fit for their child. That has helped prevent First Steps from having its own waitlist, May said. The 4K navigators, who the study suggested trying out in areas with the largest waitlists first, would have a broader knowledge of pre-K programs, the report said.

If a school district has a persistent waitlist of more than 20 students, that suggests the population has risen in that area, and state officials should consider giving the district more funding to create enough slots for those students, the report suggested.

The waitlisted students represent less than 1% of students who are eligible for the program but not enrolled. More than 18,000 4-year-olds, or about 55% of all eligible, are living in poverty but not enrolled in a 4K program, according to the report.

That’s a decrease from the 2022-2024 school year, when 60% of eligible students were not enrolled in districts. Still, it’s not enough, May said.

Even if every student on a waitlist enrolled in one of the available spots, programs would have space left over to take on at least 1,900 more students, according to the report. That suggests there are barriers other than program space keeping parents from enrolling their students in state-funded preschool, May said.

In many cases, the problem might be that parents don’t know about 4K programs or their benefits, May said.��The state should put more funding and effort into outreach to help those students, the report suggests.

Data shows preschool programs are highly beneficial, helping students learn skills in reading, math and socialization, studies have found. According to the report, at-risk students who attended a state-funded pre-K program were more likely to be prepared for school than their counterparts who didn’t, according to the report.

“So, we want those students who are eligible and not served to be able to access it, and we definitely want those students who are on a waitlist to be able to access the program,” said Dana Yow, executive director of the committee.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.

With roughly 160 students — nearly two-thirds of them low-income — the rural Charleston County school recorded well below district and state averages. One-third of students were chronically absent, and school climate was ranked low by teachers.

“The school was a failing school, and it had been a failing school for a few years,” Smalls said.

Smalls’s first year coincided with the school’s acceptance into the University of Virginia Partnership for Leaders in Education, a program that helps improve low-performing schools through administrator training and professional development. 

Frierson Elementary is one of three schools that transformed from struggling to succeeding because of the turnaround program. After one year, the school went from an unsatisfactory to excellent rating, the in the state’s report card system. 

Since 2004, the partnership has worked with more than 900 schools from 33 states. Roughly half achieve double-digit gains in reading, math or both, within three years of starting the program.

For two to three years, administrators receive professional development at the university and coaches visit their schools to help brainstorm ways to improve academic achievement, attendance and culture. Districts must apply and, if selected, pay roughly $90,000 for program costs.

Leighann Lenti, the program’s chief of partnership, said the key to transforming a low-performing is to work with district and building administrators to make systemic changes that will lead to improved student outcomes.

“They’re given a chance to think about the design and the decisions they’re making in their buildings and in their school district,” Lenti said. “[They] think about their highest priorities and the root cause of what hasn’t worked, so they can solve those problems differently — not just keep doing the same things over and over — and see tangible results for kids.”

A 2016 found that 20 Ohio schools that participated in the program saw statistically significant academic improvement that persisted even two years after completion. 

The program focuses on four areas of school improvement: system leadership, support and accountability, talent management and instructional infrastructure. 

During the first year, University of Virginia staff work with district and school leaders to develop a plan for their school. They try to find root causes for low performance and create goals that are revised every 90 days.

Administrators at Schoolfield Elementary in Danville, Virginia, started the program before the 2023-24 school year and finished in January. Principal Kelsie Hubbard and her colleagues created a 90-day plan with three main areas of focus: professional learning, classroom instruction and teaching strategies.

Educators began professional development twice a week to make sure instruction and activities matched existing rigorous academic standards. They also worked to ensure students were being taught the same way in every classroom, so they didn’t have to relearn strategies if they changed grades or teachers.

“Coming out of COVID, we were seeing a lot of our students performing below grade level, and so a trend we started to notice is that our instruction was not meeting the rigor of the standards,” Hubbard said.”We were teaching lower level because we were assuming that students needed that intensive intervention. … But we were holding and keeping them further and further behind.”

At the end of the program, Schoolfield — a building of 500 students, with 85% low-income — improved its from 68% in 2023 to 78% in 2024. Math proficiency went from 68% to 73%.

Similar gains were observed in Alabama’s Florence City Schools, a district of 4,500 students that recently finished the program. Three of its lowest-performing elementary schools that participated all reported improvements in reading, math and chronic absenteeism.

Superintendent Jimmy Shaw said principals met with reading and math teachers to brainstorm why academic scores were lacking. 

For example, they found in Weeden Elementary that third graders had a hard time with geometry and other math topics while taking state assessments. Teachers began to give 10-minute mini-lessons daily to help students master specific skills.

“It’s been beautiful work to be able to build the capacity of our leaders and our research teams. To us, that’s what it’s about,” Shaw said. “It’s not about having some dynamic leader, but it’s about building the capacity of a group of adults who can understand system structures and processes to be able to attack a problem.”

Smalls’ 90-day plan for Frierson Elementary began with a list of goals such as improving school climate by training educators and ensuring they got enough classroom time to teach the? curriculum. She also delivered a “state of the school” address for families to explain Frierson’s unsatisfactory rating and what steps were being taken to fix it. Teachers hosted literacy and math nights to get parents more involved in their child’s learning.

“I felt like I created an environment, a climate or a culture where everybody was valued and everybody was seen as a leader,” Smalls said. “[The program] is very effective. It is very self-provoking, very reflective, very action-based and action-oriented. I really believe in it.”

McCORMICK — Cows compose the greeting committee at the Governor’s School for Agriculture, flocking to the fence just past the entrance to watch visitors drive past.

Established in 1797 as a farming school for poor and orphaned children, the campus known for centuries as John de la Howe has changed missions several times. The latest turned it into the nation’s only residential public high school providing an agricultural education.

Pastures of horses, sheep and cows dot the 1,310-acre property tucked off a rural road in McCormick County inside a national forest.

The campus’ dozen residential halls are full, and for the first time since the new mission began, officials are having to turn away prospective students because of a lack of space, said Tim Keown, the school’s president.

Two more halls sit mostly empty as they await decorations from the school’s alumni committee and, next year, a new batch of students to fill them.

After a rocky start, including findings of ethical and financial mismanagement during the school’s first year after the change, things are looking up, Keown said.

Last year, the school regained the accreditation it lost in 2016. And for the first time in 25 years, auditors last year found no problems, a rare accomplishment for a state agency, he said.

Driving through the expansive campus, where classrooms abut greenhouses and open pastures, Keown described a vision for the school’s future, including continuing to expand its capacity and offering more classes to cover the full spectrum of agriculture.

His ideas have gotten support from the House of Representatives’ budget writers.

That chamber’s state spending plan for 2025-26, , includes $2 million for continuing renovations and $4 million for a new meat processing plant.

“We don’t expect (students) to all go back and be full-time farmers,” Keown said. “But there are hundreds of thousands of jobs across South Carolina that need young people to enter those jobs.”

Becoming a school for agriculture

The mission adopted in 2020 is a return to the school’s roots.

Dr. John de la Howe, a French doctor who immigrated to Charleston in 1764, that he wanted the farm he had purchased to be an agricultural seminary for “12 poor boys and 12 poor girls,” giving preference to orphans, Keown said.

For years, that was what the school was.

During World War I, John de la Howe became a state agency and a home for orphaned children, which it remained until the 1980s. Then, as orphanages waned in use, its purpose adjusted again to become a public residential school for sixth- through 10-graders with serious behavior problems.

That, too, fell out of favor over the years, as more counties established programs that kept troubled teens closer to home.

Attendance dropped, and costs per students skyrocketed.

In 2003, then-Gov. Mark Sanford recommended, without success, closing the school and sending its students to a military-like public school in West Columbia for at-risk teens. In 2014, Gov. Nikki Haley recommended putting the Department of Juvenile Justice in charge.

, with the school’s accreditation on probation, House budget writers recommended temporarily transferring oversight to Clemson University.

Weeks later, the the school’s accreditation. Deficiencies cited by inspectors included classes taught by uncertified teachers, the school not meeting the needs of students with disabilities, and the lack of online access.

That forced the Legislature to make a decision.

Legislators eventually settled on creating a third residential high school offering a specific education. The agriculture school joined existing governor’s schools for the arts and for science and math.

The year the school was supposed to open its doors to its first new class of students, the COVID-19 pandemic began. Distancing restrictions meant students could no longer share rooms, so the school halved its capacity and began its first year with 33 students.

The next year, the school’s population doubled.

At the start of the 2024 school year, 81 students were enrolled, and another 81 had graduated. Once renovations in three dorms are complete, the capacity will increase to 124, plus day students, Keown said.

“It’s been like putting together a huge puzzle with many missing pieces over the last couple of years,” Keown said. “But we’re finally finding all those pieces, and it’s all making more sense.”

The new mission

Blake Arias knew he wanted to study plants. Other than that, he had little interest in agriculture when he applied for the governor’s school.

“If you looked at my application, it was very obvious that I didn’t have a background and that I didn’t know much,” Arias said.

When he first arrived at the school nearly three hours from his home in Summerton, he wasn’t particularly interested in handling animals. And he really, really didn’t want to learn to weld.

Three years later, Arias, who graduates this spring, still focuses primarily on plants.

However, he also spends hours every day after class helping a rabbit, Chunky, lose some weight before he takes her to shows. He’s working on earning a beekeeping certification. And he even learned how to weld.

“Am I the best welder? Absolutely not,” Arias said. “But I really enjoyed it, and it taught me something new because they gave me the opportunity.”

Arias is part of about half of the school’s population that comes in with little background in agriculture, Keown said. Applicants must have . The goal is to take all kinds of students, whether they grew up on a farm or in a city and show them all sorts of opportunities in agriculture.

That’s not limited to farming.

The school offers four designated pathways: agricultural mechanics, horticulture, plant and animal systems, and environmental and natural resources. Students choose a focus, but they’re introduced to a sampler platter of what’s out there, Keown said.

“It really shows you all the possibilities that there are in each field,” said Emily White, a senior from McCormick.

Day to day

The days typically begin long before students report to the cafeteria at 7:45 a.m.

Like on any farm, horses, pigs and rabbits need feeding and cleaning, and plants need tending.

Students take a blend of core classes, such as English, math and social studies, and classes focused on agriculture, Keown said.

Even the core classes, which are all honors-level courses, typically use agriculture as a touch point for students, said Lyle Fulmer, a recent graduate.

Math problems, for instance, might use real-life examples of balancing a budget on a farm. For students interested in agriculture, that adds excitement to what might usually be their hum-drum classes, he said.

“Even if it was frustrating and I didn’t know how to solve the problem, I would work through it and I would know that this was something that I very well could be doing someday,” said Fulmer, who is now a freshman at Clemson University.

Once classes are over, students have the rest of the afternoon to do as they please.

White said she typically goes to the pig barn to clean, feed and work with Hank the Tank, a pig she’s planning to show.

Other students might practice rodeo riding or clay shooting, two of the sports the school offers. Some gather at the saw mill to help process trees salvaged when Tropical Storm Helene swept through campus last September.

By 6:15 p.m., students are expected to return to their residence halls or other communal areas for an hour of study time. Like college students, they have the run of their residence halls under the watchful eye of a residential advisor.

Along with accumulating credits to get ahead in college courses, the freedom Fulmer had as a high school student helped prepare him for living in the dorms and all the challenges that accompany that. He already knew how to keep his space tidy and handle disagreements with roommates, which many incoming freshmen don’t, he said.

“It really did prepare me a lot for college,” Fulmer said.

What the future holds

Standing on the front lawn of the president’s mansion, glimpses of the dining hall visible across an expansive open lawn, Keown described his vision of the school’s future.

In the next couple of years, the school will start offering classes in culinary arts and hospitality management, which will help students who want to go into the growing industry of agritourism that creates attractions out of farms.

“Our ag kids learn to grow (the food), our culinary students prepare it, our tourism hospitality students manage the banquets,” Keown said of his vision.

Also in the near future is the meat processing plant, which Keown hopes to have finished in the next three years. That will give students skills to land high-paying jobs straight out of high school and fill a gap in the agricultural industry, Keown said.

A decade from now, Keown hopes to see 300 students roaming the grounds. He also wants them to grow about half of what they eat, compared with 20% now.

In Keown’s mind, the school presents a bright spot for the future of agriculture. While the number of farmers under the age of 35 has grown slightly in recent years, the average age of farmers is 58, according to the U.S Department of Agriculture.

Photos of recent alumni hung from flagpoles on campus. Driving under them, Keown named each graduate and where they went to school. Many go to Clemson, though some went to schools in other states.

Most are still pursuing degrees in agriculture.

“They are making us really proud,” Keown said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.

A dozen state leaders, all from Republican-led states, wrote to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, last week asking her to push for greater state control over federal education funds and to avoid issuing guidance they say is “not anchored in law.”

In the Jan. 28 letter, shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, they also want McMahon, former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, to send large buckets of funding for schools, like Title I money for low-income students, as a block grant. But they stopped short of stating support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education — President Donald Trump’s top education policy goal. 

“By prioritizing state leadership and flexibility, the Trump administration can unleash the full potential of America’s schools and students,” they wrote. “Please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible.”

The letter outlines conservative chiefs’ priorities as Trump takes aggressive steps to reshape the federal role in education. He frequently to “send education back to the states” and is expected to issue an executive order before the end of the month that would call on Congress to close the department.

The memo offers specifics that have been lacking in many discussions over how the relationship between the federal government and the states might change. But some experts wonder if the freedom GOP leaders seek will leave high-need students without services currently provided under law. Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman, confirmed they’d received the letter, but said officials wouldn’t share it with McMahon until she’s confirmed. 

The 12 leaders who penned the letter, both elected and appointed, are from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. 

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was not among them, despite the fact that he has been the most vocal about and at one point, threatened to . 

The proposals should provide additional talking points for committee members during McMahon’s confirmation hearing Feb. 13. While it would require congressional approval, the chiefs want to see the of funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act — like Title I and Title III for English learners — consolidated into a single block grant for “maximum flexibility.”&�Բ�����;

They want to design their own formulas for distributing the money to districts so they can address the needs of rural areas, for example, and state-specific learning initiatives. In the meantime, they want the new secretary to grant as many waivers as possible from the accountability requirements of the law so they can “present new ideas” for how to spend the money.

‘Dilute the protections’

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research and policy organization, said she wasn’t surprised that the chiefs didn’t advocate eliminating the education department outright. Many of their states on federal funds and spend less state money on schools. The department, she said, is doing those states “a great service.”

While some state leaders might view the federal requirements as “overly burdensome,” she said their push for more control could come at the expense of students who require extra help, like those in poverty, English learners and homeless students. 

“Once you start blending all of those titles together you start to really dilute the protections that are going to individual students,” she said. 

The letter doesn’t mention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which under , would move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“IDEA oversight is giving some people pause,” she said. “That piece of legislation is very specific to education.”

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say they have “serious concerns” about any attempts to shutter the department. On Thursday, they to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter asking for more transparency on how the department plans to continue running programs it oversees, like financial aid and afterschool programs.

“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators and communities,” they wrote.

In their letter, the state chiefs pushed back on the department’s practice of using “dear colleague” letters to enforce its priorities, which they said have often been “treated as legally binding policy.” Guidance from the department, they said, should merely be a suggestion “so as not to force behavior change.”&�Բ�����; 

During the Obama administration, for example, Republicans fought guidance that said students should be able to use bathrooms that match their and another that said districts could risk civil rights investigations if Black and Hispanic students were . 

On Wednesday, the Education Department issued stating that it would no longer enforce the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, which extended protections to LGBTQ students, and that any investigations based on the 2024 rule would be “reevaluated.”&�Բ�����;

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes Trump honors the chiefs’ request, but noted the “chaos” that has marked Trump’s first few weeks in office. Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding have been . And even some have questioned Elon Musk’s authority to gain access to government payment systems and disable an agency that provides foreign aid.

“The ‘pen and phone’ approach, to quote Obama, whipsaws state leaders across administrations and is lousy federal governance,” he said. “My worry is less about the secretary nominee and more about the ‘move fast and break things’ approach we’ve seen so far in many other dimensions of this young administration.”

COLUMBIA — Citing multiple late audits, reports of possible misspending and the potential to lose federal aid, the state Board of Education agreed Tuesday to take control of Jasper County School District’s finances.

Unlike a state takeover of a school district, which allows the state superintendent to fire the local school board and make decisions in its place, financial control gives the state Department of Education the district’s purse strings but no other decision-making power, a department attorney told the board Tuesday.

“This is essentially like helping them complete their homework,” said board member Chris Hanley, a family doctor in Summerville.

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The state will remain in control of Jasper County schools’ finances at least through June, the end of the fiscal year. However, the state can retain control for as long as necessary to get the district back into fiscal shape.

of the countywide district’s 2,600 students live in poverty. It receives about $21,000 per pupil this school year, with just over a third of that coming from state taxes and 11% from federal aid, according to the latest estimates from the state .

Having control of the finances will allow state officials to intervene and ready the district for state- and federally required audits, which haven’t been done since 2022. The district has contracted with an auditing firm but has not taken any more steps to prepare for auditors to come in and review the district’s finances, said Daniel Haven, a fiscal analyst for the education department.

State officials will also train the district’s financial workers to better track the district’s money and be prepared for upcoming reviews. And the state will help find and train a permanent chief financial officer, since the district has had someone in charge in only a temporary capacity for the past year.

In Jasper County School District’s case, the move came after years of missed deadlines for district-wide audits.

“They need our help,” Haven told the board.

The district, located in South Carolina’s southern tip bordering Georgia, first missed its deadline in December of 2022, prompting the state to put the district on fiscal watch, the lowest of three escalating tiers.

The district turned in that year’s audit and a plan to avoid missing the deadline again. But come 2023, the district again failed to complete an examination of its finances, moving its status to the next tier, fiscal caution.

It submitted another plan to avoid further problems to the state, but state officials declined to accept it until they had the 2023 audit.

Meanwhile, in July, that district officials spent $228,000 on travel and lodging during the prior 3½ years. That same month, the board voted to put then-Superintendent Rechel Anderson on paid administrative leave. The board fired Anderson in October without giving a reason, .

By August, state officials learned that the district had no timeline to complete its audit and the potential to lose federal funding because of the unfinished review, Haven said.

Because of that, state Superintendent Ellen Weaver declared a financial emergency in the district, the highest level of scrutiny from the state. She also called for an investigation by the state Inspector General’s Office for any signs of potential financial waste, misconduct or law-breaking, according to an August letter.

That investigation will continue during the state’s control over the district, Haven said.

As of Tuesday, the district had not submitted its 2023 audit. State officials had not received the district’s 2024 audit by the Monday deadline, Haven said, though districts are allowed to continue submitting without penalty .

A spokesman for the district said it welcomes the agency’s help.

“They will provide guidance and expertise to help us resolve the delays in delivering our 2023 and 2024 financial audits,” Travis Washington said in a statement Wednesday to the SC Daily Gazette. “Additionally, they will assist us in the search for a permanent finance director and help improve our financial practices to ensure quality and efficiency within our finance department.”

The Jasper County district is one of three school districts in danger of a full state takeover, based on its financial and academic performances, a spokesman has said previously. A district is eligible for takeover if the district consistently receives scores of “unsatisfactory” on its annual report cards, if its accreditation is denied, or if the superintendent decides the district’s turnaround plan is insufficient, .

Jasper County schools have not met that criteria, though the district is on the state department’s radar. Four of Jasper County’s six schools were rated average during the 2023-2024 school year. One was below average, and one was unsatisfactory, the lowest possible grade.

Two rural school districts remain under total state control.

Williamsburg County’s local board is , so long as they get state education department approval, in the first step toward moving decision-making powers back to the board. Allendale County remains under complete control, with no clear timeline as to when local leaders might be able to make decisions again.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — The Williamsburg County school board will be able to start making decisions again with oversight from the state Department of Education, marking the first move toward regaining local control in six years.

The rural, county-wide district of 2,800 students — located in the Pee Dee between Sumter and Georgetown — has been under the state’s control since 2018, meaning the district Board of Trustees can meet but can’t make any decisions for the district.

The return of some power is the first step in returning control to the locally elected board members, according to a Tuesday news release.

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“We’re excited to serve in the capacity the citizens elected us,” said board Chair Marva Cannion, who was elected in 2019.

A report on the district’s improvements, which a state budget clause requires the state education agency to produce, could offer other poor, struggling school districts some insights into how they might boost performance and avoid a state takeover, Rep. Roger Kirby, D-Lake City, told the SC Daily Gazette on Wednesday. The directive in the state budget was his idea.

When the state first stepped in under then-state Superintendent Molly Spearman, the district was in dire straits financially and academically.

Officials had to repay more than $280,000 to the federal government and use another $368,000 to hire help in following federal spending and reporting requirements, at the time. Less than a quarter of all students could read on grade level, and even fewer third- through eighth-graders were passing their state-required math tests, according to state education data.

The district had been under notice for three years by that point, but little had changed, Cannion said. When Spearman declared a state of emergency and outlined the issues, Cannion agreed something had to happen, she told the Daily Gazette.

“At the time, it was warranted,” Cannion said of the state takeover. “But it is now time, definitely, for local governance.”

Improving grades

District officials thought they had hit the goals Spearmen set for them by 2022. The district’s finances were in order. The past several years of audits found no major issues. And students were improving academically, Cannion said.

When state Superintendent Ellen Weaver started her term last year, she gave a more specific benchmark. All eight of the district’s elementary through high schools needed to be rated at least “average,” Cannion said the department told board members. As of 2022-2023, the district still had three schools falling behind that goal.

When the state for last school year, though, officials saw marked improvements.

The scores were enough for to receive at least an average rating, which takes into account student progress: Five received an “average” rating, two were rated “good,” and one — an arts magnet middle school — rated “excellent,” the highest possible.

Scores in every subject increased from the school year before. The largest jump was in the number of students passing their end-of-course Algebra 2 tests, which went from 20.7% to 59.2% — an increase of nearly 40 percentage points.

Improvements were even more significant when compared with scores during the 2017-2018 school year, the year before the state education agency took over.

On average, the percentage of third- through eighth-graders able to pass the end-of-year English test — showing they can read on grade level and are ready to advance — jumped from 24% to 42%.�� In the same group, 25% received passing math scores at the end of last school year, compared to 18% six years before.

Still, just in the district’s Class of 2024 were considered , while 60% met benchmarks for being prepared to enter the workforce.

Students’ performance remains below the state’s , showing the district has more work ahead of it. But the improvements are promising, Kirby said.

“It certainly is an indication that improvements are being made, but I don’t think anyone would argue there’s not progress to be done,” Kirby said.

The state department will continue to monitor the district’s progress over the next year and will discuss next steps with district leadership when the 2024-2025 report cards are out, according to the news release.

How it happened

Monitoring student progress and helping those who lagged behind played a major role in improving test scores, said district Superintendent Kelvin Wymbs, who was hired by the state agency.

After the takeover, the district started assessing students weekly to check their progress, Wymbs said. Teachers could then use those scores to determine which students needed extra help.

Teachers shifted their focus to what is known as tiered instruction, grouping students based on their skill level and giving them different versions of the same lesson in an effort to make sure every student grasped the concepts being taught, Cannion said.

That gave students who were struggling smaller groups to work in, she said.

Beginning in 2022, the district started offering specialized classes for eighth- through 12th-graders who had to repeat a grade at any point and were not on track to graduate.

Students in the program, known as , could enroll in middle and high school-level classes simultaneously, with smaller class sizes than typical, in an effort to make up any credits they may have missed, according to the district.

“These were students who may have been counted as dropouts,” Cannion said.

Partnerships with outside groups have helped give students access to opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have, such as that offers cybersecurity courses. That, in turn, encourages students to engage with their other schoolwork, Kirby said.

He credited Wymbs’ leadership in pursuing those sorts of opportunities.

“It’s those types of things that could create exceptional outcomes, innovative things that previously were lacking,” Kirby said. “There are new ideas that are yielding results that point to visionary leadership.”

Part of the change came from a shift in culture, Cannion and Wymbs said.

Teachers and administrators tried to drive home a sense of ambition and confidence in students, more than 90% of whom live in poverty, Wymbs said.

“Our students are competent. They want to compete academically,” Wymbs said. “I think we’ve done a good job of instilling the idea that poverty, your ZIP code, none of that matters if you really engage in what we’re trying to teach you.”

The district also hired security officers and started using wands as metal detectors at school entrances in order to bolster security and students’ feeling that they were safe at school.

And a hired consultant helped officials come up with plans and coached teachers, especially the district’s growing population of teachers from other countries, Wymbs said.

“It comes down to personnel and having people who truly care about student success,” Wymbs said.

What comes next

Other school districts, particularly those at risk of a takeover under state law, could use similar methods to improve their own academic performances, Kirby said.

Kirby’s proposal for the state budget directive came out of frustration from Williamsburg County’s board of trustees, who met with him. Inserted by the House during floor debate on the budget, it required the department to give legislators a report on why Spearman took over the district, what the state has done since then, and what specific benchmarks the district must meet to receive full governing powers.

The budget clause, which ended up in the state’s final spending package, was meant to give clarity to the school board, which was “truly almost in the dark for the past four years,” Kirby said at the time.

The report is due by Jan. 1. It must be provided to legislators representing the county. The entire delegation consists of one senator and two House members, with Kirby representing the majority of the county.

The report should give district officials in Williamsburg County a more detailed idea of what to expect moving forward.��It could also help other districts understand what, exactly, the department considers success in struggling schools and what help is on the table, Kirby said.

Agency spokesman Jason Raven said the department offers extra support to districts underperforming academically to keep them from getting to the point of a state takeover.

Three districts “facing potential takeover” — Colleton, Jasper and McCormick counties — improved in their report cards this year, he said in an email.

, the former state superintendent, took over three failing districts in a . State law has authorized such takeovers of schools and entire districts since 1998, but no other superintendent had attempted to take control of so many.

The other two were , which remains under state control, and tiny Timmonsville (Florence 4), a district so small that all of its students were on one campus. State control ended there following a with neighboring Florence 1, the county’s largest school district, which includes the city of Florence.

Kirby said the agency’s report could give Allendale County officials a better idea of what benchmarks it needs to meet.

Without that information, Kirby’s not sure what must happen to improve rural districts’ performances, he said.

“I’m anxious to see what the department is recommending,” he said. “What is their answer to this?”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — A Pennsylvania billionaire will cover this year’s private tuition costs for South Carolina students who lost their taxpayer-funded scholarships when the state Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional.

A $900,000 donation from Jeff Yass, the co-founder of a global investment firm, will keep students impacted by last month’s ruling in their private school through at least this semester, the Palmetto Promise Institute announced Thursday.

Roughly 700 students were paying tuition with the state aid when the payments violated the state constitution’s ban on public money directly benefiting private education.

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The came after the first of four, $1,500 installments had already been deposited in parents’ accounts, leaving them scrambling on how to avoid transferring their children mid-year to their local public school. For the program’s inaugural year, only Medicaid-eligible students could participate, making it less likely their parents could pay the private tuition on their own.

“Over the last few weeks, our hearts have been broken by the stories of the low-income families who had settled into new schools that better fit their children only to have their scholarships ripped away in the middle of the school year,” said Wendy Damron, CEO of Palmetto Promise Institute, which has been the state’s leading proponent of school choice legislation since its founding over a decade ago.

The conservative think tank not only helped write and successfully pushed for the law signed last year, but it also spread the word through mailers, social media ads and other marketing to educate parents about it and help them sign up for the program.

So, when the ruling immediately ended parents’ ability to use the money for private tuition, “we felt awful, just awful about it,” Damron told the SC Daily Gazette.

So, she started making phone calls: “I didn’t know if I could raise the money, but I had to try,” she said.

Soon after the ruling, the Catholic diocese for South Carolina began separately raising money to cover tuition for the 195 students in the program who are enrolled in its 32 schools statewide.

Between the diocese’s fundraising and Yass’ donation, this semester’s tuition for all students in the program should be covered, Damron said.

The institute is working with the state Department of Education and the company it contracts with to manage parents’ accounts to pay the schools directly. The money will not go to parents.

The donation is a temporary fix. What happens next semester is unclear.

Passing another school choice law that could survive a legal challenge is a top priority for the Legislature’s GOP leaders. But even if they manage to quickly pass a new law after the session starts in January, another lawsuit is a near-certainty. Whatever happens, it’s unlikely that parents will be able to resume using their state aid for private tuition before the school year ends.

The Palmetto Promise Institute will continue pushing for a new law early in the session, while recognizing “we’ve got to raise another million for January and another million for April,” Damron said.

The ruling only banned private tuition payments. The quarterly allotments of $1,500 — for a yearly total of $6,000 — will continue flowing into parents’ accounts.

And parents can still access their accounts through the online portal to direct payments for other approved expenses, such as tutoring, speech therapy and textbooks. They just can’t use it for tuition. And they can’t access it at all if their children return to their public school.

Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association applauded Yass’ donation. While he cheered the ruling, the teachers’ advocate has repeatedly said something needed to be done so students didn’t have to transfer mid-year.

“It’s impossible to do anything but celebrate someone donating funds from their own private wealth to benefit the education of a student,” Kelly said, adding that has a “more direct impact than trying to influence policy through campaign donations.”

Asking voters

In Kentucky, where school choice is on the November ballot, Yass donated $5 million last quarter to a political action committee running ads encouraging voters to approve the measure, reported this week.

As for a school choice law in South Carolina that can survive a legal challenge, proponents are counting on a new set of justices ruling differently on whatever the Legislature passes next year. And Kelly said that’s not how the legal system should work.

Both the Sept. 11 ruling and justices’ the case were 3-2 split decisions. Two justices in the majority are retired and won’t preside over a future case. The author of the dissent is now the chief justice, who made clear he believes the scholarship accounts were a constitutional workaround.

“That’s not the way the rule of law is supposed to operate, by shifting justices around,” said Kelly, who teaches advanced high school courses on government and politics. “Don’t do it by changing the judge. The words (of the constitution) are still the same. I cannot support that approach.”

As Justice Gary Hill noted in his majority opinion, Kelly said, the constitutional ban on public money directly benefiting private education could be eliminated through changing the constitution.

South Carolina doesn’t allow voter-led referendums. Only the Legislature can ask voters whether the state constitution should be amended.

“Put it before the voters,” Kelly said.

Last year, the House approved putting a school choice question on next month’s ballot. But the Senate never took up the measure.

If the Legislature approves a similar resolution next year asking voters to change the constitution, the question won’t be on ballots until November 2026. The constitution wouldn’t actually change until 2027 at the earliest, since the Legislature would have to ratify voters’ preference through legislation in the next session.

“It’s unfortunate that we continue to spend time on voucher schemes in South Carolina,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, which challenged last year’s law and would likely challenge the next one.

“Wealthy people can do what they want with their money, and it’s his prerogative to help fund private schools,” she said of Yass’ donation. “I just wish in South Carolina we could focus on our public institutions. … I wish we’d stop attacking them and work on making them stronger.”

State Superintendent Ellen Weaver called the donation a “vital bridge of continuity for beleaguered” families and reiterated that she’ll work with legislators and Gov. Henry McMaster on restoring the program.

Until that happens, she said, “I pray that even more generous donors will be inspired to stand in the gap for these children.”

“I am profoundly grateful for this enormous gift of hope for students left out in the cold by the Supreme Court majority’s flawed decision,” said Weaver, who led the Palmetto Promise Institute before her 2022 election.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — It’s probably not surprising that students who are chronically absent from class tend to perform poorly on end-of-year tests. It’s the extent of the problem in South Carolina that seemed to stun lawmakers.

An analysis found that 1 of every 5 South Carolina students missed at least 10% of their school days during the 2022-23 school year, according to a presentation Monday to the Education Oversight Committee, an independent oversight group that evaluates K-12 achievement.

“One out of five? That’s a lot of kids,” said Rep. Terry Alexander, D-Florence, who’s among legislators on the committee. He repeated himself, drawing out one word for emphasis: “That’s a lot of kids.”

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Among those chronically absent students, fewer than a quarter could do math as expected, and less than half could read on grade level, committee researcher Matthew Lavery found.

“My data point is a very simple one,” Lavery said: “Chronic absenteeism hurts achievement — kind of a lot.”

On average, fewer than half of South Carolina’s third- through eighth-grade students meet math expectations, and barely over half can read well for their grade, according to . State report cards being released Tuesday grade elementary and middle schools based on how well their students performed on those tests.

Contributing to those dismal results are students simply not being in class for much of the school year, said Lavery, the oversight agency’s deputy director.

By law, the school year must include at least 180 days of instruction. The data analyzed absences over 115 school days, leaving out the weeks at the beginning and the end, so as not to count students who moved into or out of the state partway through a semester. But it did include those who switched schools within the state, Lavery said.

A student who skips 10% or more of their school days, including half days, is considered chronically absent. For the study, that meant students missed at least 12 days’ worth of classes.

The numbers

More students missed out as they got older, Lavery said.

In third, fourth and fifth grades, 15% of students missed 10% of the year or more. By eighth and ninth grades, that was up to 22%. And in 12th grade, 37% of students qualified as chronically absent, according to the data Lavery presented.

That could be because older students have more freedom. Parents usually put their younger children on the bus and see them off. But high schoolers who drive or have another way of getting to school might find it easier to cut class, said Sen. Kevin Johnson, a former school board member in Clarendon County.

“These higher grades, these students may not be going to school, and parents may not even be aware of it,” the Manning Democrat said.

Nationally, more students have been absent since the years of virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. During the 2019-20 school year, 13% of students were chronically absent. In the 2021-22 school year, that spiked to 28%, and in 2022-23, it was 26% nationally, according to data presented to the committee.

That could be because of a shift in attitudes toward virtual learning as opposed to classroom instruction, committee members said.

“A lot of the time, if you’re working from home, you think your child can do the same thing,” said Dana Yow, director of the oversight agency.

But the more a student misses school, the more likely they are to fail the benchmark tests the state uses to gauge achievement, according to the report.

For instance, 23% of students who missed at least 12 school days got a passing score on the end-of-year math test, compared to 47% of those who missed fewer days.

The same pattern was true for reading, with 40% of chronically absent students getting a passing grade for English language arts, compared to 60% of other students.

And 26% of chronically absent students received a passing science score, compared to 49% who were not chronically absent, according to the presentation.

Test scores worsened the more often a student was absent.

Among middle school students considered “extremely chronically absent,” meaning they missed 20% of the school year or more, 8% met math expectations.

In high school, 12% of extremely chronically absent students could do math at grade level, according to committee data.

“This impact is big for being chronically absent at all, but it’s severe when you’re extremely chronically absent,” Lavery said.

Changing schools can also affect a child’s performance.

Regardless of absences, 22% of students who switched schools partway through the year could do math and 34% could read on grade level. Among those who didn’t switch, 42% could do math as expected, and 57% could read, according to the data.

“To me, the takeaway here is go to school. Go to the same school. Stay there. Learn,” Lavery said.

Why students are absent

What causes a student to be frequently absent can vary.

The committee did not have data on the reasons. But member  said she had heard from students who worked long hours at night to help pay bills, which made them too tired to come to school the next day. Other long absences are due to families going on long vacations in the middle of the semester.

“We’re battling (absences) across all socioeconomic” groups, said Pender, principal at Coosa Elementary School in Beaufort County and a former teacher of the year.

In other cases, it could just be that students and parents don’t understand why their child needs to go to school, said Melanie Barton, the governor’s education adviser.

“I am fearful that this is now a cultural shift for all kids, that they just don’t see the value, and parents don’t see the value anymore,” said Barton, the agency’s former director.

That’s especially true among high school juniors and seniors who may be considering going into a field that doesn’t require a high school diploma or college degree.

When Sen. Dwight Loftis worked as an insurance agent, students would sometimes shadow him and tell him they were considering dropping out because they didn’t need to finish school, the Greenville Republican said.

“I’ve heard some other talk from other students who begin to think about what they want to do career-wise: What is the incentive to stay in school that they don’t see?” Loftis said. “They don’t get it.”

What to do

By law, school officials and parents are supposed to jointly figure out how to get those students back in class.

After three consecutive absences or five total absences unapproved by administrators, state law requires school officials to develop a plan alongside the absent student and their parents. If a child continues not to show up to school, district officials can then refer them to family court, according to the state Department of Education.

Making a change could be a matter of making sure schools enforce that rule, said Rep. Neal Collins.

“State law already contemplates this question, and it’s not enforced,” the Easley Republican said. “Locally, statewide — it’s just not enforced.”

Or, state education officials and local school leaders might need to do more to hammer home just how important it is for students to go to school and what children are losing by missing classes, Lavery said.

“If the student doesn’t understand the benefit of being here, it’s definitely going to be more challenging to get them to be here,” Lavery said. “And it might suggest that we could do a better job of narrating that, to make it clear to students what they stand to gain and, if they are not seeing the benefit, then changing our delivery or changing our approach so they can find that benefit.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — Fewer high schoolers enrolled in or applied for college this fall, even though the graduation rate for the Class of 2024 was slightly better than last year, according to data released Tuesday.

Overall, that grade public schools contained few surprises, teachers’ advocates said.

That’s not good news, as schools’ ratings still reflect low test scores and high absence rates statewide.

“There’s very little movement at all,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association. “I’m not seeing much ‘Oh, wow,’ or ‘Oh, yikes,’ either.”

The number of schools at the highest and lowest ends of the spectrum decreased.

This year, 230 schools — 18% — were considered excellent, down from 278, or 22.5%, last year.

At the same time, 47 schools — just 4% — were rated unsatisfactory, the lowest of five rankings. That’s down from 60 last year, according to the data jointly released by the state Department of Education and the independent Education Oversight Committee.

It is good news that fewer schools fell in the bottom tier, said Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association.

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“I tend to look more toward underachieving schools,” Kelly said. “I don’t want any student in South Carolina to attend a school that’s underachieving.”

Education officials pointed to Pinecrest Elementary School in Greenwood, where they held a news conference releasing the report cards, as an example of a school doing well despite difficult circumstances.

Pinecrest Elementary, where 87% of students live in poverty, scored an “excellent” rating overall, along with top scores in academic performance and student progress.

“While the road ahead is challenging, we remain optimistic as the performance of schools like Pinecrest Elementary demonstrate that academic improvement is achievable,” April Allen, chair of the Education Oversight Committee, said at the school.

College and career readiness

The percentage of students who graduated on time (four years after entering ninth grade) improved slightly to 85% — 1.6 percentage points better than last year. Still, less than a third of all high school seniors were considered ready for both the workforce and college, according to the data.

“We want to ensure that our students are adequately prepared for life after graduation,” Allen said.

In South Carolina, all 11th graders take a career-readiness assessment of skills commonly needed for jobs. It tests four areas: Math, reading, understanding data (such as correctly interpreting graphics), and so-called “soft skills,” which is basically knowing how to act professionally, be dependable and work well with others.

Students receive scores of 1 to 5. The higher the score, the more jobs and career fields they’re ready to pursue.

But that score alone may not mean much, Kelly said, since “some students go through the motions” when it comes to that test.

Nearly 70% of students in the Class of 2024 were considered ready for a career.

That means they received at least a 3 on the career-readiness assessment, earned a technical education certificate, completed a , or scored well enough on the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (commonly known as the ASVAB) to qualify to enlist in the military.

That was up from 61% last year.

At the same time, the percentage of students enrolling in and applying for college decreased from last year. Nearly 55% of students who graduated in the spring started this semester in a two- or four-year college, compared with 63% of last year’s graduates attending college in fall 2023.

And 61% applied for college, compared to 64% of the Class of 2023. About 4,530 fewer students completed a Free Application for Federal Student Aid, which determines how much state and federal aid a student’s eligible to receive.

Statewide, the percentage of graduates considered ready for college was 32.5%, essentially unchanged from last year. That reflects students’ scores on the ACT or SAT college entrance exam, whether they earned college credit through a dual-enrollment course, or scored high enough on end-of-course Advanced Placement tests to earn college credit.

The numbers suggest students can graduate high school without actually being prepared for the workforce or college, East said.

“We made sure our graduation rates are where they need to be, even if we’re just passing (students) along,” she said.

Students who fail tests or entire classes are more often offered alternatives, which are sometimes easier than the original class. That enables them to graduate, boosting schools’ graduation rates, without preparing students for any sort of career, East and Kelly said.

Offering second chances for struggling students “is not a bad thing,” Kelly said.

“But there are too many instances where the second chance is not as aligned with the rigor or expectations of the first chance,” he said.

Chronic absences

The rate of students who miss 10% of the school year — 18 days or more, when considering the state’s required 180 days of instruction — remains a concern for education leaders, Allen said.

Nearly 23% of students were considered chronically absent last school year, according to the data.

The more often students miss class, the less likely they are to earn scores on end-of-year standardized tests showing they’re reading for the next grade, the oversight committee heard Monday.

“It makes sense: If students aren’t in school, it is unlikely that they are going to stay on track for success,” Allen said.

Test scores

Report cards for elementary and middle schools are based on performance on end-of-year standardized tests. About 54% of third- through eighth-grade students statewide showed they could read on grade level, while 43% could meet math expectations for their grade.

High school report cards factored in students’ end-of-course tests in English 2 (usually taken by sophomores) and Algebra I (often taken by freshman). Two-thirds of students passed the English test, while less than half of algebra students scored at least a 70 (a C).

“Students are struggling in math, and as a state, we want to provide schools, teachers and students the tools and resources they need to improve,” Allen said in a statement.

State Superintendent Ellen Weaver credited the Palmetto Literacy Project with improving reading scores. Since 2019, the state budget has provided the agency up to $14 million annually to hire reading specialists, train teachers and provide more resources to schools with particularly low scores.

Officials are hoping for a similar outcome from the new Palmetto Math Project, which was funded with $10 million in this year’s state budget to hire math tutors, buy textbooks, and improve training for teachers at the lowest-scoring schools.

“Improving math proficiency must also be an urgent, parallel priority to ensure that all students are fully prepared for future success,” Weaver said in a news release. “The department’s newly launched Palmetto Math Project is positioned to do just that.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — South Carolina school districts must ban students from using their cellphones during the entire school day, but exactly how they go about it is up to district officials, according to the state Board of Education passed Tuesday.

At the very least, districts must require students to keep their phones and connected devices, such as smartwatches, turned off and in their backpacks or lockers from the time the first bell rings in the morning until the dismissal bell in the afternoon, according to the state policy.

But the state board said districts can decide whether to enact sterner rules, as well as the consequences for violating them.

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Districts that do not put a policy in place that is at least as strict as the one the state board passed Tuesday could lose their state funding.

“We’re saying, ‘This is what state law says, and so you’ve got to implement it,’ but we are leaving a lot of discretion, a lot of latitude, to districts on how exactly they do it,” board member Christian Hanley said.

The decision follows a clause the Legislature included in the state spending plan requiring the state board to create a policy prohibiting cellphones for K-12 students in the state’s public schools. The specifics, legislators left up to the board, which in turn left many of the details to local school boards.

Although state board members supported the idea of banning cellphones in schools, they said they worried about unintended consequences of the new policy, such as putting another task on overworked teachers, increasing the number of out-of-school suspensions or cutting students off from their parents during emergencies.

“Implementation of such a policy over a school day scares me,” said board chair David O’Shields. “Why? Because once we create this policy, it is the requirement of every district to follow suit, and there is the law of unintended consequences, and it frightens me.”

School boards will to put in place a policy at least as strict as the one the state board enacted, according to a memo the department sent to superintendents in June. District must submit those policies to the department to ensure compliance.

The state board, which passed the policy 15-1, added a stipulation that districts must report back about how implementation went in case the board finds a need to adjust its policy ahead of next school year.

“All of these things look good, but just because it looks good doesn’t mean it is good.” O’Shields said.

The policy

In the state policy, the board did decide lunch and other breaks should be considered part of the school day, meaning students must leave their cell phones stowed away during those times.

Districts may choose to take it further telling students not to bring their devices to school at all. Or they can buy lockable pouches to store them. Some may also decide to include bus rides, field trips or athletic events as times when students can not access their phones, according to the policy.

The policy also leaves room for exceptions.

If students have an assignment they cannot complete on school-provided devices, districts can allow students to keep their phones with them to use as part of their classwork.

Students with disabilities who need access to phones or tablets to learn would still be allowed to use the devices. And students with certain outside jobs, such as volunteer firefighters, can seek a written exception from their superintendent to use their phone during the day, according to the policy.

Enforcement also will largely be up to school districts. The policy requires “disciplinary enforcement procedures,” with increasing consequences for repeat offenders, but it doesn’t specify what that means.

State board members did discourage using out-of-school suspension as punishment for violating the policy. Taking a student out of school because they are breaking a rule meant to keep them focused on their classwork feels counterintuitive, said state Superintendent Ellen Weaver.

“The whole idea behind this policy is that we want students in classrooms getting instruction,” Weaver told reporters. “Taking students out of that instructional space really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as far as I’m concerned.”

Still, different situations may warrant different punishments, so board members wanted to leave that decision up to the districts, said board member David Mathis.

Timing

Some board members felt they did not have enough time to create the policy.

Board member Beverly Frierson was the sole “no” vote, not because she disagreed with it but because she thought the board was too rushed to give the policy the consideration it needed, she said.

O’Shields, the board chair, worried teachers may have to spend too much time policing cellphones. Still, he agreed some kind of action was necessary.

“I know we need control, and there is an addiction, no doubt,” O’Shields said.

The policy has support from legislators, teachers’ advocates and Gov. Henry McMaster. Since 2020, McMaster has included this clause in his state budget recommendations. This was the first time legislators agreed to put it in the final plan.

“The research is clear,” McMaster wrote in a letter to the board Tuesday. “Removing access to personal electronic devices during the school day improves student academic performance and removes distractions that exacerbate anxiety among our adolescents.”

“Our responsibility is to create an environment where teachers can teach, and students can learn,” the letter continued.

In a statewide survey the education department conducted, 55% of teachers and administrators who responded said they supported a total ban on cellphones during the school day. Another 37% said they wanted students to have limited access during class time, with the chance to check their phones between classes or at lunch.

Along with being distracting while students are trying to learn, phones can erode their social skills and encourage bullying, Weaver said.

“I think the dividend that we will see this pay for schools and for our students’ future will be worth it in the end,” Weaver said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — Fewer than half of South Carolina third- through eighth-grade students can do math as expected for their grade level, according to .

State education officials hope to improve scores with a new $10 million program to hire math tutors, improve training and pay for resources.

A similar program has helped improve reading scores in recent years, though across the board, test scores are “still not where we need to be, period,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

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On average, the percentage of students who ended last school year reading on grade level was barely over half, according to the state Department of Education.

Students’ scores on the math portion of the required annual remain behind where they were before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2019, 45% of third- through eighth-graders statewide could perform grade-level math, compared to 2024, when 42% of students met expectations. The scores also worsen the older students get. In third grade, about 54% of students were ready to advance to the next grade level, while only 30% of eighth graders met that benchmark.

That leaves high school teachers trying to catch students up to speed, since math skills build each year, said East, a high school science teacher in Rock Hill.

Meanwhile, reading scores have surpassed their pre-pandemic levels, though they remain low. This year, 53% of students met expectations in reading, compared with 45% before the pandemic. State education officials have set a goal that 75% of students test on grade level in both subject areas, though there’s no longer a year for meeting that goal.

Statewide improvement in reading may have come from the Palmetto Literacy Project, East said.

Starting in 2019, a clause in the state budget directed the department to set aside up to $14 million each year to hire reading specialists, train teachers and provide more resources to schools with particularly low scores.

The department hopes to boost math scores using a similar program. With $10 million in this year’s budget, education officials plan to hire math-specific tutors, buy better textbooks and resources, and improve training for teachers at schools where at least one-third of students fall in the lowest category of scores.

“South Carolina’s mathematics scores have consistently lagged and remain stubbornly below even anemic pre-­pandemic levels,” the department wrote as the reason for the program when requesting the money.

Whether or not that program proves effective will depend on how the department spends the money and how long it continues, said Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist for the Palmetto State Teachers Association. Math scores are not likely to improve immediately as schools work to implement the program and students learn the skills, he said.

“Turning around math scores isn’t as easy as turning on a light switch,” Kelly said.

While virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic likely played a role in students’ low test scores, it’s not the whole story, East said.

In math, which remains below pre-pandemic numbers, part of the dip could come from residual effects of students not learning fundamentals online. But most students should have had the time to recover, East said.

“We’ve been back at school for two years now,” East said. “I don’t know that we should still see scores where they are.”

Another likely culprit is an ongoing shortage in teachers, she said. The state had more than 1,300 open positions for teachers, counselors, librarians and other education professionals in February, according from the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement. That was down from a of more than 1,600 vacant positions when the school year started.

As teachers take on bigger classes, students are more likely to miss out on one-on-one instruction, said Kelly, who’s also a high school teacher in Richland Two. Other classrooms may rely on a long-term substitute who doesn’t always know the subject material or how to teach it, he said.

“You have large pockets of students in this state that are either in overcrowded math classes or in classrooms without a certified teacher at all,” Kelly said.

Poorer districts are more likely to feel those effects. Fewer resources often means fewer certified teachers, fewer options for struggling students and larger class sizes, leading to lower test scores, East said.

Some districts react to low test scores by requiring more tests, but that should not be the case, Kelly said.

Testing often takes away time during which students could actually be learning skills, and the scores are not always an accurate reflection of how well a student is performing. Instead, schools should focus on proven ways to best teach the material, he said.

“The goal is not to reach an abstract number,” Kelly said. “The goal is to help each student reach their potential.”

Students in Fort Mill (York 4) posted the best scores in the state.

Across fourth through eighth grades, at least 75% of the district’s students could read on grade level, and 76% of third-graders met math expectations. The fast-growing school district just south of Charlotte also posts the state’s lowest poverty rate, with 21% of students living in poverty compared to a statewide average of 62%, according to state agency data.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

The released by ImpactSTATS, Inc. and The BEE Collective used National Center for Education Statistics data to compare how often students were being excluded from school as a disciplinary measure at predominantly white versus Black Charleston schools in the 2022-23 school year.

To zero in on the treatment of young students, researchers considered only those schools that offered pre-kindergarten programs. Of the 42 schools in the study, 33 encompassed grades pre-K through 5; six went from pre-K to grade 8; two were pre-K to kindergarten and one school taught pre-K to second grade.

Of those schools, the ones with more than a 51% Black student population isolated children from learning settings for disciplinary reasons at a rate of 98.2 removals per 1,000 students, according to the report. This was seven times greater than the 14.1 removals per 1,000 students at majority white early-grade and elementary schools — and more than double the districtwide rate of 42.7 per 1,000 students.

Exclusionary discipline could include in-school or out-of-school suspensions and expulsion. When looking just at out-of-school suspensions in Charleston, the racial disparity by school population soared, according to the study released earlier this summer.

Students in majority Black schools faced out-of-school suspension rates of 78.8 per 1,000 students in the 2022-23 school year compared to 11.9 suspensions per 1,000 students for those in predominantly white schools. 

The districtwide rate was 34.8 suspensions per 1,000 students. 

“This tells us that we have a problem and it’s not children’s behavior — but adult action and adult decisions,” said lead researcher Melodie Baker. 

Charleston public schools served 50,312 students at the end of the last school year: 24,978 were white, 14,291 were Black and 7,916 were Hispanic, according to the district. 

Baker said removing a child from a classroom or isolating them from their teachers and peers robs them of an opportunity to learn self-regulation and is particularly damaging to the youngest learners.

“It makes kids feel like they don’t belong,” she said. “They feel ashamed. They feel confused. It affects their overall development.”

The practice is seen as : and are among the states that have banned or strictly limited such removals in the early grades.

Charleston County School District spokesman Andrew Pruitt last week pushed back against the study, which raises issues of racism and implicit bias, noting its data does not include the ages of the suspended students or the reasons why they were punished. 

“We take any report that raises concerns about unconscious bias negatively impacting our children seriously. However, we are incredibly concerned that a specific claim of that magnitude was made in the absence of an analysis of the appropriate and relevant data,” he said in a statement. 

The district didn’t start breaking down its disciplinary data by grade until recently, according to Pruitt. Though records were limited, he cited a total of 49 preschool suspensions in Charleston public schools in the 2022-23 school year. He did not separate that number by race.

Preschoolers across the U.S. are expelled at rates than K-12 students. South Carolina in preschool suspensions by a large margin in 2017-18 with 438 preschoolers suspended, according to the most recent available federal data. 

Those numbers have grown significantly worse in the Palmetto State and were a critical focus of . The Joint Citizens and Legislative Committee on Children showing 928 South Carolina public preschoolers received in-school and out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24; 66% of those 3- and 4-year-olds were children of color and 77% were boys.

The committee’s data for Charleston County schools, the state’s second-largest district, cites that 25 preschoolers received out-of-school suspensions in 2023-24 and fewer than five received an in-school suspension. Eighteen Black Charleston County public preschoolers received an out–of-school suspension and fewer than five white students did. Twenty-one male preschoolers received an out-of-school suspension that year and fewer than five female preschoolers did. Six preschoolers classified as special education students were among those removed from school for disciplinary reasons.

The Charleston County School District has taken steps to address systemic inequalities in discipline, Pruitt said, including professional development training for all its early education teachers that focuses on how to appropriately respond to student behavior while taking into account young learners’ social-emotional well-being. He said the district continues to work with early childhood education organizations throughout the state to adopt best practices.

The report by ImpactSTATS and The BEE Collective notes citing the role of educator bias in harsh discipline, including perceptions of Black children as being older than they are, less innocent, more aggressive and more deserving of punishment for the same behavior displayed by white students.

New York-based was founded by Baker in 2023 to bring more diversity to the research field and to provide technical support and research assistance to grass-roots groups working with underserved communities of color. 

The BEE — Beloved Early Education and Care — Collective is that partly funded the study and collaborated on the research. It seeks to improve maternal and child health in South Carolina’s Lowcountry, including in addressing racism and implicit bias in early child care. 

Black children across all grade levels and those with disabilities have long faced higher rates of exclusionary disciplines than other student groups. According to analyzing data from the 2020-21 school year, Black boys were nearly two times more likely than white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or an expulsion.

“It’s mostly boys who are being suspended — mostly for rough-and-tumble play,” Baker said, speaking anecdotally of the Charleston suspensions after interviewing those who worked with or observed district students. “But there’s a lot of research out there that talks about the positives of rough-and-tumble play. Males tend to perceive that very differently.”

Of Charleston County schools’ 3,673 teachers in the 2021-22 school year, roughly 2,402 were white females, 556 were white males, 404 were Black females and 103 were Black males, according to .

Cara Kelly, a researcher who observed classrooms within the Charleston district for seven years, ending in 2019, recalled several instances where kindergarten children were made to sit alone and in silence for 30 minutes or more for minor infractions such as talking to other students, calling out while a teacher was speaking or standing up when they were supposed to sit for long stretches of time. 

“It’s OK to give a child five minutes to calm down — but not to be completely excluded,” she said. 

Kelly, now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Oklahoma’s Early Childhood Education Institute, told ����Ӱ�� she believed the punishments were not developmentally appropriate and often targeted Black children. 

The report recommends the district recruit more male teachers in the early grades, increase pay for all early childhood educators, decrease student-to-staff ratios and raise awareness about discipline reform legislation that seeks to prohibit suspensions, expulsions and corporal punishment while promoting more effective means of managing student behavior. 

Researchers acknowledge that the report, funded partly by the American Heart Association Voices for Healthy Kids, should be interpreted cautiously because of the data’s limitations regarding race and age.

The BEE Collective has filed a public records request asking the Charleston district to release the suspension records for children 5 and under for the last five years broken down by age, race, gender and school. Noting that the response to that Freedom of Information request is due Aug. 31, Pruitt said it was “unfortunate” that the groups moved ahead with publishing the report without that information in hand. 

Tawanna R. Jennings, an infant and early childhood mental health consultant for South Carolina’s Partners for Early Attuned Relationships Network, called the study’s findings “pretty astounding,” adding she hopes the results will be shared widely and that Charleston teachers receive better training and greater support.

“There needs to be more resources so that [teachers] can understand these behaviors,” she said. “How do you teach these children and how do you be empathetic with what they may be experiencing?”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to ImpactSTATS and to ����Ӱ��.

COLUMBIA — A model policy requiring South Carolina’s K-12 students to stash their cellphones during the entire school day received initial approval Tuesday from the State Board of Education, which wanted to get more feedback before finalizing minimum guidelines for school districts.

The unanimous vote comes six weeks after the state budget mandated school districts to adopt a policy banning cellphones during the school day or risk state funding. But the State Board of Education must first adopt a model policy for them to follow.

The goal is for all districts to have a policy in place before January, according to a memo the state agency sent school administrators over the summer.

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The board was considering a , which would require phones, smart watches and other devices to be turned off and stashed through the entire school day, not just during class time. It would allow exceptions for students with particular medical or educational needs, for specific educational purposes and for high schoolers who volunteer as local firefighters or other emergency responders.

It allows for school districts to set more restrictive rules, but not less.

It also gives school districts flexibility on setting rules outside the school day, such as whether to allow devices on bus rides. Districts could also decide where students would be required to keep their phones from the opening to closing bells — whether in a locker, a backpack or somewhere else.

Board Chairman David O’Shields said he wanted to take some additional time on such an important policy to gather feedback, including from parents.

“I do think without equivocation there needs to be a serious reigning in of cellphone use and proliferation because it’s negative consequences, especially for adolescents, can be quite harmful,” said O’Shields, superintendent of Laurens County School District 56 (Clinton).

While board members wanted more time, they were enthusiastic about the underlying idea.

“It’s not just about the discipline in the schools,” said Christian Hanley Jr. of Berkeley County. “The discipline is important, but it’s ruining our kids.”

Hanley noted the board put a lot of work into that bars books in schools that describe “sexual conduct.”

“You can get a whole lot more porn on these phones than you’re going to get in those library books,” he said.

Matthew Ferguson, deputy superintendent for the Department of Education, said the agency has already received a lot of feedback in creating the model rules.

More than 9,000 teachers responded to a survey on banning phones. Teachers reported that phones were taking up hours of their teaching time, and they asked for support from school administrators so they don’t have to be the phone police, he said.

“When we first sent the survey out … our survey platform thought we had been hacked and spoofed because the responses were coming in so quickly,” Ferguson told the board.

State Superintendent Ellen Weaver said her agency can also help school officials educate parents on the policies.

“The districts are very hungry for us as the department to help create communication tools and resources,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA – Fewer families in South Carolina will receive help covering the cost of child care as federal COVID-19 aid dries up and the state replaces just a quarter of that lost funding.

For about three years, amid the global coronavirus pandemic, the federal government raised income limits, making more parents eligible for federal dollars to pay for child care. But the last of that aid ends in about nine weeks.

State legislators agreed to put several million in state taxes toward the program, but not enough to cover all the parents newly helped by the expanded rules.

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About 2,250 children will no longer qualify for child care scholarships, based on data provided by Department of Social Services spokeswoman Connelly-Anne Ragley.

Those scholarships cover most, if not all, of annual daycare costs through direct payments to eligible child care providers for every child whose parents’ income qualifies.

Before October 2020, working parents qualified for the federally funded daycare aid if their pay equaled 85% or less of the state median income. In South Carolina, that meant at or below $64,063 for a family of three.

But for those applying between October 2020 and September 2023, their income had to fall below 300% of the federal poverty level, or $74,580 or less for that same family of three.

DSS estimated it would take $10 million to continue covering child care expenses for 3,000 children under the expanded eligibility rules, and agency Director Michael Leach asked for that amount in his budget request to lawmakers.

Gov. Henry McMaster, , recommended $5 million instead.

In the end, legislators agreed to put $2.5 million toward the scholarships in the budget that started July 1.

Based on data provided by Social Services, that’s enough to cover aid for 750 of those 3,000 children.

“A lot of families were very upset because they … grew accustomed to having this benefit,” Ragley said when parents were informed last fall that the money was expiring.

When the one-year scholarships dry up depends on when parents applied. Some families’ aid may have already ended. Last September marked the end of the expanded eligibility rules. So, the final daycare payments for scholarships awarded in September 2023 will be the end of this September.

Martha Strickland leads First Steps, which oversees private providers in the state’s for poor 4-year-olds. Parents with 4-year-olds in private preschool can also get scholarships for child care to cover the rest of their workday, both for their up to 12 years old. Strickland said she knows what a godsend the aid can be for families.

She talked about one mother who cried on the phone after finding out she qualified for free child care for her children, calling it “a miracle” for her family.

While DSS didn’t get the $10 million it requested, the agency is glad it got some money to disperse. The agency is still determining the new eligibility parameters for how to distribute it, Ragley said.

“We know the need of families to receive help paying for child care is great,” she said.

Between October 2020 and July 2023, the agency granted more than 71,200 52-week scholarships for children of parents whose income fell in the expanded eligibility levels. That total number includes children counted multiple times if they received child care aid year after year, Ragley said.

How much each scholarship is worth depends on the age of the child and how highly a child care center is rated.

For a child care center to accept children under scholarships, they have to volunteer to be part of the state’s ABC Quality Program and meet health and safety standards beyond state minimum requirements, such as background checks for all staff members.

Ragley said this gives parents a sense of security when having to leave their children in the care of others while they go to work or attend school.

As a working mother herself, Ragley said she and her husband have to scramble when they don’t have child care. Luckily, they have paid time off of work they can use.

“Not everybody has that luxury or family who can step in and help,” she said.

The rising cost of child care may also mean a parent ultimately chooses to stay home and out of the workforce, Ragley added.

“Because by the time they pay the cost of child care out of the salary they make, they either break even or the margin is small,” she said. “That is a population that, if they had access to affordable child care, could be additional workers that could fill the jobs that are open in the state.”

Ragley said the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on long-standing child care issues in South Carolina and nationwide.

The agency knows it will need more funding for its programs in the next state budget and beyond.

Its budget request will likely again include money for child care scholarships, as well as wage bonuses to encourage more people to enter the child care industry, startup grants for new centers and tax incentives for employers that offer child care as a benefit to their workers.

Ragley pointed to Georgia as an example, where businesses that provide or sponsor child care for employees are eligible for a state tax credit offsetting up to 75% of the cost.

The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce advocated for legislators to update South Carolina’s own long-standing but little-used tax break offered to employers that start or operate child care for workers or provide direct payments for private options. But the issue ultimately was not taken up.

Maine is subsidizing child care for those making up to 125% of the state median income, according to the Center for American Progress based in Washington, D.C.

Michigan is extending its COVID-19 relief policy, offering subsidies at 200% of the federal poverty level.

Minnesota is putting an additional $252 million this fiscal year into its scholarship program and promises to add $58.9 million more in the following budget year. And Montana is expanding child care subsidy eligibility up to 185% of the federal poverty level, according to the center.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

After nearly three decades working in education, I would hardly call myself naive. I’ve been a school counselor, principal and district superintendent. I’ve served or worked in rural, urban and suburban schools. Along the way, I’ve received recognition for closing learning gaps, increasing graduation rates and recruiting male teachers of color to the workforce.

Yet, for all my experience, there’s one thing I underestimated: chronic absenteeism and the challenge of addressing the many factors that contribute to it.

I now recognize that chronic absenteeism is a symptom of deeper, systemic issues in schools and broader society. The reasons for missing class are complex, representing a confluence of school, home and community factors. Logistical challenges like transportation or lack of child care can pose insurmountable barriers, while young people who lack a sense of belonging at school or are generally disengaged may simply opt out.

Because students and families are the groups most impacted by these impediments to attendance, they must also be a part of developing the solutions. consistently shows that engaging communities leads to innovative and effective solutions.

I’m encouraged by the efforts I’ve seen through my work with Digital Promise’s Center for Inclusive Innovation. Inclusive innovation — an education research and development model that fosters deep district-community partnership to create novel student-centered solutions — is an opportunity for students and families, who are often excluded from positions of influence in education, to lead, participate in and benefit from problem solving and decision making. Inclusive innovation is not a new concept, but it is underutilized — and has the potential to significantly impact the nation’s attendance crisis. 

To that end, Digital Promise has Chronic Absenteeism: Insights and Innovations — a six-month cohort supporting 17 school districts ranging from suburban California to rural Ohio. The goal is to address chronic absenteeism through the deep investigation of its root causes, collaboration among districts around shared challenges and partnerships with students and families to identify solutions for improving attendance in their communities.

With the potential to impact more than 210,000 students, the cohort will develop strategies that meet the unique needs of their students and families, together with and alongside their students and communities. These districts will develop a chronic absenteeism blueprint by conducting data analysis; identifying the systems, conditions and processes needed to improve attendance; and engaging students in the design and development of solutions.

El Segundo Unified School District, Greenfield Union School District, Lynwood Unified School District and Mountain View Whisman Schools in California; Adams 12 Five Star Schools in Colorado; Wilmington Learning Collaborative in Delaware; NOLA Public Schools in Louisiana; Roselle Public Schools in New Jersey; East Irondequoit Central School District, Hudson City School District, Mount Vernon School District and Suffern Central School District in New York; Springfield City Public Schools in Ohio; Allentown School District and Elizabeth Forward School District in Pennsylvania; Richland School District 2 in South Carolina; and Spokane Public Schools in Washington.

The cohort will be co-led by Lynwood Superintendent Gudiel Crosthwaite, whose district is making progress in addressing chronic absenteeism. To start, the district asked a basic question of families: What conditions and barriers are preventing each and every student from participating and engaging in school? 

To find answers, Lynwood, which is over 90% Latino/a, distributed four surveys and hosted in-person meetings with families to hear their concerns. They increased communications with parents, including a social media campaign highlighting real students and their positive experiences in school, to remind families how being present and engaged can contribute to young people’s physical and mental well-being. As a result of these efforts, the district went from 1,200 students who attended virtually last year to 55 attending online this year and the rest returning to classes in person. 

Lynwood is also improving attendance among foster youth through a program created with student councils and staff. The program “hires” foster youth, who have lower attendance rates than other students, to work in their schools’ front offices or provide tutoring. This motivates these students because they know they know they have a purpose, build relationships with caring adults and are seen as role models to their younger peers. It also sets them on a pathway to entry-level jobs within the school district or at partnering agencies and afterschool programs, guiding them toward potential careers in education as well.

Another promising approach also draws a clear connection between attending school and students’ career and employment prospects: 

Digital Promise’s district- and community-led cybersecurity initiative provides access to inclusive STEM pathways for high schoolers in 10 school districts, from Alabama to New York. Students participate in a three-year, in-school cybersecurity program, earning industry-valued credentials and, ultimately, opportunities to secure employment and/or enroll in vocational and trade schools or colleges and universities in a related field. In all 10 districts, actual enrollment doubled or tripled projections due to student and parent demand. And those districts have seen a decrease in absenteeism among students in the program. 

For school leaders who want to develop lasting solutions for chronic absenteeism, the first step is to ensure the conditions — and the commitment — are in place to work alongside students, families and community members. This will lead to the next, crucial step: building trust and relationships to design and sustain solutions that enable all students to participate, engage in and thrive at school.

COLUMBIA — Just over $8 million meant to help families afford groceries went unused last month, according to state data.

Last August, the state Department of Social Services mailed nearly 537,000 debit cards loaded with money for groceries to families across the state. The money was part of a temporary federal program during the COVID-19 pandemic meant to help families buy groceries during the months when their children weren’t in school.

The last round of cards, which gave families $120 per child, expired in May, nine months after they were issued. Nearly 470,000 cards — 87.5% of those mailed — were activated, totaling $56.2 million.

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Whether families used up all of their allotment is unknown. DSS doesn’t track how much of a card is used once it’s activated. But with the cost of groceries, it’s expected that families who activated their card at all quickly used their total available.

Cards remain good nine months after they’re used for an initial purchase of any amount. That means the 1,300 people who first used the cards between April and May have until next January or February to use the remaining money before it, too, returns to the federal government.

The exact reasons 67,000 families did not use their cards at all are unknown. There could be several reasons a parent didn’t use the money, DSS officials and advocates have said.

Some cards may have been lost in the shuffle of other pandemic assistance, Sue Berkowitz, an advocate with Appleseed Legal Justice Center, said previously. Others may have thrown it out because they didn’t know what it was or that it was legitimate.

The social services and education departments tried to get the word out through news interviews and social media posts, agency spokespeople said.

Still other families may have intentionally discarded the aid. The cards went to the addresses listed for any student who qualifies to eat free or reduced-priced meals at school.

And the vast majority of schools statewide qualify for a federal program that allows all students to eat for free, regardless of their parents’ income. That means families who normally don’t qualify for any public assistance received the grocery debit cards anyway.

The cards sent out in August were the final of seven rounds of federal pandemic grocery aid.

In all, the state distributed 2.26 million cards between July 2020 and last August providing $1.04 billion for groceries. Parents used 90% of those cards at least once, according to DSS data.

While no complete database of states’ usage exists, South Carolina families seem to have used the money at a higher rate than other states. For instance, Missouri had about in unused grocery aid in February, and Louisiana had in April, just ahead of their cards’ expiration dates.

A new, permanent version of the program began in 35 states this summer. South Carolina was not among them after Gov. Henry McMaster declined to participate, pointing to that feed children over the summers.

Unlike the pandemic-era aid, which the federal government fully funded, the new program requires states to chip in half the administrative cost.

Democratic legislators for his decision, but that would have required him to sign on and asking Congress to extend the Jan. 1 deadline to sign up went nowhere.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

COLUMBIA — Public school students across South Carolina will be barred from using their cellphones during the school day under a clause legislators agreed to add to the state spending plan Thursday.

Education officials and teachers backed the proposal. For years, teachers have been asking the state for help controlling student cellphone use, said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

“Cellphones are a mega distraction,” said East, who also teaches high school science. “It’s hard to teach with kids on their cellphones.”

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The clause was one of a number of funding stipulations that a committee of three House members and three senators approved during days of negotiations on the state’s more than $13.8 billion budget.

To continue receiving state funds, public school districts must adopt the statewide policy, which the state Board of Education will write.

How the state board plans to enforce the policy, ensuring schools and districts are actually keeping phones out of students’ hands, remains to be seen. There are also questions over whether to allow certain exceptions for safety situations.

“We think cellphones are a huge distraction in the classroom,” East said. “We are happy to see something being done about it, but it’s all going to be down to implementation.”

For example, some parents have questioned whether they would be able to reach their children in case of an emergency, state Superintendent Ellen Weaver said during a board meeting last month. That concern will need to factor that into the final policy, she said.

“While we certainly don’t want to ever deny a parent access to their child, at the same time, I think we have to balance these very real safety and instructional concerns that cellphones create,” Weaver said.

Varying policies

The goal is to improve students’ mental health and reduce bullying both in-person and online, Weaver said. While social media has some benefits, it can also hurt young people’s mental health, .

In some cases, students use their cellphones for legitimate learning purposes. Peter Lauzon’s biomedical sciences class in Lexington-Richland School District Five often takes photos of nature as part of their assignments, which they submit online.

The problem is when students use their phones as a distraction, Lauzon told the SC Daily Gazette.

“If you’re competing with their favorite show on Netflix, that’s not always an easy thing to do,” Lauzon said. “But there is use for phones.”

Nationwide, about 77% of schools banned students from using their phones during school hours except for instructional purposes during the 2019-2020 school year, according to from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Across South Carolina, policies vary. Greenwood School District 50 trustees voted this week to ban phones during the school day. Charleston County School District only allows students to use their phones during certain parts of the day, such as at lunch. Richland School District One bans phones during class time. Other districts have no policy at all.

House Ways and Means Chairman Bruce Bannister initially questioned whether the state needed an overarching rule, considering many districts already have their own rules about cellphones.

“Shouldn’t independently elected school boards weigh in on that?” Bannister said during budget debates Wednesday.

But going statewide will allow education officials to standardize policies across districts, Weaver said. That will likely involve working with superintendents who already have policies in place, “making sure that there is a benchmark for uniformity across the state,” Weaver said.

While the idea is popular among teachers, who have been calling for a solution for years, it may not be so popular among students.

“I’m willing for us to be the bad guys at the state level, if necessary, because I think this is just the No. 1 most common-sense thing we can do to start to get ahold of some of the discipline and mental health issues that our students are facing in school,” Weaver said.

The House and Senate both already had passed proposals limiting student’s cell phone use. But the two chambers differed on times those limits should be in place — all day or just during class time. On Thursday they agreed to a full-day ban, as the Senate proposed.

Other measures

Also on the list of special budget rules agreed to Thursday were two controversial measures from the Senate. One will require libraries to before allowing children and teenagers to check out books with sexual content or risk losing state funding. The other will require students to use bathrooms and locker rooms .

While the Republican senators who proposed the measures said they will protect children from inappropriate content or boys pretending to be girls to go in the wrong locker room, some Democrats pushed back.

Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, D-Columbia, argued restricting library books will penalize small libraries. She also argued requiring students use certain bathrooms will open up the state to lawsuits, as well as hurt transgender students who want to use the bathroom aligned with their gender.

Both proposals passed the Senate along party lines. The six-legislator committee agreed to add them to the final spending proposal.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .