So members of the school board are asking the General Assembly to address the problem, falling short of actually asking that the legislation be repealed.
The request comes as part of a resolution passed Monday night in a 5-2-1 vote by the board that asks legislators to take immediate steps in response to the state's financial crisis to avoid significant damage to public education.
Officials with both the S.C. School Boards Association, and the S.C. Association of School Administrators, asked that the resolution be passed and given to the local delegation and public.
However, board chairman Jim Shelton, who voted against the resolution, suggested that as part of the non-bind resolution that the board ask for Act 388 to be repealed.
“That would take us back to where we were before this perfect storm hit,” he said.
But Shelton also suggested that asking the General Assembly to pass the cigarette tax should be struck from the resolution.
“I’m hesitant to support any new tax, and the cigarette tax would disproportionately affect the lower end of the economic spectrum in the state,” he said.
However, the board as a whole did not agree with Shelton’s recommended changes, voting against them 4-3-1, with board member Alex Saitta abstaining.
Board member Kevin Kay said a cigarette tax should go toward healthcare and agreed that it should not be a part of the resolution, but the second at-large member, Shirley Jones, disagreed.
Jones, a pediatric nurse, later told the Sentinel that along with supporting the cigarette tax, she also thinks the state should impose a 10-tax on beer sales.
“That would pay for all healthcare for children in the state,” she said.
Board members B.J. Skelton, Judy Edwards, Oscar Thorsland, Shirley Jones and Herb Cooper voted in favor of the resolution as written, and Saitta cast the second vote in opposition.
The Pickens representative said he felt the school board association was not offering real leadership by only suggesting ways to raise revenue and not offering suggestions for ways to cut spending.
“I don’t want to be spoon-fed anything that will do more harm to the school district,” he said.
Saitta said the economic woes faced now could continue for years to come and that the restructuring was needed.
But Skelton, the Six Mile representative, said he took exception to Saitta’s comments about the school boards association, noting that the organization addresses a lot of topics that are beneficial to the school district.
He said he agreed that restructuring was needed but that it would have to come out of Columbia.
“We’re limited a lot by what the state Department of Education and the legislature requires of us,” Skelton said.
Kay, who abstained from the final vote, agreed.
“I agree we have to look at everything, but if requirements are going to be placed on us, we should have the freedom to decide how to tailor those requirements to meet the needs of the people of Pickens County,” he said.
Edwards, of Easley, also chimed in about tax exemptions that impede the school district from collecting necessary revenue.
“It’s time the state realized they’ve exempted us into the poor house,” she said.
However, Edwards did say she agreed that the district needs to operate within its means like others must do.
In their request that the resolution be passed, officials with the SCSBA and SCASA said further cuts to public education could “undermine the state's decade-long efforts to raise student academic achievement and personal income, as well as other policy objectives, most notably economic development.”
Along with calling for action concerning Act 388, the resolution states that the General Assembly continues to give favorable consideration to legislation like the point-of-sale bill and charter school board and that those bills would "negatively impact local school district revenue" if passed.
"It is apparent to the board that the K-12 educational system is at risk of significant damage due to the failure to take any action, either immediate or long term, to address our state's fiscal crisis," the resolution states.
The resolution asks that the legislature not pass any more laws that would grant additional tax exemptions, or increase school district financial obligations at the local level without adequate and recurring state funding.
The school board is also asking for maximum financial flexibility and that the Index of Taxpaying Ability be held temporarily, for one year, to the figures published in February 2009.
By passing the resolution, the school board is asking that the General Assembly "support public schools during this economic crisis and prevent the loss of more teacher jobs by providing new revenue streams such as removing tax exemption, enforcing online sales tax collections and increasing the state's lowest-in-the nation cigarette tax to the national average while directing a portion of the proceeds collected from the increase in the cigarette tax to K-12 public education.
Jones told The Sentinel that the legislature needs to consider “what this stripped down economy and Act 388 are doing to this state.”
“We are a pro-life state, but we have to care about children after they’re born,” she said. “That includes what’s happening with education funding, development and special needs funding and DSS funding.”
Jones said that children have to count on adults to make good decisions to protect them.
“And right now, the state legislators are letting them down,” she said.
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