During a virtual faculty meeting...

By Cindy Landrum  

MARCH 9, 2010 8:53 a.m. (0)

State Superintendent of Education Jim Rex told teachers across the state Monday afternoon they need to contact state legislators to try to stop proposed budget cuts he said would seriously hurt public schools.

Rex appeared on closed circuit TV from the ETV studios in Columbia, a move four Republican legislators called a “thinly-veiled taxpayer-funded political rally by gubernatorial candidate Jim Rex.”

Rex is a Democrat.

Rex did not mention his candidacy during the hour-long “virtual faculty meeting.” He has held three other “virtual faculty meetings” during his time as education superintendent.

Rex told teachers $100 million in cuts proposed in the House Ways and Means committee budget would roll public school funding back to 1995 levels.

That, he said, could result in job cuts, teacher furloughs, salary freezes, larger classes and cutbacks to extracurricular activities. The proposed budget includes money to run the state’s school buses for 122 days of the 180-day school year, Rex said.

Rex said the budget problems are at the point where “there are really no good choices left.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the time to be heard. This is the time I hope as colleagues we will stand shoulder to shoulder and let the people who are making decisions in Columbia, South Carolina, know how important public education is to our present and our future as a state,” Rex said.

If the cuts go through, nearly $1 billion will have been cut from public education in the past 18 months, he said.

“We are all in the fight of our lives to preserve, protect and defend our schools,” he said. “We have fought too hard for too long to move our schools forward. We are in danger of sliding back.”

Attendance was not required of Greenville County teachers.

At Berea High, three teachers watched part of the telecast while another group of teachers met in another portion of the school’s media center.

Rex called once again for comprehensive tax reform and increasing the state’s cigarette tax to the national average.

“Just cutting as the only response is tantamount to political malpractice,” he said.

When Rex said the legislature should repeal Act 388, the controversial law which switched school funding from property tax to sales tax, one of the Berea teachers watching said, “Amen.”

Teachers, who could email questions to Rex during the show, suggested reducing testing to save money. But Rex said that would only save a couple million dollars. One teacher suggested shifting lottery money for college scholarships to K-12 education until the crisis passes. Rex said “the lottery isn’t going to save us.”

Rex told teachers while news for next year sounds bad, it may not be the worst of it.

“As dire as things look for next year, the next year could be much worse because stimulus money runs out,” he said.

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