'Enough is Enough'

By Anna Mitchell  

APRIL 18, 2010 7:47 p.m. (0)

This week’s revelation that state revenues are $60 million lower than lawmakers had thought – largely a clerical error – has done nothing to help the financial picture of the state’s public schools.

Educators, parents and other stakeholders in public schools will be rallying Monday to let legislators know in Columbia they are paying attention to the cuts and would prefer to see state-revenue declines addressed with a scalpel rather than an axe. The 5 p.m. rally will be at the International Center for Automotive Research off Millennium Drive near the intersection of Interstate 85 and Laurens Road.

Free parking will be available in the facility’s parking deck at the end of Research Drive on the ICAR campus.

Grier Mullins, executive director of Greenville-based Alliance for Quality Education, said she hoped lawmakers would approach each agency individually rather than with across-the-board cuts.

School districts across the state are preparing for base-student state funding to decline to 1995 levels in the fall – that is, to about $1,600 per student. This is down almost $1,000 from where funding stood at the beginning of the 2008 school year.

Erwin Maddrey, chairman of the Alliance’s Board of Directors, told Greenville County school board members earlier this week his organization resolved to join the county’s PTA and Student Improvement Councils over its concern for the district’s ongoing, and worsening, financial condition.

“The goal of the rally is to convene a large number of citizens to show our legislators in Greenville County and across the state that enough is enough,” he said.

Total per-student funding, according to the most recent report from the State Department of Education, was $8,114 in Greenville County in 2009. This was up 6.5 percent from 2008, when the district spent $7,621 per student.

In that same period, average administrator salaries went up 8.1 percent and average teacher salaries went up 4.5 percent. State mandated raises accounted for much of the raises, and the district’s highest-paid employee, Dr. Penny Fisher, has frozen her salary since 2008.

All told, despite the money increases, district officials have said state and local funding has not kept up with costs of doing business as usual. Class sizes were increased last year by 0.5 student per teacher, supply budgets have been frozen and the district – still in the process of forming it’s 2010-2011 – is reserving the possibility of fives days of teacher furloughs.

Several key education organizations – including the the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and state associations for school boards, school administrators, teachers and school communications – sponsored a similar rally April 14 that drew hundreds to the Statehouse in Columbia.

The Monday event in Greenville will feature several speakers – a Hughes Academy parent, the county’s Teacher of the Year Kelly Nalley, Bethel Elementary Principal Brenda Byrd and a League Academy eighth-grader.

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