Struggle for education resources resumes in Manning court today

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In Clarendon County in 1950, 20 black parents filed a lawsuit against the local white school superintendent seeking bus transportation for their children, just like that provided for white children.

The Rev. Joseph A. DeLaine Sr., a school principal, was a leader of those black parents. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an appeal of the case known as Briggs v. Elliott that segregated schools were inherently unequal and unconstitutional, a victory for DeLaine and his fellow black citizens.

But the Rev. DeLaine had his church burned to the ground, his life threatened, and ultimately gunshots fired at him until he left South Carolina. His son Joseph DeLaine Jr., was an American soldier serving in Korea at the time.

Today, Joseph DeLaine Jr., 70, serves on a presidential commission to commemorate the 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation that his father helped start in Clarendon County.

"My father was run out of South Carolina. Whether I had the intention of leaving or not, I had no choice" about returning, DeLaine said.

"In order for us to understand and direct our future, we must know our past. Even if we get a favorable decision in court, it will not be fully implemented until many more social changes take place," DeLaine said Friday in an interview.

Last year, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued a "Call for Action in Education," which talked about the "unfulfilled promise" of the Brown v. Topeka ruling by the Supreme Court.

"The facts are clear: the persistent failure of schools to provide equality of opportunity for all students is having a devastating impact on communities of color and the future of our nation," the NAACP report said.

DeLaine said it is no small irony that the trial beginning today in Manning to challenge to state funding equity for poor, rural and often majority-black school districts is taking place where the struggle against segregated schools began.

The trial is just another stage in a continuum of struggle that started out pitting black against white, and goes on between poor versus rich, and the rural versus urban parts of South Carolina, said Valinda Littlefield, a history professor at the University of South Carolina.

Universal education started with Reconstruction, she said. Newly freed blacks pushed for universal education paid for by the government, Littlefield said.

"They saw what education meant, probably better than anyone else. It was the key that opens doors. Without it, they were going to remain enslaved, whether on paper or not," Littlefield said.

"We've had this struggle for resources for a very long time. In Briggs v. Elliott, it started out from the need for a bus, basic things people were not getting," Littlefield said.

In 1954, it was still about access; there was some access to education, but there still was not a level playing ground, she said.

Littlefield said it remains the same fight, over and over again, for basic education resources.

Today, these desperately poor school districts will charge in their lawsuit that the way the state funds public schools violates the state constitution.

In counties such as Clarendon and Williamsburg that line the I-95 corridor, students attend schools that contrast sharply with those of the state's most affluent region along the I-85 corridor, bristling with taxpaying industries that provide high-wage jobs.

The state's lawyers argue the General Assembly is meeting its constitutional obligation. Today, a decade after the poor districts filed a lawsuit, the two sides will meet in court in Clarendon County.

The current legal battle began over who pays for employee benefits, building improvements and buses. Carl Epps, attorney for the school districts, said the state has consistently shifted financial costs from the state to the districts. The poor districts don't have the tax base to provide an adequate education, he said.

A property tax mill in Marion District 7 generates just $9,000, for example, compared with the one mill in Greenville County that generates $1.5 million.

The state Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that the General Assembly is responsible for providing "the opportunity for each child to receive a minimally adequate education."

The districts involved in the lawsuit have "extremely high" dropout rates, extremely poor test scores, high concentrations of poverty and live in economically depressed areas, Epps said.

Bobby Stepp, the lawyer representing the state, said the state is meeting its obligation. "The standard is one of opportunity, not achievement," he said.

He said he will prove students have sufficient classrooms and related facilities, students are exposed to a curriculum that "far exceeds" constitutional requirements, teachers are certified to teach the subjects they're assigned, and adequate instructional material.

The Education Finance Act of 1977 aimed to provide just that. The law states that it would "establish substantially equitable current operation funding levels for programs for South Carolina's public school students, regardless of their geographic location, after the students are transported to school and housed in school plants."

The law laid out a formula to be used each year to determine the appropriate funding level per student throughout the state.

But only in a handful of years since it was passed has the General Assembly funded the Education Finance Act at the recommended level. For the current year, the formula recommended $2,201 per student, while the Legislature provided just $1,777.

State Sen. John Land, D-Manning, said the Legislature could have gone a long way toward diffusing the equity issue by fully funding the $2,201 base student cost this year.

"This is sort of typical of South Carolina. Before we adequately funded our prisons, the federal court had to tell us to do it. Before we integrated our schools, the court had to tell us to do it. There are too many times when our Legislature did not do what he should have done, and the courts had to intervene. It's the same old thing over and over again," Land said.

"We said in the Education Finance Act, we basically said there must be equity in funding," Land said.

But Land said the EFA remains an unfulfilled promise because of chronic under-funding.

"We ought to decide on the state level what it costs to educate a child, and have all of that money come from state income, corporate and sales taxes. Then a child in Clarendon County would have the same spent on him as is being spent in Greenville," Land said.

Today, J.A. DeLaine Jr. continues to work to help improve schools in his home county, even though he lives in Charlotte.

"I'm not seeing any great progress in Clarendon County's schools. Physical buildings have changed and improved. However, I question the advancement of the quality of education," DeLaine said.

DeLaine said there are issues of leadership and finance in the Clarendon County schools where his father help launch the desegregation lawsuit.

It may be necessary for the state to intervene in the decision-making process and management of the schools there, in addition to providing more funds.

"They have three districts in a county with just 35,000 people. They are top-heavy with management," DeLaine said.

Industry-rich districts such as Greenville can make up the shortfall by increasing local property taxes. But many rural districts have so little taxable property that they cannot raise property taxes enough to adjust for major state funding shortfalls.

That, the poor districts say, creates an inherently unequal education system reminiscent of the old racially divided segregated system of a half-century ago.

"In Greenville, you have more industry in one block than we have in all of Clarendon County," Land said.

"We're going do the same old path again. The legislative leaders need to step up to the plate and let the state of South Carolina take over the funding of education," Land said.

(Staff writer Cindy Landrum contributed to this article.)