Once each side has rested its case, closing arguments will be heard. Before the year is out, 3rd Circuit Judge Thomas A. Cooper Jr. is expected to clear court dates for those conclusions. The trial began in July.
Eight districts in South Carolina - Dillon 2, Florence 4, Marion 7, Lee, Hampton 2, Orangeburg 3, Jasper and Allendale - are involved in the lawsuit. They claim the way the state funds public schools does not give them enough money to give students a decent education as required by the state’s constitution.
On Thursday morning, the three local school principals took the stand to clarify their depositions for plaintiff attorneys. The state’s attorneys called the move nothing more than an attempt to change what the witnesses said in statements more than a year ago.
|
Each of the three was asked to reiterate his or her answers to questions posed prior to the actual trial. The principals contend poor rural school districts receive inadequate and inferior education opportunities as a result of the state’s school funding system.
Class size, teacher quality, facility concerns and course offerings were among the many issues addressed.
“I need smaller class sizes, additional personnel, afternoon programs that offer remediation and tools to do other things for our students,” Geene-Richardson said. “We are not always equipped to deal with the many problems the children may have.”
McCray, who was the last to testify before court adjourned at noon, said he was hired as principal of Timmonsville High School in the middle of the 2002-03 school year because of the poor performance of the students and leadership at the school. The chief job of a principal is to see that students achieve, he said.
“Teachers weren’t being led to make students achieve, so they weren’t performing to their utmost abilities,” he said. “There were programs in place and the principal wasn’t using them to improve academic achievement.”
Dr. Everette Dean, superintendent of Marion 7, is scheduled to take the stand at 9:30 a.m. today. The court fight began more than a decade ago. A similar lawsuit brought by school districts in 1988 was unsuccessful, with the court finding that the state’s school financing mechanism was a “rational and constitutional means by which to equalize the educational standards of the public school system.”
The districts then decided to broaden their focus to include the concept of adequacy. The lawsuit was filed Nov. 2, 1993, in Lee County by 29 rural and poor school districts. More districts joined, although the lawsuit focuses on the eight districts involved in the trial.
Cooper dismissed the lawsuit in 1993, but the districts appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court. The justices ruled in 1999 that the state constitution “requires the General Assembly to provide the opportunity for each child to receive a minimally adequate education.”
The state argues the plaintiff districts have a sufficient number of classrooms and related facilities that are at least minimally adequate.
They also say students in those districts and throughout the state are exposed to a curriculum that far exceeds the requirements of the constitution and that at least minimally adequate instructional materials are available.
Let us know what you think of this story | Send us a letter to the editor