It is a big deal. Siphoning public money for private education could lead to school resegregation, says the Rev. Joseph A. Darby, the much-respected African-American minister at Morris Brown A.M.E. Church in Charleston.
Many recall that Darby, who is first vice president of the S.C. NAACP, is the man who gave invocations at the inauguration of Sanford and his predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges.
Darby sees Sanford's voucher proposal as one of the worst education ideas to come along in a long time.
For years, Darby says, South Carolina hasn't adequately funded public education, particularly in the rural areas. A lawsuit brought by poorer school districts seeking fairer education funding featured 16 months of testimony that wrapped up late last year. A decision is expected this summer.
"I refuse to write off schools that have never been given the chance to compete on a level playing field, and (I) find it hypocritical that those (who) refused to equitably fund our schools decide to try 'something new' and blithely call it 'Putting Parents in Charge' to disguise a legislative wolf in sheep's clothing," Darby wrote last week in an e-mail to a voucher-backed group seeking support from black preachers.
Darby said if money were drained now from public schools to provide tax credits to parents who send their kids to private schools, students in many public schools would suffer consequences of already under-funded schools.
"It's a continuation of that same kind of paternalistic thinking that South Carolina has always had, and that's what's been holding us back," he said.
In the e-mail, he claimed the ballyhooed voucher effort is little more than a frightening attempt to modernize two strategies used in the 1960s to block school desegregation efforts.
"One of those was called 'freedom of choice,' which allowed parents to send their children to any public school that they pleased to slow down desegregation. The other, which was ultimately outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court, allowed parents to have tax credits and scholarships to send their children to all-white private schools created with the expressed purpose of maintaining segregation.
"Those private schools, many of which now chase the dollars that the present legislation would offer, served to set public education back by decades in South Carolina, and our (g)overnor wants to abandon those public schools instead of fixing them."
In an interview, Darby added, "It outrages me that 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the same strategies used to fight Brown v. Board are being brought up by our elected officials."
Tom Trait, executive director of the Pee Dee Education Center in Florence, said Darby's argument is strong.
"The obligation of the state is to provide an education for all of the children and it makes no sense if we're going to live in an integrated society to provide education in a segregated manner."
He added that the idea tax credits (vouchers) for private school education would help public schools is a notion "that does not pass the common sense test."
Maybe the ills of vouchers are getting through to people and politicians. In the past couple of weeks, Rep. Ronnie Townsend, the Anderson Republican who chairs the House Education and Public Works Committee, told constituents that the Sanford plan was merely a tax cut to help the wealthy that masqueraded as an education bill, according to the S.C. Education Association.
Also, Rep. Jim McGee, R-Florence, disingenuously tried to distance himself from the voucher idea in a recent letter to a Florence newspaper, even though he's still a co-sponsor of two versions of the voucher bill.
Finally, senior Senate sources claim the measure will get nowhere this year.
Meanwhile, proponents of the measure seem to be using more desperate tactics -- from writing fictitious letters to the editor and threatening letters to school boards, to working stealthily to create support for the proposal among black preachers and spending thousands of dollars on television commercials.
If public-school advocates don't remain vigilant and thwart sneaky, hypocritical tactics, they may find voucher proponents will lose the battle this year but eventually win the war.