Sanford signs school bill

Governor pushes community role

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. - Calling it "a whole lot of common sense," Gov. Mark Sanford signed a neighborhood schools bill Wednesday which he said could help put the brakes on suburban sprawl and get parents more involved in education.

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"We can no longer afford, as a state, the old paradigm where you mandated schools out at the edge of town in which you basically push sprawl," Mr. Sanford said.

The law eliminates state rules requiring minimum acreage for new schools and makes it easier to renovate existing buildings for schools. The old rules mandated new high schools be built on 30-acre sites with an additional acre for every 100 students.

Mr. Sanford, surrounded by local educators and state lawmakers, signed the bill at Moultrie Middle School, which he called a great example of a neighborhood school.

Located in the center of Mount Pleasant, many of its pupils walk or ride their bikes each day. Each week, the school grounds play host to a local farmer's market, which attracts people from throughout the town of 53,000.

Neighborhood schools can help get parents more involved in education, and they are less likely to get involved if they have to drive miles to schools on the edge of town, Mr. Sanford said.

"If you want a good educational output, you need to have a sense of community," he added.

Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum supported the bill in the General Assembly, seeing it as "a way to help protect historic buildings and preserve communities," said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

As a practical matter, when school districts wanted waivers from the old acreage requirements, they were granted. The new law "lets districts avoid the whole rigmarole of applying for a waiver that would be granted anyway," Mr. Foster said.

"Thirty years ago, South Carolina began to turn away from a heritage of small schools within communities - like Moultrie Middle - and it was very devastating to our cities and towns," said Dana Beach, the director of the South Carolina Coastal Conservation League.

Requirements for larger campuses damaged the environment and increased transportation costs for both schools and families, he said.

Mr. Sanford opposes - and wrote a letter to that effect to The Beaufort Gazette in January 2002 - a proposal to build a new large high school north of the Whale Branch River in Beaufort County near where he and relatives own property.

The neighborhood school issue "is something that has been made more real to me because I grew up down that way," said the governor, who said the Beaufort proposal breaks with a county comprehensive plan and will cost taxpayers because most pupils would live miles away.

But Mr. Sanford said the driving force behind the new law was a recommendation of the Quality of Life Task Force he appointed last year.

"This is something that impacts the entire state," Mr. Sanford said.

--From the Thursday, July 17, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle