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Proposed legislation would help foot education bill

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Following Beaufort County's dramatic loss of nearly $16 million in state school funding last year, state Sen. Scott Richardson plans to introduce legislation that would reform how money is given to schools statewide and bring more of it back to the Lowcountry.

In one of two bills still being drafted, Richardson, R-Hilton Head Island, said the state would be required to give each school district at least 25 percent of the amount it costs to educate all of its students.

For instance, last year, the state government determined that educating a student in South Carolina costs $2,290 a year, said Len Richardson, director of finance at the S.C. Department of Education. Most districts get about 70 percent of that -- per student -- from the state through the Education Finance Act of 1977.

Beaufort County, gets less than 1 percent of that $2,290 cost per student from the state, Scott Richardson said.

"A school district such as Beaufort shouldn't be required to shoulder the entire burden of educating their children," he said.

EFA money -- the largest state education funding source -- is allocated to districts using a complex formula that focuses on a district's property value and student demographics.

Beaufort County, by far, has higher property value than any other county or school district in the state, so it receives less state support -- only a fraction of what other districts receive.

After 2004 state property reassessments kicked in, state funding for the Beaufort County School District fell from $28.4 million in fiscal year 2006 to $13.3 million this year, a 53 percent drop. The majority of the school district's $147 million budget comes from local property tax revenue.

A second bill he said he's working on would also force the state to factor a school district's poverty and the county's real wage into the EFA formula, giving the county more of an advantage when the money is doled out.

Though Beaufort County has an enormous amount of property wealth, primarily south of the Broad River, the school district has a large number of students on free-and-reduced lunches -- an indicator of poverty -- and the county's real wage of $5.18 is eighth-lowest in the state, the senator said.

"Beaufort is not the mega-wealthy place that everyone thinks it is," he said. "A pocket of it is. But it's mostly regular folks."

School district interim Superintendent Phillip McDaniel and Phyllis White, assistant superintendent for finance, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Contact Jonathan Cribbs at 986-5517 or jcribbsbeaufortgazette.com.

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