IT WAS NOT HARD to find a good number of people who care about South Carolina public schools last week. They gathered in Manning to watch the end of a landmark legal case seeking to end an inequitable education system that has endured too long, one that has allowed South Carolina’s poor, rural school districts to fall behind their better-funded, urban peers.

We do not yet know how that case will ultimately be resolved. But we know one thing. The state’s chief executive, who exhibits no grasp of what is going on in our public schools, displayed his tone-deafness yet again. While eyes engaged in the real business of our state were focused on the important proceedings in Manning, Gov. Mark Sanford jetted off to Milwaukee. His mission? To study that city’s voucher program, which sends public money to private schools.

Fortunately, other than the governor’s time, we can’t say too many public resources were wasted on the junket. The trip was sponsored by the Illinois-based Legislative Education Action Drive, which advocates tuition tax credits for parents who want to send their children to private school or to another public school.

The greatest cost is the lost opportunity as Mr. Sanford wastes his time on tangents, ideas about as far from the real school solutions needed here as one can get. When it comes to working with our public schools in our communities on the solutions they need today, our governor is unacceptably absent and woefully off-track.