Guest Column: Schools drowning in money Voices of Carolina If you read a newspaper, get your news from radio or TV, or just listen to your local public school administrators you would have to believe money is tight. Almost every day you can hear someone crying about the "cuts" to the education budgets and fret over how more money can be found. But the truth of the matter is far different. And the proof for this comes from an unlikely source, the National Education Association teachers' union itself. In a report entitled "Rankings and Estimates 2003," the teachers' union details facts about education spending for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Their report on South Carolina is shocking. Today, taxpayers in South Carolina fund public education to the tune of $9,260 per pupil. That puts us above the national average and 20th overall in the nation. When you consider that just 10 years ago South Carolina was 49th in the nation in spending, you can see how fast we've increased spending in a very short time. But there is one other fact worth noting in the report. Of the $6.3 billion we spend on schools, only 28.2 percent goes to pay teachers while more than 70 percent is spent on administration and other functions not directly related to teaching the kids. This is well below the national average. So, while the so-called "education establishment" demands more and more money from the over-taxed families of South Carolina, they are putting that money in their own pockets and not in the classroom. The teachers are shortchanged. And we know from test scores and graduation rates that students and parents are shortchanged. Money is not the problem with schools in South Carolina. The problem is an entrenched, arrogant administration that is unresponsive to the parents or the taxpayers. They demanded more money and we gave it to them. They return the favor not by improving the schools but by demanding more money. The answer to our problems in education is to make the administrators feel the heat of competition. If they were held accountable for the billions of dollars we give them, perhaps things would improve. That has been the case in other parts of the nation where school choice has been enacted into law. The simple truth is nothing will change until the education establishment is required to meet the needs and demands of the people who pay the bills and the parents of the students in the system. And that will not happen until a meaningful school choice law is enacted. That is why the Put Parents in Charge Act is so vital to the long-term success of education in South Carolina. And that is why the hundreds of thousands of taxpayers and parents pushing for this common-sense measure will keep fighting until it is the law. The author, Tom Swatzel, is president of South Carolinians for Responsible Government in Murrells Inlet. Click here to return to story: http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/050304/LOCschoolvoices.shtml