How Sanford’s vision of ‘choice’ can fit with tax reform, school progress

By CINDI ROSS SCOPPE

Associate Editor

THE MEETING had dragged on too long and the governor was late for another appointment when my colleague Warren Bolton asked about the two South Carolinas. Rich and poor. Rural and suburban. Black and white. One state, two worlds. A divide that explains why our state isn’t moving forward the way we all want it to.

Mark Sanford’s response took us all aback. His advisers even seemed to look surprised.

“This goes back to a larger and much more complex debate on property tax,” he said. “I’ve been evolving on that issue, in some ways both from an educational outputs standpoint and a tax competitiveness standpoint. The current model, the more I’ve learned about it, probably disadvantages rural South Carolina.”

He started to talk about “congruence” between our editorial board’s position on education and his position on education when an adviser handed him a note about his next appointment.

Mr. Sanford was undeterred.

“Right now we fund school districts, and some school districts are wealthier than other districts,” he said. “And if you ever got to a point where you were funding kids and you put the money in the kid, it would lead to complete portability, which is something I’m after, and it would lead to equity, which is something y’all are after, and that’s a longer discussion.”

He didn’t want to get into that longer discussion, but he realized it was impossible to answer the question about the two South Carolinas without talking about how we pay for schools.

“You’ve got to come up with some way that makes a rural county a more attractive alternative,” he said. “And right now they are mathematically locked ... based on the current tax system, because you come from intrinsically a lower tax base, which means you’ve got to be taxing at a higher tax rate. And so you ... can’t take advantage of the fact that you have cheaper land ..., and you’re probably going to have substandard education because of your tax base. And so I think unfortunately, or fortunately, it’s going to lead to a larger debate on education and comprehensive tax reform.”

The governor jumped around to “cultural issues” in rural communities, then health and then suddenly was being whisked away by an anxious aide.

I tried to get him to elaborate as we rode down the elevator. He wouldn’t do it. After the Legislature adjourns, he promised. He didn’t want to start mucking around in their property tax debate, it seemed, and get accused again of dropping a bomb when it was too late to do any good.

But it’s not too late.

The approach he is “gravitating toward” is the one that kept the Senate tied up in knots for the better part of a month. It’s also the one a lot of House members prefer. But it’s one that to this point just hasn’t quite gotten enough powerful people willing to get behind it.

Mr. Sanford hasn’t come up with a new idea. What he’s come up with — if a bit late — is a new reason for people to support that much-debated idea.

Then-Reps. Rick Quinn and Vincent Sheheen started the conversation of the state taking over school funding three years ago when they realized it offered something important to people in both political parties: property tax relief for Republicans, and for Democrats a way to give poor kids in poor districts the same educational opportunities as rich kids in suburban districts.

Now Mr. Sanford has a reason for some Republicans to like it as education policy, even if they don’t like it as tax policy.

The governor talks the loudest about private school choice. But he also supports public school choice — charter schools, magnet schools, open enrollment within and even between districts. Sensible ideas (once you include realistic transportation options) that should be a part of a grand plan that moves education forward by incorporating the best ideas from all across the political spectrum.

What Mr. Sanford seems finally to have hit on is that one of the biggest hurdles to those public choice ideas is the current school funding system, in which one district has twice as much money to spend per pupil as the one next door. District A certainly doesn’t want to accept students from District B if that means taxpayers in District A have to subsidize that student. But if the state provides all the funding, and provides the same amount to educate a gifted middle-class 10-grader in District A as in District B, there’s a lot less resistance.

State funding eliminates one of the biggest barriers to school district consolidation — the fear that taxpayers in low-tax districts will have to pay more if they merge with adjacent high-tax districts. It even produces a reason for residents to want consolidation: to reduce the percentage of money that has to be spent on district overhead, and thus send more of it into the classroom.

Having the state take complete responsibility for school funding won’t lead automatically to district consolidations, or to public school choice. But it makes all those things more likely. And it makes it more likely that the kids whose test scores are dragging down our averages will get the kind of instruction they need to flourish.

Unlike the boutique ideas our governor has spent far too much of his time promoting, this is an education initiative that can move us in the direction of some of Mr. Sanford’s market-based ideas while actually addressing the real problems that face our state.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.