COLUMBIA — A packed room at a public
hearing Wednesday heard some officials — including Gov. Mark
Sanford in an unannounced appearance — praise tuition tax
credits as a means to improve South Carolina schools, while
others argued the state should not abandon its existing
education accountability efforts as they start to show
results.
Anderson County Taxpayers Association chairman Dan Harvell
attended but did not speak at the hearing before a South
Carolina House of Representatives subcommittee Wednesday
afternoon. The Anderson group has no official position but is
very interested in the topic, Mr. Harvell said.
The hearing was the first chance in this year’s legislative
session for public comment on the proposal to allow tax
credits for parents whose children transfer from public
schools to private schools, home schooling or public schools.
Professor Jim Carper of the University of South Carolina
said — noting that he was not speaking on behalf of the
university — that tax credits would not involve public money.
But opponents of the bill said private schools would retain
their ability to determine which students they would accept,
so in that respect, tax credits would not put parents in
control of where their children were educated.
"There is nothing in this bill to make private schools take
all children who come to their doors," said Leni Paterson, a
member of a Laurens County school board.
State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum said the
tuition tax credit bill would dilute support for public
education at a time when the state’s education accountability
law, passed in 1998, is producing results.
"Education in South Carolina is improving, not just
steadily but dramatically," she said.
Gov. Sanford, who visited the subcommittee hearing as his
education adviser Charmeka Bosket was addressing the group,
said it is time for the state to try market-based reform in
the field of education to create more improvement than
accountability has created.
"We have to look at something more substantial than
incremental change," he said.
A crowd filled to capacity a room that seats 145, and a few
stragglers wandered the hallways of the Statehouse building
where the meeting was held.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Alison Glass can be reached at (864) 260-1275 or by
e-mail at glassag@IndependentMail.com.
