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Sanford opposes appeal of ruling
Statement puts more pressure on lawmakers to improve early childhood education
By AARON GOULD SHEININ
Staff Writer
Gov. Mark Sanford said Friday the state should not appeal Judge Thomas Cooper’s decision in the landmark school funding lawsuit but instead should focus on efforts to improve early childhood education.
The governor’s statement came a day after the judge ruled the state fails to prepare its youngest children for school. But Cooper also said the Legislature provides safe, adequate school buildings, appropriate learning goals and “minimally competent teachers.”
House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, said his “inclination is not to appeal,” but he will not make a decision unilaterally.
A spokesman for Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, said the Senate leader had not decided whether to support an appeal.
Sanford’s statement puts more pressure on lawmakers to improve early childhood education, something many of them were already working toward.
Sen. John Courson, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said he is preparing legislation that would offer state-sanctioned kindergarten to, at least, all 4-year-olds from economically disadvantaged families.
Several House leaders, including Education Committee chairman Ronny Townsend, R-Anderson, and Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, said all 4-year-olds should have access to kindergarten.
Sen. Luke Rankin, R-Horry, has a similar proposal, pre-filed in the Senate, that would require all school districts to offer a 4-year-old kindergarten program, but it would be voluntary.
In addition, Courson wants to keep alive First Steps, the state-funded early childhood program, through at least 2013. Created in 1999, it would be phased out July 1, 2007, if not reauthorized.
The 4-year-old kindergarten proposals would cost from an estimated $50 million to $150 million each year, Courson said. The lower price tag is for full-day kindergarten for 4-year-olds from lower-income families. The highest cost would be to offer full-day kindergarten for all 4-year-olds.
Courson said the state either will pay to improve children’s education now or pay for it later through social services and prisons.
“If we do not get our young people who are at-risk prepared for elementary school, middle school and high school, so they get an education — we’re going to pay for them on the back end in our prison system,” Courson said.
Courson said he, Sen. John Matthews, D-Orangeburg, and Sen. Wes Hayes, D-York, met with state Education Superintendent Inez Tenenbaum last week to discuss the idea of kindergarten for 4-year-olds. Everyone agreed there is a need, but no plan was settled on, he said.
Harrell plans to introduce legislation that addresses another part of the problem: children who do poorly on their first PACT test, in the third grade.
Cooper said the state fails to meet its goals in preparing children to learn. Those problems are evident to third grade, he said.
Harrell, who also is preparing a plan for kindergarten for 4-year-olds, said he interprets Cooper’s ruling to suggest “the General Assembly spent a lot of money on the older grades, but that money comes too late.” He interprets that to mean the state could shift money from higher grades to early childhood intervention.
Harrell’s kindergarten program would incorporate public and private schools, out of necessity if nothing else.
“You’re going to have to use existing pre-school programs, including churches,” Harrell said. “We could set up a reimbursement system so the poorer a person is, the more money they get toward (paying for) the 4-year-old kindergarten. But everybody ought to benefit.”
Sanford offered no specific plans, but said he would work with lawmakers to expand programs such as First Steps.
Rankin’s bill is modeled on an Oklahoma plan that requires school districts to offer voluntary 4-year-old kindergarten programs. It, too, is aimed at improving third graders’ performance on PACT, the state’s primary benchmark test for what a child has learned.
Reach Gould Sheinin at (803) 771-8658 or asheinin@thestate.com.
