Tax credits could prompt repeat of harmful exodus

These academies are in a sense an attempt to deal with these problems by avoiding them. While this might be an acceptable course of action for single institutions, it is not a possible course for society. We must face the problems.

— Terry Sanford, in his introduction to The Schools That Fear Built: Segregationist Academies in the South

THE NEW MOVEMENT to shift public money to private schools is really an old one. South Carolina tried this before, in 1963, when segregation was fighting a rear-guard action against social justice.

The General Assembly formed a School Committee, also known as the “Segregation Committee,” and allocated $250,000 for white parents to pay their children’s tuition to private schools. Immediately, a separate, whites-only system sprang up, with new private schools forming monthly around South Carolina.

The effect was devastating. New and existing private school enrollments soared. When a Robert E. Lee Academy, a Jefferson Davis Academy or a Stonewall Jackson Academy opened in a community, it put a pall over the public schools’ operation. Their vitality was drained as the bankers, lawyers and merchants took their children, their support and their enthusiasm out of the public schools.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1966 ruled the grants that separated children by race unconstitutional. But the damage was done, damage that persists in some communities that never saw the vibrant local — or adequate state — support for public schools return.

And the exodus continued, reaching a new peak in 1970, when full integration was finally instituted in South Carolina public schools.

The worst thing that could happen to any South Carolina community is to see another exodus from the public schools. The draining of resources and active, engaged middle-class parents — who are precisely the ones most likely to take advantage of tuition tax credits — is a real possibility if the state again moves to subsidize private schools. Consider who would be able to take advantage of the tax credits as proposed under the bill called “Put Parents in Charge.” It offers the most benefit to middle- and upper-income parents who already can afford private school tuition. The income limits aren’t low enough, and the assistance provided isn’t high enough, to validate the claim that this bill is intended to help poor children.

“Put Parents in Charge” is the most serious move yet to return to days that must remain in our past — days when the state sanctioned and subsidized separate and unequal schools. It was not right then, is not right now and is another reason this tax credit plan must be rejected.

To read the rest of this series, go to http://www.thestate.com/ and click on “Opinion,” then click on “Our Children, Our Schools.”