Hollie Bennett believes that public schools are failing S.C. children and that parents don’t have time to wait for government to fix them.

The social worker from Rock Hill thinks it’s time to try something new.

At a public hearing Wednesday, Bennett urged lawmakers to pass a tuition tax credit bill, which she says would help parents fed up with the current system afford private schools or other options.

“What is left for a parent to do?” Bennett said. “Public schools are accountable to the government, and this has gotten us where? Last, that’s where. Tell me, where is the accountability?”

But Craig Stein, who volunteers in the Greenville schools, thinks the tax credit proposal is too risky.

“We cannot afford to waste limited state tax dollars on a program that has not been proven to work,” he said.

Perhaps not since the debate over the Confederate flag on State House grounds has an issue so galvanized the public.

Bennett and Stein were among more than 30 parents, educators and business and political leaders — including Gov. Mark Sanford — trying to persuade lawmakers to support or oppose a controversial tuition tax credit bill.

More than 80 people packed a House auditorium for the four-hour hearing — the first opportunity this year for South Carolinians to tell lawmakers how they feel about the controversial bill.

Called “Put Parents in Charge” by supporters, the bill would give tax breaks to parents who want to teach their children at home or send them to private school or another public school.

Opponents said they fear it would resegregate schools that have only in recent decades begun to offer equal education to black and white students.

Many urged lawmakers not to give up on public schools.

“The fact is, we’ve got a plan in place,” said Rick Ott, a member of Choose Children First, a group of business and community leaders opposed to the bill.

In the future, S.C. students will rank in the top half on tests they now fail because accountability standards approved in 1998 are improving schools, he said.

Reed Swann, a Barnwell County grandparent, reminded lawmakers that Sanford brought piglets to the State House last year to make a point about pork in the budget.

“This year we have another pig in the House — it’s a pig in a poke,” Swann said of the bill. “With all this pork, where’s the beef? The answer is there is none.”

Supporters of the bill told stories about public school children who were sexually abused, got hooked on drugs or alcohol, or failed to learn to read. They begged lawmakers to give parents the ability to choose other schools that would help troubled students.

“Do you realize the anguish that has been caused the parents and the harm that has been done to the children?” asked Kathleen Carper, president of the S.C. Association of Independent Home Schools.

For parents who want to send children to those schools but can’t afford it, she said, “a tax credit or scholarship would allow them to make that choice.”

“It is about empowering parents to decide what is best for their children,” said her husband, Jim Carper, a USC professor.

Florence Mayor Frank Willis invited lawmakers to the Pee Dee, home to the state’s highest unemployment rates and poorest residents.

He told lawmakers to ask whether private schools there are able — or willing — to take the children that proponents of the bill say would leave the public schools.

“Come see for yourselves what our students and teachers and parents are up against,” he said.

Sanford, the bill’s highest-profile supporter, said private schools would emerge if parents want to leave public schools.

Sanford popped into the meeting unexpectedly while his education policy adviser, Charmeka Bosket, was speaking.

Sanford took her place at the podium to say that the state must consider alternative plans because statistics show what S.C. schools are doing now is failing.

“There are a lot of teachers and a lot of principals working very hard,” he said. “But there is clearly something wrong.”

Lawmakers on the subcommittee could meet again as soon as today to decide whether to pass the bill on to the full Ways and Means Committee.

Reach Talhelm at (803) 771-8339 or jtalhelm@thestate.com.