When opportunity knocks, education must answer
By Bill Settlemyer
Founder, SCBIZNEWS, LLC
Opportunity knocks when it wants to, not when you want it to. But when that knock on the door comes, you’d better be ready to answer it.
South Carolina has a long history of being ready to welcome new businesses to the state. Most of what people think of as “economic development” has traditionally focused on the role of recruiting out-of-state companies that bring more jobs and higher wages to our citizens. In that context, we’ve done a pretty good job of competing in the economic development arena. Companies that do choose to relocate or expand here typically praise the warm welcome and solid support they receive from communities and our state and local governments.
But “opportunity” is a discerning customer with lots of choices when it comes to places where they can do business. A recent newsletter from the Charleston Regional Development Alliance brought the point home with a report that they lost one prospect recently due in part to dissatisfaction with the region’s K-12 schools. It’s credit to the authors of the newsletter that they didn’t bury the story, which shared the page with other more positive reports.
Achilles’ heel
More than anything else, education is South Carolina’s Achilles’ heel. If we could fix education, truly fix it, we could transform the character and reputation of this state in ways few could even imagine.
First and foremost, that requires investment, meaning long-term commitments of substantial tax revenue. How much? Whatever it takes! That’s how important this is to the state’s future.
With the current budget shortfalls due to a slowing economy, there’s a lot on the line and the possibility of severe cutbacks in education spending just when we ought to be going all out in the other direction.
There are many needs that cry out for funding. The Endowed Chairs program, for example, is beginning to show significant success in drawing nationally recognized academic research faculty to USC, Clemson and MUSC.
Think of the Endowed Chairs as acorns from which mighty oaks will grow. We know the end result of success in building great academic research centers: North Carolina’s Research Triangle, Stanford and Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128 are icons of achievement based on bringing the best academic minds together to achieve great things.
At the other end of the education ladder, the leadership of South Carolina’s United Way organizations are asking legislators to fund an expanded 4K (pre-kindergarten) program, starting with the state’s neediest children. There is widespread agreement that funding 4K programs reaps great dividends by putting young kids on a track toward a successful K-12 experience leading to graduation and career opportunities.
Further up the ladder, the Pathways to Success program now being implemented at the high school level will help students focus on careers they’d actually like to pursue, and then provide specialized course work consistent with their chosen career goals.
Even closer to the work force itself, the state’s technical colleges work in lockstep with employers to deliver that huge middle range of workers who don’t need a four-year degree but must have post-high school training to qualify for a good job.
Here in our region and around the state, one of the most critical issues is the growing shortage of nurses and other health care workers. Trident Technical College needs funding for a new building to accommodate rapidly expanding programs. MUSC and other institutions around the state need additional funding to add nursing faculty and expand their programs.
The tax trap
We still have a state government far too focused on the notion that cutting taxes is the ultimate solution to every problem. Cutting taxes is a cop-out when the state is overwhelmed by legitimate needs that require a reliable and substantial tax base. It’s time we stopped playing this corrosive game of arguing over who will cut taxes the most, because it’s not going to lead to prosperity for our state over the long run.
The same goes for constantly promising that taxes will never be raised. At its worst, it’s cheap pandering to special interests and voters who care far more about their pocketbooks than the common good of our state and its citizens.
On the other hand, tax burdens should reflect some basic sense of fairness. The recent “property tax reform” gave relief to people of limited income whose homes had appreciated rapidly because of where they had lived for many years. But the same “reform” gave generous breaks to the well to do and the very wealthy, people who can and should pay a fairer share of the state’s tax burden than they now answer for.
Jailhouses rock
It’s been pretty well established that when a state shortchanges public education, the state will wind up spending a lot more money on jails and the criminal justice system as a result. And incarceration is only one small measure of the losses we sustain economically and socially from having too many young people fall through the cracks and wind up on the wrong side of the law.
How much should we be spending on education? As much as it takes to truly transform public education in South Carolina into a source of pride and prosperity.
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