Lawmakers seek to punish unemployed educators

Let's begin with vocabulary.

"Employed" means having a job, and working.

"Unemployed" means not having a job, and not working.

"Unemployment benefits" are the weak, thin and pale safety net that South Carolina lawmakers pretend to offer our state's unemployed citizens as subsistence -- the barest minimum in funding that might help buy groceries and little else.

Because some public employees

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Leventis speaks truth to entrenched power

Sen. Phil Leventis has many fans and many detractors, and that's likely because he's been in office many years.

As he wraps up his last term, it's pleasant to see him still swinging for the fences, as he does in this opinion-editorial, published last week in The State.

Tell it, Senator.With my legislative tenure coming to an end, I want to share something with my fellow South Carolinians. Our

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South Carolina: Where the rubber meets the road

Atlanta, the metropolis, identifies with several well-established brands -- Coca-Cola and CNN among them -- and is capital of the South itself, with Georgia generally known for peaches and peanuts. So Georgia feeds its people two ways, with the fruits of the earth and with intelligence about their world.

North Carolina transitioned from tobacco and marine fisheries to Research Triangle Park,

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Is Ware Shoals cutting educators' pay?

A note was published last week in the Greenwood Index-Journal about a proposal to cut educators' salaries to help balance the local district's budget, but I haven't heard whether the issue has been resolved, or how.

This was the original note, by reporter Erin Owens:Ware Shoals School District Board of Trustees discussed possible ways in which the district can cut its budget for the 2012-13

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Equalization schools highlighted in Charleston

Having served briefly on the United States Supreme Court, Governor Jimmy Byrnes foresaw in 1951 that a number of low-level federal lawsuits would likely make their way to the nation's highest court within a few years and, given the Court's composition, might result in an order striking down the fifty-year-old "separate but equal" principle in public accommodations.

Byrnes made no secret of his

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Bamberg trustees address lunch money problems

I can understand the need to allow students to charge their meals. Children in poor, rural counties are likely the children of under-employed South Carolinians.

If Governor Nikki Haley finds a spare minute in her day -- I know it must be crowded with national media requests and fashion photographers, all clamoring for an audience with her grace -- she might give some thought to improving the

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Supreme Court upholds public education as a right*

Next time I hear an American politician declare that we should be more like India, I'm going to shout AMEN.

Tucked away in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal last week was this nugget by Tripti Lahiri and Diksha Sahni:India's Supreme Court upheld a law Thursday that supporters say can transform access to education for hundreds of millions of poor children but critics claim infringes

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Darlington finds cheaper bus fuel solution

Again, a good idea comes from the Pee Dee region.

While lawmakers look for ways to privatize the state's school bus system and turn another part of public education into a profit-making enterprise, the leaders in Darlington County's school system are innovating and solving problems within the public school system.

Which seems to prove the old notion once again: Empower professionals to solve

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Lottery proves to be a regressive tax in South Carolina

Columnist Dwayne Green, writing in the Charleston City Paper, took up recently an issue that catches my attention from time to time, the evidence that poor people who play the lottery the most get the least benefit from it, directly and indirectly.

Green writes, persuasively,What if the S.C. General Assembly announced a new tax that would be paid primarily by the state's poor and minority

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Greenville News defends public employment penalties

Editors of the Greenville News praised today the legislature's move to raise public employees' required contributions to their retirement fund, calling it "not perfect" but "necessary."

Indeed, it's imperfect. It's also unnecessary, as lawmakers could have adopted -- could still amend themselves and adopt -- a host of alternative strategies, from raising sufficient revenue to address the state's

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Haley ignores education questions, promotes book

A huge thank-you to Paul Bowers of the Charleston City Paper for catching Governor Nikki Haley's book-promotion gimmick on Facebook yesterday and documenting the interaction. If such things happen again, we should share the word as quickly as possible, to get as many interested South Carolinians as possible involved in asking questions.

That is, the ones who are Haley's Facebook friends.

Here

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Parents defending public schools offend right wing

Here's the good that has come from this post: Anyone wishing to communicate their support for traditional public schools in South Carolina are armed with a great set of talking points!

As I understand it, a family moved to a small town in South Carolina because of the "notoriety" of its public schools. (No, I don't understand that reference, either.) And when they arrived, they joined the local

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AT&T sets its sights on education in SC

Uh-oh.

Another corporate giant has discovered that there are potentially billions of dollars to be made once South Carolina converts all of its public schools to private alternatives, and it's laying down a big, fat marker on those future profits.

From Midlands Biz comes the announcement:As access to skilled workers becomes increasingly vital to the U.S. economy, AT&T is launching a

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Sanford-Haley advisor denies critique of state's economy

A couple of old adages come to mind here. One is that a kicked dog barks. The other is that figures lie and liars figure.

I think the average South Carolinian feels the truth as it's described in an economic report issued by TD Economics recently, which says that our state lawmakers' budget decisions over recent years contribute to our inability to rebound after the recent recession.

Ordinary

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Lawmakers punish public employees, expand charters

The South Carolina Education Association publishes by email a weekly update of legislative activity, and the update from the past week documents the damage done by our lawmakers to the state's retirement system.

To wit:The House passed H.4976 (Ways and Means Committee), the bill that changes the S.C. Retirement System this week. Included in this bill are:

• Increases in employee contributions

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Riley: America depends on quality teachers and schools

Former South Carolina Governor Dick Riley is one of the handful of elder statesmen who can be called "education governors," alongside former North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt.

In fact, Riley is one of only two South Carolinians to serve in a presidential Cabinet in the twentieth century; he served as education secretary for former President Bill Clinton, and former Governor Jimmy Byrnes served as

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Louisiana's teachers denigrated by governor, lawmakers

Is this what the new conservative world order will look like? Teachers locked out of their State House, interrogated by lawmakers for daring to speak up on the issues that affect them?

Is this where we're headed in South Carolina, too?With the 12-6 vote -- which came almost 11 hours the committee convened -- two of the four principal measures of Jindal's overhaul of primary and secondary

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Educators blocked from State House in Baton Rouge

Shades of Governor Nikki Haley?

Weeks after sharing a luncheon table with our governor at the White House, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal blocked thousands of educators from gaining entry to the State House in Baton Rouge this morning, while a package of his proposals to dismantle public education in that state was being rolled out in a legislative committee.

There's more to this story -- and

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National educators group offers lobbying tips

The American Association of School Administrators, the national association with which the South Carolina Association of School Administrators is affiliated, has published a helpful note on its website on the topic of gaining greater funding for public education.

It is helpful because it reminds educators in South Carolina of two facts: One, public education and its funding is under attack

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Out-of-state readers: Welcome, and help!

I've noticed something about the readers of Educating South Carolina over the past year, and it has both entertained and puzzled me: Many of ESC's readers are reading from outside South Carolina.

I don't mean that a bunch of South Carolinians are taking vacations across the border and checking-in via their Blackberries. I mean there have been a good many readers from across the nation, regularly

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