The effort makes Haley the first governor to be serious about addressing the problem of growing disparity between poor schools and wealthier districts since a landmark school equity lawsuit was filed on behalf of several rural school districts 20 years ago, says Bud Ferillo, who produced and directed the 2005 award-winning documentary “Corridor of Shame: The Neglect of South Carolina's Rural Schools.” (The State Supreme Court has yet to make a decision in that case — yes, two decades later.)

In the early 2000s, Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges brought a state lottery to South Carolina where $687 million in proceeds have gone to K-12 education since 2002. Under the administration of Republican Gov. Mark Sanford, the school choice movement —public support for private schools — was a priority.

Haley's plan includes:

• Nearly $100 million for poverty-stricken students.
• Nearly $30 million to beef up broadband capabilities.
• About $30 million to hire teaching coaches.

Lawmakers and education advocates are hoping more details come out as they debate the issue. 

“We're going to have to make sure monies are there and not start programs where money isn't there,” said Spartanburg Republican Rep. Rita Allison, who is on the House Ways and Means Committee and was an education advisor to Sanford. 

Haley has said no new taxes would be needed to pay for her education plan.

Now is the time for education ... and politics

The Palmetto State's financial landscape has been improving in recent years, and its budget outlook is about where it was just prior to the Great Recession, according to State Budget Director Les Boles. The money for Haley's proposal will come from up to $400 million in new tax revenue that budget forecasters expect the state to reap.

Education reform is likely to play out in two arenas this year: under the copper dome of the Statehouse in Columbia, and in a hotly contested rematch campaign for governor between Haley and likely Democratic nominee Vincent Sheheen.

The Camden senator and lawyer has made his own education plan a priority, which focuses on government-funded statewide 4-year-old kindergarten. Legislative Democrats support his plan to expand a program that currently only includes at-risk children in 36 of the state's 46 counties. Last year, Sheheen was the driving force behind adding $26 million for the program for at-risk children.

Democrats so far have played a kind of rhetorical jujitsu with Haley on her education package.

“I’m glad the governor is now making funding for rural public schools a priority. Senate Democrats have long advocated for additional funding for poor, rural school districts,” said Senate Minority Leader Nikki Setzler of Lexington. “This past year, we led the effort to expand state funded 4-old-kindergarten for at-risk children so that 4K is now available to at-risk children in more than 50 school districts, many in rural areas. Continued expansion of state-funded 4 year-old-kindergarten needs to be a part of any education plan going forward.” And Orangeburg Democratic Sen. Brad Hutto said he “belatedly” welcomed Haley to the issue.

They have some context and recent history on their side.

The State newspaper reported last summer that education spending made up a quarter of Haley's vetoes since she took office in 2010. Her veto strikes have added up to more than $200 million in public education spending. As a lawmaker when it came to education, Haley was a vocal champion of school choice proposals that would have diverted public money to private schools. That's opened the door for the state Democratic Party to frame the governor's new public education plan as a “Hail Mary initiative launched in the midst of her reelection campaign.”

But public education advocates outside the Legislature have given initial praise to Haley's focus on low-income students. And absent from her plan are the school-choice measures to give tax breaks for families with children in private schools, something that has become a divisive issue at the Statehouse in the past decade.

Welcome, refreshing

“Any emphasis on the plight of the rural districts is welcome, regardless of who proposes them,” Ferillo said.

Debbie Elmore, a spokesman for the South Carolina School Boards Association, called Haley's stance on wanting to address public school funding refreshing.

“Everything she said was very positive … and that's been a void for a long time,” Elmore said, adding that an advocate in the executive office focusing on public education has been lacking for years. “So that was very nice.”

But Elmore worried the plan did not go far enough to address fundamental flaws in the state's tax structure that affect the way money flows to public schools.

In 2006, for instance, lawmakers passed Act 388, which removed residential property taxes from school funding essentially to give tax relief for coastal property homeowners whose taxes had gone up.  At the same time, it raised the sales taxes to 6 cents per dollar in hopes that it would make up the difference. But an economic downturn led to dropping sales tax collections and hurt poor counties. There's not been the will at the Statehouse to revisit Act 388, despite grumblings from many corners.

Elmore said she hoped that becomes part of the conversation moving forward.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers agree that a child living in a poor or wealthy part of South Carolina shouldn't affect what kind of education the child receives at a public school based on funding. But some said they wanted concrete details before making a commitment to taking up Haley's plan.

House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston, didn't fully embrace Haley's education agenda when asked about it this week by reporters. He said he saw education as a top priority in 2014 in the sense that education was a subset of the economy.

Corey Hutchins is a reporter with the Charleston City Paper and contributor to Statehouse Report.

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Alimony reform conference: A statewide nonprofit dedicated to reforming South Carolina’s alimony laws will meet from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Jan. 11 at Dupre’s Catering, 300 Senate Street, Columbia. Keynote speaker is Steve Hitner, founder of Massachusetts Alimony Reform. $15 fee to attend. More: Contact Wyman Oxner at 803.531.3002.

Ways and Means subcommittees. Several House subcommittees will meet during the week to discuss budget requests:

• Higher ed. Members will meet with Clemson, Francis Marion and Coastal Carolina university officials an hour after adjournment Tuesday. The committee will also meet one hour after adjournment Wednesday to discuss requests from Winthrop and S.C. State universities and the state Department of Archives and History. Agenda.
  
  
• Justice. A House Ways and Means subcommittee will meet in Blatt 305 with the Administrative Law Court and Department of Juvenile Justice 1.5 hours after Tuesday’s adjournment. Members will meet Wednesday to discuss budget requests from the Judicial Department and the Department of Corrections. Agenda.
  
  
• Mental Health. House budget writers will meet one hour after the session adjourns Wednesday with officials from the Department of Mental Health. Location: Blatt 108. Agenda.
  
  
• Regulatory. Committee members will meet an hour after the session adjourns Wednesday with the Patient Compensation Fund, Board of Financial Institutions and Department of Insurance. Location: Blatt 501. More.
  
  
• Education. Members will meet with officials from the state Department of Education and Education Oversight Committee 1.5 hours after adjournment Wednesday in Blatt 521 and on Thursday with the S.C. Public Charter School District and the Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Agenda.
  

Legislative dinner. The Riley Institute at Furman will have its annual Wilkins Legislative and Civic Awards Dinner at 7:30 p.m. Jan. 14 at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. Tickets are $125 each. More.

Bonds. The Joint Bond Review Committee will meet in 308 Gressette at 9 a.m. Wednesday to consider permanent improvement projects, including a $60 million project to renovate the Rita Hollings Science Center at the College of Charleston and a $27.5 million Student Health Center at the University of South Carolina.  Agenda.

Conservation. The state Senate will hold its annual “Conservation with the Conservationists” at 10 a.m. Wednesday in 105 Gressette.

News that Gov. Nikki Haley wants to spend almost $100 million on education for kids in poor areas leads many wags to believe that she’s been scared into making it a political issue because of the work by her likely Democratic opponent, state Sen. Vincent Sheheen of Camden. 

Not only did Sheheen write a long treatise on education reform in a book last year, but he secured $26 million in 4-year-old kindergarten for poor kids last year. Proof about whether Haley is serious will come if Haley really puts muscle, not photo ops and rhetoric, behind her proposal. 

The governor was to appear today at elementary schools in Walterboro and Orangeburg.

As a big education debate plays out this year in the Statehouse, one thing that might get caught up in it is opposition to Common Core standards being initiated in public schools nationwide.

Conservative groups across the country have protested the new standards in a way that public education advocates worry could politicize educational standards. Pickens GOP Sen. Larry Martin says there was a hardcore vocal group of activists approaching state lawmakers with stacks of misinformation on the subject.

Said dismissively by his Democratic colleague Brad Hutto of Orangeburg: “Can you spell 'evolution?' That's all it's about.”

From morality to truthiness

Look for this year’s opening of the legislative session to be far different than past years. 

A coalition of South Carolina progressives, taking cues from last year’s Moral Monday protests of the Republican-led Statehouse in North Carolina, will offer a “Truthful Tuesday” this year to protest the legislature’s inaction on enacting Medicaid expansion, protecting voting rights and improving education.

Buses and carpools are being organized in Aiken, Beaufort, Charleston, Hilton Head Island, Hopkins, Rock Hill and Spartanburg to transport people from across the state to the “Enough is enough” rally at noon Tuesday. 

Coalition members include the S.C. Progressive Network, the S.C. Education Association, S.C. Christian Action Council, the state chapter of the National Association of Social workers, and the state chapter of the NAACP.

Attendees are being encouraged to wear black to mourn lives lost because of the failure to expand Medicaid.

• More: http://www.truthfultuesday.net

“It’s as if the earth is slowly taking it back,” he wrote Friday on SouthernCrescent.org. “It represents a time long passed, but also it reminds me how everything is ‘of the earth.’”

Across the Carolinas, old tobacco barns are disappearing at an amazing pace. Once a dominant structure in rural areas, as many as nine barns out of 10 are gone compared to the number in place during the peak of tobacco production a few decades ago.

In South Carolina, Coastal Carolina historian Wink Prince estimates the state had as many as 25,000 tobacco barns, mostly in the Pee Dee, in the 1950s when tobacco production peaked on about 100,000 acres. Today? There might be only a few hundred tobacco barns left -- and no more than 2,000, Prince guessed.

In North Carolina, the number of barns was about ten times more -- 250,000 -- when Tar Heel farmers grew up to 700,000 acres of tobacco a year in the 1930s, estimated state historical preservation officer Michael Southern. He figured there were no more than 10,000 left across the state today.

“That sounds like a lot, but they’re disappearing every day,” he said. “It’s a sad loss of a cultural icon. If I got upset every time one disappeared, I would have jumped off a bridge a long time ago.”

So, what should we do -- let them keep falling down or try to figure out how protect barns so our children will be able to view pastoral scenes that show visual evidence of our heritage and a way of life that fueled the Pee Dee for years?

“I would hope that a certain number of them could be preserved so that we would have some sort of tangible record, a visual record of a time,” said Eric Emerson, director of the S.C. Department of Archives and History. “The economic engine for that area for a long time was the culture of tobacco. It’s a broad period that was just as long-lasting as the textile industry and you see vestiges of that.” 

The state, he said, has created incentives for preserving and restoring old textile mills, which often end up as apartment lofts, businesses and more. Why not work on an incentive for preserving old tobacco barns, cotton houses, silos, historic barns and other structures around the state? 

That’s a good idea, said state Commissioner of Agriculture Hugh Weathers.

“In the Pee Dee, a tobacco barn is next to a church steeple in terms of importance in the rural community,” he said.

So here’s an idea for state legislators -- an idea that shouldn’t be too controversial and might be something Democrats, country club Republicans and tea party Republicans can rally around: Let’s create an income tax incentive for landowners who spend money to preserve old farm structures that can be seen from a county road or highway. 

To qualify for a tax credit of 25 percent of the money they use to stabilize or preserve an old farm building, they’d have to get it put on the National Register of Historic Places, which means the building would have to be at least 50 years old. The preserved building should not be used for significant commercial purposes, because farm buildings in use may qualify for  existing tax breaks. And you could put a cap on the maximum amount of the incentive every year to keep the budgetary impact low so the state didn’t lose too much revenue. For example, if owners spent $10,000 each to preserve 100 buildings, the impact to the state budget would be $250,000 a year.

Think of this proposal as a way to incentivize farmers and landowners to create rural heritage sites to preserve agricultural vistas of the state. 

Weathers said preserving old tobacco barns and other buildings possibly could keep some rural property values higher because of their ties to the past.

So, who’s going to be first in line to write a bill to help preserve our rural agricultural vistas?

Andy Brack is publisher of Statehouse Report.  You can reach Brack at: brack@statehousereport.com.

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Warmth. All say at the same time: “Thank goodness the damned polar vortex is gone.” The one good thing about the big freeze: It might have killed off pesky mosquito larvae and greatly slowed invasive species in the Palmetto State.