JAN. 23, 2009 -- When state Superintendent of Education Jim Rex vowed to confront poverty when he came into office, little did he know he would eventually be talking about his own department.
With mid-year education cuts already at over one-third of a billion dollars, and another cut looming that could see reductions climb to $500 million, Rex will have his work, umm, cut out for him Wednesday when he pleads his case in front of the Senate’s full Education Committee.
But don’t expect Rex to talk about the dreary present. He’s already gone public with a request to return roughly $280 million to his agency.
No, on Wednesday, the man in charge of the state’s public K-12 education system will have his eyes set on bigger game. Instead of rehashing the current tough times, Rex said this week he would try to talk legislators into overhauling the state’s entire tax system before the economy turns around.
“There’s no reason to keep plugging money back into the same, dumb system,” said Rex, , the state’s only statewide elected Democrat as he returned from the Obama inauguration in Washington, D.C.
Superintendent says change has to happen now
Bemoaning recent tax cuts that have hamstrung state government’s coffers, such as the property tax swap in Act 388 which he said unfairly shifted the burden of funding public education from homeowners to the private sector, Rex was forthright with his belief that change had to happen now to save the state from itself.
His biggest change proposal would be for the state to take on a bigger role in funding and supervising schools by increasing the amount of money it contributes statewide to public school districts from 70 percent to 80 percent.
In this, Rex seemed to be culling from a mantra popularized in the 1981 Hal Needham car flick Cannonball Run: “If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly!”
Rex said to accomplish this would take a new statewide property tax which would shore up the differences in need and ability to pay between a host of booming and slacking districts. He argued some struggling districts have had to jack up their millage rates so high to pay for decades of legislative economic neglect, they’ve ended up running off new business investment (i.e., local jobs).
Why a statewide property tax, instead of going back to more local property taxes for schools? Because it would allow poorer school districts to be subsidized in part by funds collected from areas where more affluent people live. That would spread money more evenly around the state based on the whole tax base, not just a local one which might behave much lower value in, for example, rural areas. Such a plan would be likely to result in more uniform education across the state..
To counterbalance the proposed 10 percent increase in state funding, Rex said school districts would be given more latitude and flexibility in spending, with money more following student needs and not categorical programs. State oversight, he said, would ensure all would balance.
“I know I’m going to catch a lot of spears on this one,” said Rex.
Maybe not.
The cornerstone to Rex’s plan seems to be in tune with a chorus of voices from around the state, from legislators like Senate President Pro Tempore Glenn McConnell to the State Chamber of Commerce and conservative think tanks like the S.C. Policy Council and the Palmetto Institute, which have all called for tax reform and overhaul in one form or another.
Two programs in the crosshairs
Rex admitted that some of the state’s -- and by extension his own department’s -- current woes and future challenges overlapped. To that end, Rex said he would welcome discussing the future of two popular, but contentious, programs.
The first was the TERI program, or Teacher and Employment Retention Incentive, which allows teachers to begin collecting retirement benefits while still working. The second program was the one that gives teachers a $7,500 annual stipend for becoming nationally accredited.
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-Clinton) won’t be in the Senate committee for Rex’s Wednesday appearance, but he said he would be interested in what transpired.
As the head of a House study committee looking into ways to modernize the state’s Education Finance Act, Duncan said he wanted to hear that Rex supported a funding plan that would “back-pack” funding, where money would follow students.
The devil, said Duncan and Rex, would be in the details. Both men said differences might come in how much weight certain student issues -- from failing schools to community poverty levels.
Duncan said he was for “collapsing” the various state education funding categories into an easier to understand, and track, format. “More simplified; more streamlined,” he said.
Like Rex, Duncan said he was no fan of Act 388, and liked the idea of more spending flexibility on the local level. Duncan said the state would have to look at scrapping TERI, and the national accreditation stipend, potentially closing it to new entries.
Sen. Phil Leventis (D-Sumter) will be in that Senate committee on Wednesday, as well as the Finance Committee when it next meets. Leventis, not known for subtle rhetoric, said he was not a fan of doing away with the stipend as better teachers “lead to better student outcomes.”
Leventis said the need for fully-funded state public education had become even more important now that the economy has stalled. He likened the situation to the one faced by the Department of Social Services, which has seen demands grow as funding shrunk in recent months.
Crystal ball: It seems like most in Columbia are behind the notion of overhauling the state’s tax structure. But one man’s comprehensive reform might not be appealing to another.
The real question is, even if everyone is on board, will anything happen? This issue is not new, and the legislature has a recent history of talking tough and then tackling a sideline issue as its “headline” grabber, as evidenced by last year’s illegal immigration reform fight. Rex’s concern was that the legislature might be happy just to name a few panels and committees, and “kick the can down the road two years” and not do anything about it now, when it matters.