“Dum spiro spero” on S.C. Public Education

Twenty years from now, historians just might look back on the past week as the tipping point for state legislators finally “getting it” that public education, particularly in rural areas, needs a lot of attention, not episodic Band-aids.
The state House of Representatives finally seems to have a leader — a man who grew up in the Corridor of Shame’s Darlington County — who is walking the walk, not just talking the talk about public education.
GOP House Speaker Jay Lucas this week challenged a special new panel of leaders he appointed to look for real fixes to public education, solutions that should be innovative, bold and inventive.
He told legislators and lay leaders to use an approach offered by Britlish writer and thinker C.S. Lewis, who once said, “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles, but to irrigate deserts.”
Lucas reflected, “Cutting down a jungle does nothing but focus solely on correcting the current inadequacies in our system. Hacking away at ineffective policy will only yield minimally adequate results.
“Instead, focus on irrigating the desert. Focus on achieving what others think cannot be achieved. Make South Carolina’s educational system competitive on the national scale.”
Comments like that illustrate that Lucas is serious and wants legislators, often lackluster in thinking outside the box, to look for solutions that will be transformative for students from Dillon County to Abbeville County.
“If we have procedures and programs that work, keep them,” Lucas implored. “If there is a program you believe is failing, then scrap it and find a new approach.”
Lucas’ marching orders are pretty clear: Do something big, for a change.
Bud Ferillo, the Columbia public relations guru who brought national attention to the failings of rural education in schools along the Interstate 95 corridor in his 2005 “Corridor of Shame” documentary, understands how Lucas’ words show the attitude toward public education really may be changing in the Statehouse.
“With the strong decision [last year] from the Supreme Court, last legislative session’s increased funding of early childhood education, a new superintendent of education, a new Speaker of the House and improved state revenue projections, the stars are aligned for genuine collaboration on the problems in our poverty schools,” Ferillo told us this week. “It will take years to assure quality education in these districts, but I think we have the wind at our backs for meaningful, sustained improvements. I am excited about this impressive beginning.”
So is Ferillo’s longtime friend, past Gov. and U.S. Secretary of Education Dick Riley of Greenville. He told committee members they had a real chance to do something remarkable with public education.
In seven pages of remarks, Riley outlined what really is a blueprint for change in rural public education. He told the policy review and reform task force that last year’s S.C. Supreme Court decision imploring the state to deal with inequities of rural education provides a real chance for a fresh start.
Riley told members to think strategically, expansively, comprehensively and with a long-term view. He said they needed to have a sense of urgency. “There are 130,000 elementary and secondary students in the plaintiff districts,” he said. “We cannot lose another generation of children when we have a chance to do right by them now.”
Riley then offered 13 major policy recommendations, from attracting and retaining effective teachers and leaders to providing high-quality after-school and summer learning programs, and reforming high schools.
It’s going to take a long time, Riley and Lucas agreed. The effort by the state has to be sustained, not piecemeal as it has been year after year as new leaders trash what their predecessors did.
“We also know that initiating these reforms is a complicated process that requires more than just the ‘spaghetti approach,’” Lucas said. “We can’t afford to simply throw a bunch of ideas up against the wall hoping that some stick. This is why I have brought all of you together to work towards a real solution.”
“Dum spiro spero,” our state’s motto. “While I breathe, I hope” our state lawmakers won’t lose this chance to do what they should have done generations ago..
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at: brack@statehousereport.com.