Opposition to SCRG not about politics
By JIM FOSTER Saturday, February 14, 20091 comment(s) | Default | Large
Matt Moore's response to my recent article in The Times and Democrat was disappointing but not surprising. He answered my criticism of the pro-voucher group South Carolinians for Responsible Government with the same sorts of misleading statements and personal attacks that have made SCRG justifiably infamous.
Mr. Moore and SCRG continue to imply that independently audited expenditure data from South Carolina's 85 local school districts are somehow tainted and unreliable. More trustworthy, they claim, are data found in the State Budget and Control Board's annual Local Government Finance Report. But those data are not produced by Budget and Control Board auditors, as Mr. Moore claims. The Budget and Control Board gets them from the South Carolina Department of Education.
The difference lies in how the data are interpreted. Mr. Moore and SCRG believe the only "instructional" dollars that matter are the ones used to pay classroom teachers. Unrelated to classroom instruction, in their view, are textbooks, classroom computers and software, school librarians and media specialists, school nurses, school safety officers, school buses, bus fuel, bus mechanics, school cafeterias, school buildings, building maintenance, utilities, teacher training, business operations and administrative expenses of any kind.
When Mr. Moore and SCRG claim that "only 45 cents on the dollar" reaches the classroom, these are the kinds of things that they're leaving out.
Mr. Moore then launched into a personal attack, claiming that my sole motivation in criticizing SCRG was political. I have worked for both Republican and Democratic state superintendents of education, and all of them rightly put children first and politics second. Besides, I was not aware that SCRG had declared a political affiliation. I have always viewed the organization as nonpartisan because Republicans and Democrats seemed to condemn its thuggish behavior in equal numbers. For my part, I enjoy partisan politics solely for its entertainment value, along with demolition derbies and professional wrestling.
Jim Foster is director of communications for the S.C. Department of Education.
To subscribe to the print edition of The Times and Democrat, click here.
pedingsgang wrote on Feb 18, 2009 8:26 AM:
Mr. Moore, would this reform you speak of have to do with school vouchers? You of course understand that this is a way to funnel public funds into private facilities. What happens to the children who have no options of where to attend school or transportation to these schools? What is the taxpayers' responsibility to these children? The children with the least will suffer the most.
If we choose to live in a "me and mine" society, then the lack of quality education for all does not affect me. However, I know that my community depends on the education of the next generation for survival. And I for one am not willing to write off my community's youth and future, like Porth and Tucker on the Calhoun County School Board. "