S.C. House Speaker Offers Plan to Improve Schools

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina House Speaker Jay Lucas shared his plan Thursday for improving the state's schools, a massive, thorough bill that came after dozens of conversations with the governor, lawmakers, business leaders and educators.

The proposal includes a wide range of ideas anchored to a student bill of rights that includes promises of safety, financial stability for schools, teachers who are highly qualified and school choice.

The proposal also includes a 10 percent raise for teachers over two years, required consolidation of small and poorly performing school districts, free college tuition for the children of teachers in the worst-performing schools and the creation of a committee to ensure education goals in the state are unified from pre-kindergarten through college and align with what business leaders want.

It also promised to fix the state's 2014 Read to Succeed program, which was designed to ensure students did not advance past the third grade if they couldn't read. Instead, the program has seen reading test scores in the state drop because the law was full of exemptions that have frustrated teachers.

Lucas' bill received wide praise from fellow Republican and Democratic lawmakers, from the private sector and from education officials. "I didn't have to seek them out. They came to me," the Hartsville Republican said with a smile.

But everyone also said they needed time to digest the 26,200-word proposal — just a few hundred words shorter than Ernest Hemingway's classic "The Old Man and the Sea."

In an interview Thursday, Lucas said this proposal in no way is a final offer and he was setting "a template for others to come behind and make a better bill."

Like a bill increasing road funding that final passed in 2017 after years of debate, the spur to action has been the business community. Lucas said the poor state of South Carolina's education system is leaving jobs unfilled that require increasing mental dexterity and knowledge of advanced mathematics that many schools in the state can't provide.

Lucas plans to have several public hearings and other ways to get input from anyone concerned. He understands it is likely implausible to solve everything in a year. The speaker's proposal doesn't touch the formula for school funding, a confusing set of laws and instructions passed over four-decades.

Lucas joined Senate President Harvey Peeler and Gov. Henry McMaster in asking state economists to review the formula and issue a report in the spring.