Superintendent of Education Candidates

1.  Do you support vouchers or tax credits?  Explain your position.  
 

No.

Vouchers and tax credits would take resources away from our public schools.  Perhaps more important, they would undercut the essential public commitment to a quality public education for all students, regardless of their background or status.  Vouchers and tax credits are fiscally irresponsible, would create a new state entitlement, and would create a new special tax provision when we are attempting to reduce the number of special tax exemptions in South Carolina.  A candidate cannot contend that he or she is working to direct resources toward the classroom or student learning when he or she is working to take funds away from the public schools by way of vouchers or tax credits. 

Except for Mr. Price, all the candidates of the other parties support vouchers or tax credits or both.

2.  Have you accepted or will you accept money from Howard Rich or his affiliates?  

No. 

3.  Given the bleak budget outlook for South Carolina and more specifically, education, what ideas do you support to increase revenue and how would you work with the legislature to achieve your ideas?  

(a) First, we should not make a bad situation worse by enacting vouchers and tax credits that would further strain the state budget and take resources away from public education.  

(b) Second, I served as Dick Riley’s Chief of Staff and thereafter as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education.  In the near future, additional resources for public education are likely to come from the national Department, national foundations, or other national sources.  I want to use my knowledge of the national Department, national programs, and national education leaders to work to attract those resources, grants, and initiatives to South Carolina, school districts in South Carolina, and initiatives in individual public schools.  This is an advantage that no other candidate brings to the office.  

(c) Third, we must have stable, adequate, and equitable funding for public education in South Carolina.  We will convince the Legislature to take action to achieve this goal only if we first build the support needed among the public and the business and civic communities in South Carolina.

(d) We must continue to work for flexibility for school districts so that they can make the best use of the funds they receive.  

(e) We must work to look for ways to achieve savings and direct resources to improving student learning.  

(f) Finally, we need to work to make all educational facilities energy efficient, to save operational funds for schools and districts and also to be good stewards of our resources.  

I am the only candidate who comes from the business and civic community; I have a long history of building coalitions, creating collaborations to achieve community goals, and advocating for community improvements.  In the United Way, Success by Six, the University Center, and the Chamber of Commerce, for example, I have worked with leaders and elected officials of all political persuasions to achieve community goals.  As Chief of Staff to Secretary Riley and as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education (during a period of time when the Congress was controlled by a different political party), I worked as part of a team that built bridges to legislators of all political outlooks and successfully created and advanced a wide range of education initiatives.  As founding Vice Chair of South Carolina First Steps to School Readiness, I worked with legislators of both parties and people of all political persuasions and led a board that was made up of appointees of legislators and elected officials of different parties. 

Public education, like many important community endeavors, is not partisan.  As Superintendent, I would put to work the experience and the skills I have gained in a wide variety of governmental, public, and community efforts that have drawn support from people of all persuasions.  At the same time, I would employ my years of experience in advocating for public education in a wide variety of venues, from the local PTA to the national Department.