Governor wants 2% cut in spending

By John Temple Ligon

Last week, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford held a budget conference on education around his conference table in the Wade Hampton Building. Seated with him were State Sen. John Courson, Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum, Maurice Bresnahan of SCETV, Susan DeVenny of First Steps, and invited citizen critic Mac McBride, a CPA and financial planner of the Charleston office of Morgan Stanley, among a few others. Sanford asked each agency head to come prepared to shave 2% off last year's budget.

Sanford began with an illustration of the growth in state spending for the past several years, which was ahead of a combination of the state's gain in population plus the rate of inflation. Sanford asked for the 2% cost cuts to slow the growth in state spending down to the combination formula.

Tenenbaum suggested her 2% cost savings would have amounted to $43 million, but she also asked to decline to produce an itemized schedule. As she put it in a letter addressed to the governor:

+ First, the General Assembly directives to the Education Department are not prioritized. All legislative mandates automatically become high priority items for the Department.

Inez Tenenbaum State Superintendent of Education

+ Second, my budget recommendations are a good faith estimate of the resources required to address high priority needs in S.C.'s public school system and fulfill statutory mandates.

+ Finally, because I am in the final months of my tenure as State Superintendent of Education, I believe this to be a task more suited for the newly elected State Superintendent of Education.

In her executive summary, Tenenbaum totaled her agency's recurring base appropriation in three categories: state, $2,134,249,249; federal, $651,782,256; and other, $685,043,555.

SCETV's Bresnahan recalled budget cuts since 2001: approximately $7.1 million or 34%. Staff positions during the same five years fell from 320 to 210.

Bresnahan shared his excitement over the coming public/private wireless broadband initiative called EBS (Educational Broadband Service). Through the new technology of WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), a cellular phone type feature would provide broadband throughout S.C., to include the 21% of the population in rural areas that currently have no access to broadband.

Maurice Bresnahan SC ETV

DeVenny's First Steps program is figuring out how to let the funding follow the child. In other words, parents who live in one county and work in another can take their children with them to kindergartens and child care facilities, public or non-public, where they work. It becomes a matter of school choice.

This works especially well for the parents along the I-95 corridor who work on the coast. The child must be age eligible, geography eligible, and poverty qualified for the funding.

DeVenny reminded the table a child's first 18 months are probably the most important in brain development, and successful experiences for the four-year-olds have positive spillover effects for their younger siblings.

CPA McBride complained of the state's unique status in the country with its state-run centralized school bus system. Elsewhere the buses are owned and managed by individual districts.

Susan DeVenny First Steps

Tenenbaum was asking for $80 million to sustain the statewide school bus system.

The most disappointing number at the meeting was the state's standing nationally in its high school graduation rate: at 53%, dead last.

Mac McBride CPA and financial planner State Sen. John Courson