islandpacket.com - The Island Packet Online

• Archive Search

Search Everything in the Lowcountry and the Coastal Empire.

Local panel targets better state funding for schools

Comment on this | | | | | | | |

For the first time in 30 years, the Beaufort County School District is not getting a cent from the $1.5 billion available to school districts across the state through the Education Finance Act.

"By far it's the largest amount of money we send out to districts," Len Richardson, finance director of the South Carolina Department of Education, said of the overall amount. "Up until this year, Beaufort has gotten money, but it had been decreasing (every year)."

State legislators are studying ways to change how money is distributed to ensure all districts receive fair funding.

To help the process along, state Rep. Richard Chalk, R-Hilton Head Island, created a School Finance Advisory Committee made up of Beaufort County leaders, school officials and residents. It met for the first time Tuesday.

Chalk, who serves on the state Education Finance Act Study Committee, hopes the group can help craft legislation for consideration when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.

Money is given to school districts based on an "index of tax-paying ability," which measures the relative wealth of a county in relation to others in the state.

That wealth is based on the full market value of all taxable property in that district and the ability of residents to finance local programs.

"We've been hurt more than any other county in the state by not getting any dollars from (the Education Finance Act) ... just because we have more property tax wealth," Chalk said Tuesday.

The index was designed in 1977 to act as an equalizer in distributing state money, said state department of education spokesman Pete Pillow.

"Districts with a high ability to raise local funds get less," Pillow said. "If you are a wealthy district, they expect you to make up the difference in what you need for your schools, while the poorer districts get more from the state's taxpayers."

Chalk said if the Beaufort County School District was divided into two systems, half of the schools would get state funding under the formula.

"Northern Beaufort County would get the funds we don't get at all now because of property tax wealth in southern Beaufort County," Chalk said.

Gretchen Keefner, principal of Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts, attended the meeting and saidHilton Head also has its share of poverty.

"You're talking about us supporting northern Beaufort County, but we've got needs of our own on Hilton Head," she said. Her school has a poverty index nearing 50 percent.

That index is based on the number of students participating in the free and reduced lunch program and the number of students receiving Medicaid assistance, Pillow said.

As Chalk works to develop new proposals in how districts obtain state money, Keefner offered a larger view.

"Certainly South Carolina is not the only state with pockets of poverty and great wealth," she said. "As we begin to look at states that are successful, I would ask how have other states looked at funding and created balance in their own counties."

| | | | | | |