New group in Beaufort Co. pushes for better schools in hopes of improving local economy
Two Beaufort County marketing professionals who formed a nonprofit last month to help garner support for November’s $345 million school bond referendum have spent the past two weeks illegally raising money for the effort, the South Carolina Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Thursday.
Within hours of The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette bringing the matter to the attention of Citizens for Better Schools Now!, the group rectified the issue by complying with a state fundraising law that requires entities seeking donations in South Carolina to register with the charity division of the Secretary of State’s Office.
Citizens for Better Schools Now! was formed in June by paid advisers Tom Gardo, president of Denarius Group on Hilton Head Island, and John Williams, creative principal of Williams Group PR in Beaufort, to advocate for the upcoming school bond referendum, which both say will ultimately boost the local economy.
“When potential businesses ask about our schools, we want to be able to say the schools are top-notch,” Gardo said. “That used to be Beaufort County’s calling card, to be honest with you.”
Money from the two-question bond referendum, if passed, would go toward improving safety, technology and facilities across the district; expanding the overcrowded campuses of May River High School and River Ridge Academy, both in Bluffton; funding the demolition and rebuilding of Robert Smalls International Academy in Beaufort; and upgrading athletic fields and playgrounds across the district.
Gardo and Williams said Wednesday that these school improvements would encourage more families and businesses to move to the area and more students to stay in the area after graduation, which could result in more people entering the local workforce.
Their goal is to raise between $80,000 and $100,000 to create campaigns promoting the referendum and registering voters.
So far, Citizens for Better Schools Now! has received three “small but much-appreciated” donations, according to Gardo and Williams.
November’s bond referendum is the third the Board of Education has put in front of voters in the past three years.
If it passes it would be the first successful one for the district since 2008. The district held two failed referendums in 2016 and 2018, the latter with a dismal 27.8 percent “yes” vote.
Originally, Gardo and Williams reached out to the district in May, before the school board approved the bond referendum, to see whether the district planned to outsource their marketing campaign when the time came.
District spokesman Jim Foster said the district is restricted by state law from explicitly promoting the referendum and will instead host information town halls across the county in the lead-up to the vote.
In forming the group’s steering committee, Gardo and Williams reached out to four members of the Community Project Review Committee, a task force formed in January to tour 19 district schools and provide guidance to the district in whittling down a $600 million-plus list of school needs.
Those volunteers are Judge Joseph Kline of Dale, former Port Royal Town Councilman Joe Lee, Shannon Bedenbaugh of Hilton Head Island and Debbie Burke of Bluffton.
Bedenbaugh said she wanted to stay involved in the process after the committee’s tours of schools, where she witnessed leaking ceilings and faulty intercoms.
“Security was one of the biggest eye-openers for me,” she said. “There was a safety drill during a class change, and students couldn’t hear instructions over the intercoms.”
The process that began in January was a marked improvement over the last two referendums, according to Lee.
“It was a vote against the superintendent,” Lee said. “That shouldn’t even count.”
Ahead of the 2016 school bond referendum, then-superintendent Jeff Moss pleaded guilty to state ethics charges for the hiring of his wife in a high-paid position he created in the district office.
The school board at the time faced widespread criticism for its handling of the situation.
Two months before the 2018 school bond referendum, a board member revealed that the district had been subpoenaed as part of an FBI investigation involving the construction of May River High School and River Ridge Academy.
Since Moss’ departure in July 2018 and school board elections later in the year, the board and district have sought to rebuild community trust.
“The unfair negativity over the last few years hasn’t helped,” Williams said. “All that happened. The needs for students, schools and the community maintained. We’re trying to get personalities out of the discussion.”
Both Gardo and Williams have experience with passing referendums in the county. Williams served as the public information officer for the school district during the 2008 referendum, which he said encouraged him to get involved this time around. Gardo helped pass nine referendums in the county concerning education, transportation and land preservation, according to CH2 magazine.
However, Gardo said laws around accepting donations without registering as a charity had “never been an issue” in the past, after the Packet and the Gazette called to ask why the group was registered as a 501(c)(6) in the state, but not with the Secretary of State’s Division of Public Charities.
“My attorney didn’t tell me that,” he said.
In a phone call Thursday afternoon, Gardo’s attorney, Robert Arundell, said he had been practicing tax law for 35 years and had never heard of the requirement to register as a charity before accepting donations in the state before.
The penalty for failing to register is a $10 fine per day after the violations are reported, which can stack up to a maximum of $2,000, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
Arundell emphasized that state employees there for “three or four years” were prone to mistakes. But after checking with the state office, Gardo said he had registered the group as a charity.
“Your person was actually right,” Gardo said to a reporter at the newspapers.
Now that their donations are legal, the group plans to push for more fundraising and reach out to other members of the referendum planning committee. Lee said their big push to the public will come in the eight to 10 weeks ahead of the referendum.
“I think we’re going after everyone that’s breathing and qualified to vote,” he said.
This story was originally published July 25, 2019 at 6:16 PM.