State teachers’ protest

Teachers across South Carolina have walked out of their classrooms to come to Columbia to lobby the General Assembly to adopt education reforms.

State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman announced the teachers were abandoning their students so she would spend the day as a substitute teacher.

Spearman’s problem, like that of many legislators, is that she sees the teacher mobilization solely as an effort by teachers for more pay and better working conditions.

Even if that myopic perspective were accurate, Spearman should have used the day and the audience to promote improvements in our state’s educational system. That is leadership one might expect from an experienced educator who happens to be a statewide elected official. Substitute teaching for the day is a stunt.

It is the kind of stunt that has allowed our educational system to be starved of resources and innovation. It is the kind of stunt that allowed Mark Sanford and Nikki Haley and their legislative allies to pretend that the educational system would be improved by taking money from public schools to subsidize tuition at private schools.

Do teachers deserve higher pay? Certainly. If I were a public school teacher and saw what our universities were paying football coaches with even mediocre records, I’d join in petitioning the General Assembly to fund education in our state.

Can schools be improved? Certainly. If I were a public school teacher I’d want members of the General Assembly to understand how facilities, planning periods and class size relate to educational success.

Spearman is playing to the same anti-worker bias that has existed in South Carolina since slavery. That bias has resulted in laws that restrict workers’ rights and deprives those in positions of authority from hearing from the people on the front line whether in the classroom or assembly line.

Spearman seemed annoyed that teachers wanted to come to Columbia while the legislature was in session to exercise their right to assemble and petition their government for redress. If she is unhappy that the teachers need to come on a weekday, perhaps she could petition the General Assembly to meet on Saturday so that teachers could demonstrate their commitment to their students by convincing legislators that the time for posturing and posing is past.

From the perspective of teachers, parents and the business community, the message is “fix the problem.” A real fix will improve the opportunities for the students these teachers guide and assist on a daily basis.

The fix includes improved pay and working conditions to enable us to attract and retain intelligent and dedicated teachers.

House Speaker Jay Lucas deserves credit for trying to reach a solution. That could have been improved had Lucas followed the example of Gov. Dick Riley who built grassroots support for educational reform. No doubt Lucas and his staff made a good faith effort to craft legislation to address pressing needs but he didn’t enlist teachers, parents and the business community in the effort in advance to achieve reform.

Jay Bender is a practicing local attorney.