SC Senate plan unfreezes teacher raises, adds school nurses and upgrades prisons
South Carolina lawmakers are facing the reality of a potentially shaky economic future next year because of COVID-19, proposing to stash away half a billion dollars in case of mid-year agency cuts.
But a new budget proposal that the state Senate will debate next week also would spend a collective $100 million to cover pay raises for teachers — which would be added onto a reversal of a temporary freeze put in place earlier this year — and safety and security upgrades for the state’s prisons system two years after a deadly riot.
Senate budget writers are looking to spend an additional $40 million to pay for charter school growth and school nurses.
With so much uncertainty, Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence, told his committee in a video conference Tuesday that the Legislature should avoid spending every new dollar available when money the state collects through taxes and fees still hasn’t rebounded.
Early this year, the Legislature delayed writing a new budget as health officials sought to curb the state’s COVID-19 outbreak and as tourism — a major money maker for South Carolina — took a severe nosedive as officials suggested people quarantine at home.
And still, even after Gov. Henry McMaster signed an emergency measure that has kept state services operating on levels before July 1, the state’s lead accountant announced a $775 million one-time surplus and state budget forecasters projected $86 million more in new money the state can expect annually.
What the Senate does next week still needs the S.C. House’s blessing and the governor’s OK — two actions that aren’t guaranteed.
Teachers, schools
Under a plan the Senate Finance Committee is slated to adopt Wednesday is a proposal to spend $50 million on teacher raises.
That spending would help effectively unfreeze what the Legislature did in May, when lawmakers — pressed by groups which represent administrators, business officials and school boards — paused those yearly raises, which come out to a pay increase on average of about 2%.
South Carolina teachers would gain back their yearly promised pay raises, based on years of classroom experience, should the Senate proposal become law. Lawmakers froze those raises to avoid forcing poorer school districts to cover the cost of the raises themselves.
Had lawmakers not moved to lift the pay freeze in their spending plan, they would have dealt a severe blow to the morale of S.C. teachers, some of them heading back into the classroom despite the threat of COVID-19, and others missing out on extra pay associated with extra school programs that have been postponed in the pandemic, said Patrick Kelly with the Palmetto State Teachers Association, the state’s largest teacher group.
“No. 1, teacher morale is sagging in this stage and we continue to have a teacher shortage crisis,” Kelly said. “We simply can’t afford to have teachers leave the classroom.”
For schools, the Senate’s proposal includes $34 million for charter schools.
South Carolina logged its first COVID-19 cases in March and soon after closed schools and forced students to learn online. But with districts slowly reopening classrooms to students, more parents than in previous years are choosing to enroll their child in charter schools.
More than 23,000 students as of Tuesday are enrolled in charter schools, with more than 19,000 studying at schools associated in South Carolina’s Public Charter School District and more than 16,000 enrolled online and 7,301 in person at schools authorized through the Charter Institute at Erskine.
The Senate proposal also would spend $6 million for districts to hire school nurses.
“It is very public-education friendly, because it does provide the funding and teachers need the increase,” Debbie Elmore, with the S.C. School Boards Association, said of the Senate’s budget proposal. “The freeze was just primarily a prevention method.”
A boost for SC prisons
Two years after a deadly prison riot at Lee Correctional Institution where seven inmates were killed, South Carolina lawmakers were set to spend $100 million this year to provide the agency money for needed security and safety upgrades that included door locks.
Then COVID-19 hit.
Senators’ spending proposal cuts that figure in half, instead sending $50 million to the state Department of Corrections.
That money could help cover $21 million for lock replacements at Broad River, Lieber and McCormick prisons and $15 million for fire alarm replacements at at least nine prisons, according to the agency’s priority budget list. And millions more could be spent on updating the agency’s air-conditioning and boiler systems, enhancing razor wire and other fencing and repair roofs — overdue needs.
“There’s a lot of immediate things we need to pay close attention to,” said state Sen. John Scott, D-Richland, who sits on the Senate Finance Committee. “But we cannot fund it all.”
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to reflect that the South Carolina Senate’s budget includes a measure to stash away half a billion dollars in case of mid-year agency cuts.
This story was originally published September 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "SC Senate plan unfreezes teacher raises, adds school nurses and upgrades prisons."
