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South Carolina’s supreme court upheld a challenge to the Palmetto State’s school choice law this week, delivering a decisive victory to the status quo and further complicating parents’ efforts to find academic settings which meet the needs of their children.
Their ruling also threw open the door to constitutional challenges of a host of higher education and four-year-old kindergarten programs.
Specifically, the court struck down broad sections of the Education Scholarship Trust Fund (ESTF) – a program created last year by lawmakers and administered by the S.C. Department of Education (SCDE) which provides roughly 5,000 academic scholarships totaling $6,000 apiece for eligible K-12 students.
That’s $30 million worth of school choice… out of a total state education budget of nearly $14 billion.
Writing for a narrow majority, justice Garrison Hill concluded “portions of the act violate South Carolina’s constitutional prohibition against the use of public funds for the direct benefit of private educational institutions.”
According to Hill, tuition payments from the ESTF constitute a “direct benefit” to private education institutions.
Hill added that arguments in support of the ESTF’s constitutionality were “unconvincing,” referring to the structure of the program as “an attempt to deploy a trust to avoid constitutional limits on the use of public funds.”
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“They read our Constitution as allowing public funds to be directly paid to private schools as tuition as long as the funds are nudged along their path by the student, who may, through an online portal, choose to use the funds that way,” Hill wrote, with former chief justice Donald Beatty and acting justice James Lockemy concurring.
Actually, that’s exactly the sort of thing the plain language the Constitution permits… and which lawmakers expressly authorized in passing the ESTF.
In a scathing dissent, newly installed chief justice John Kittredge – backed by justice John Few – noted that “the majority opinion pays lip service to the policy-making role of the legislature.”
“Our constitution allows the legislature — and only the legislature — to make this policy decision,” he wrote.
Kittredge further slammed the majority for “acknowledging a simple dictionary definition” it assessing whether the funds constituted a “direct benefit” to private schools.
“The funds move from the State Treasury, to a trust fund held by a third-party bank, to an applicant’s individual account, to the school of the applicant’s choice (some of which can be private schools),” he noted. “The majority opinion finds this is a direct benefit to the private school, that is, that public funds are ‘immediately’ going from the State Treasury to the private school.”
Kittredge also obliterated the contention that South Carolina’s small, fledgling school choice program had somehow adversely impacted government-run schools.
“The legislature has substantially increased funding to public schools each year, and this pattern has not been interrupted by the passage of the ESTF Act,” he noted. “In fact, the state’s public education system received a record amount of funding in the last state budget.”
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RELATED | ROTTEN APPLES IN SOUTH CAROLINA SCHOOLS
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That’s accurate. There are currently 769,703 students in the Palmetto State’s struggling government-run system – and taxpayers are shelling out a record $18,000 per student per year. Those calculations also don’t include carry-forward balances hoarded by districts, federal “stimulus” funding or proceeds from local bond referendums.
That’s nearly $14 billion going into a failed status quo… one which, incidentally, has been engaged in an increasingly overt campaign of indoctrination even as students continue to scrape the bottom of the national barrel in terms of academic achievement.
Kittredge also correctly noted the majority opinion “places the continuing constitutionality of indirect aid to private schools on life support” – while putting numerous other state programs “on the chopping block.”
Among those programs? Multiple college scholarships established by the state as well as the First Steps program, which “directs public funds to hundreds of kindergarten programs that are privately owned and operated.”
“These ‘First Steps’ funds are paid directly to the providers, not to the students through their parents,” Kittredge wrote.
Supporters of academic freedom were understandably frustrated by the court’s decision.
“Sad news for South Carolinians,” noted Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute. “School choice empowers diverse families to get the education they think is best for their kids, which is also best for liberty.”
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“It is unconscionable that the Supreme Court would rip away these scholarships from children and families counting on the funds for their education this year,” said Palmetto Promise President Wendy Damron.
— Palmetto Promise (@PalmettoPromise) September 11, 2024
Our full press release can be found here: https://t.co/8d5CmM0F9i pic.twitter.com/OZKqq7oyO4
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“Today, a court overturned a duly passed piece of legislation on the basis of an indefensible misreading of the words of our State Constitution,” said Wendy Damron, president of Palmetto Promise. “Prekindergarten students and college students enjoy state programs that allow them to attend private and religious schools. How is a program for K-12 students any different?”
“It is unconscionable that the Supreme Court would rip away these scholarships from children and families counting on the funds for their education this year,” Damron added, noting that approximately 2,880 students would be stripped of their funding just weeks into the school year.
Damron urged S.C. superintendent of education Ellen Weaver and state treasurer Curtis Loftis – both of whom support school choice – to appeal the ruling “so that parents will no longer be forced to watch their child fail to thrive in a school that is a bad fit.”
While the future for parental choice in the Palmetto State remains bleak, another bill introduced last year – H. 4645 – would cut the state out as a middleman and simply give the money directly to parents in the form of a refundable tax credit. Actually, H. 4645 would avoid constitutional entanglements of any sort by keeping the cash out of the government coffers in the first place. The tax credit proposal – submitted by state representative Jordan Pace – would provide more money than the scholarship, $7,000 per child, with unlimited eligibility.
My media outlet has consistently advocated on behalf of expanded parental choice – for more than a decade, in fact. As I have often noted, choice is the “silver bullet” in education – the key to “unlocking academic achievement, stimulating innovation and creating the only accountability that’s worth a damn, the accountability of the marketplace.”
Unfortunately, in addition to lagging behind the rest of the nation in creating choice – South Carolina’s justices seem intent on blocking even its most modest implementation.
The sad result? More failure… at an ever-escalating price tag.
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THE RULING…
(S.C. Supreme Court)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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7 comments
Once again, all of these bills have one intent. Forcing people who do not have children, and people whose Children are no longer in school to help parents, some of whom are very well off, some of whom want a religious education, and some of whom don’t want their kids to associate with minorities, pay for their children to attend private schools. I am not interested. Pay for your private school yourself; and if you cannot, that is not my problem. I am willing to support good public schools. That is it.
Almost like calling yourself a Libertarian but taking out PPP loans, huh?
Is this *good* socialism, Will?
Socialism is when gubmint money goes to “those” people. Capitalism is when gubmint money goes to “our” people.
I was not yet born when this section of the constitution was last revised in 1973. I’m not anti-choice, but I have to consider then intent of Article XI, Section 4. Somehow, I cannot believe that the key word “direct”, and the people of South Carolina, at that time, thought that the concept of funding private and religious education was ok, but only if it passed through multiple hands before getting to the institution. That argument sounds the same to me as using the “general welfare” clause of the US constitution to justify the federal government doing anything they want.
If the people of South Carolina want to be able to use tax dollars to fund education at private institutions, they need to amend the constitution.
And using tax credits does not side step this process, either. State tax is calculated prior to the calculation of a credit. Whether the funding comes in the form of funds from a state account, or a forgoing of a tax receivable, it’s still utilizing an asset of the State to fund private education.
Maybe if a MAGA clown with a fake degree was not in charge of the state Department of Education, we would not need this scheme to further abandon the public school system…
You have TDS if you’re blaming Trump for the SOUTH CAROLINA education system. The state has a C+ rating and our education system in SC has always been terrible. Change does not happen quickly when it comes to government. “Weaver is a strong advocate of education freedom and supports providing education scholarship accounts to help parents choose the educational environment that best suits their individual child” The supreme court ruled it unconstitutional, not her!