Dorchester County Taxpayers Association

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I am duly qualified, according to the Constitution of the State, to exercise the duties of the office to which I have been elected (or appointed) and that I will, to the best of my ability, discharge the duties thereof and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the State and the United States, so help me God.”

As a school board member in South Carolina, I pledge my efforts to improve education in my community and will solemnly try to abide by the code of ethics below:

• To understand the proper role of the board to set policies governing the district and to hire the chief administrative officer.

  1. The role of the board has been violated because of a contract and appointment of a corporation to handle the duties of financing and managing the maintenance and upkeep for a fee that was not revealed to the general public. In fact, the board authorized the corporation to conduct a study to determine the number of schools to be built in exchange for a fee of $45,000. This study will embrace potential developments now and to anticipate those to be built in the future.

  2. The board failed to take into consideration that by hiring this corporation they may have abrogated their right to make key decisions as to subcontracts regarding the type schools to be built. It is entirely possible that schools could be replicas of the Taj Mahal. The corporation will select the bond agency and may not be obligated to conduct competitive bidding. In fact, contracts will no longer be under the watchful eyes of the board.

  3. There may be no limit to the cost or the number of schools, despite the result of the study. This arrangement between the board and the corporation could be maintained in perpetuity to be implemented every time a developer decides where he wants to locate a new subdivision. School buildings sell houses. One would suspect a connection between the board and the developers.

  4. The financing for hiring school teachers, administrators and other personnel to man these new schools and purchase all the books, computers and a thousand other items are categorized as operation costs to be covered by the federal government, the state and not the taxpayers, if the 40% increase in sales tax is to become law. All operations costs, according to the plan, that is most likely to be approved will be paid by the state from the proceeds of the tax. There is one debilitating caveat whereby, if the state’s distributions are insufficient to cover the operational costs, the school boards may importune the county councils for approval of additional funds. On the other hand, if the sales tax increase is denied, all operation costs not provided by state or federal government will be laid on taxpayers and county councils to fulfill the “requirements”. Without considering fully the outcome of this legislation or the fact that there is legislation now pending within the SC House Ways and Means Committee to implement impact fees to cover part of the costs for new school construction, the board charged ahead with their infamous plan, based on the board’s legal council that if the action is challenged by the courts, once implemented, the plan will be grandfathered and immune to reversal.

• To carry out these policies to encourage an open exchange of ideas by all board members during the decision making process.

  The board conducted what might be considered a charade when it asked several groups to meet with them for ideas.

  1. The board met with two members of the Legislative Delegation and were told because the board failed to make a presentation to enlighten them on measures taken previously to help eliminate the problem of overcrowding, due to anticipated population growth, no recommendation could be made to other members of the delegation in order to reach a finding.

  2. The board scheduled a meeting with contractors and only one person showed up. The rest may have felt secure that the decision would favor them anyway. Mr. Pye, the Superintendent of District 2 Schools said he was very disappointed.

  3. The Dorchester County Taxpayer Association was invited to make recommendations and several were offered such as year round scheduling, modular constructed classrooms with moveable walls to accommodate large and small classes; adoption of a proposal by one of the school board members to move the ninth grade from high schools to middle schools where there are available classroom spaces; promotion of more Charter Schools and full utilization of the technical schools where many classrooms are minimally utilized. When the topic of alternate financing came up (The Greenville Plan), Mr. Pye stated flatly that the plan was considered but decided against it because of the legal complications and other troubling aspects.

  4. Other meetings were held by the Chamber of Commerce, the Parent Teachers Association, and realtors all of which advocated more schools, but it was never revealed what alternatives were discussed. There is possible evidence that these organizations have their special interests and would approve any alternates source of funding even if it meant that the general public would be left out of the decision. There appears to be no evidence that the school board asked or received approval for such a plan.

• To communicate concerns and public reaction to board policies and school programs to the superintendent and board members in a professional manner.

  1. The board and the superintendent were fully aware that the general public voted not to approve a bond referendum (March 25, 2003) which asked for $98.3 million dollars to build new schools. The referendum failed and although the margin was small, a local builder headed the campaign “Yes to Schools” which allegedly was financed by those who would benefit from passage of this mammoth request. A special, single issue election was held at taxpayer expense, perhaps with anticipation that most voters who may oppose the referendum would not show up since no other matter was on the ballot. With a concerted effort by the Dorchester County Taxpayers Association, enough voters became aware that their property taxes would be raised significantly and as a result instead of the anticipated 10% showing up at the polls, 20% cast their ballots. The Board and the Administration were perplexed until Berkeley County Administrators adopted what was known as the Greenville Plan. Without any prior announcement, the school board held closed negotiations with the company who would manage the plan and in an open meeting just after the signing, the lawyer for the corporation announced that he was the school board’s representative in any legal matter relative to the arrangement. The Dorchester County Taxpayers Association (DCTA) members were the only body other than school affiliate employees, reporters from the Post and Courier, the Summerville Journal Scene and administration members present meant to be aware of this declaration.

  2. Based on the above surreptitious and misleading endeavor to hide from the general public what was transpiring behind closed doors, DCTA feels that the board most egregiously violated the spirit and intent of ethical conduct.

• To take no individual action which would compromise the integrity of the board or administration and to respect the confidentially of information that is privileged under the Freedom of Information Act.

  1. The school board did compromise its integrity when one of its members stated at the signing of the alternative funding agreement that with this agreement it will facilitate as many new schools as required by the board and that the freed up 8% money will provide niceties heretofore denied children which she mentioned included her own. The implication appeared to be that District 2 children were subject to impoverished funding where $6,200 per child for operations and an additional amount for bond indebtedness wasn’t sufficient and where 73% of the total taxes collected by the country wasn’t enough to meet an obvious bottomless maw of a layered bureaucracy and mammoth inefficacy

• to support legislation that will improve the educational opportunities and environment for students and staff.

  1. DCTA feels that by promoting unabated school construction also creates massive promotion for new development, increased congestion and unsustainable increases in taxes to support needed infrastructure requirements, but actually it detracts from improved education. It does, however, create an ever-burgeoning school bureaucracy, more powerful and less considerate than what the public needs and can afford.

  2. It appears that school boards have become autonomous and rarely do county councils or county managers, such as the one Berkeley County endures, turn down significant funding requests and when they do, it is barely enough to be considered mentionable. Rather, subterfuge may be employed to tell the public, for instance, that the alternate funding plan will not result in a tax increase. Or in other past instances where proposed bond referendums were to be on the ballot, there was a propensity to sell the idea of tax increases to the public by underestimating the true tax for fear of voter rejection. Isn’t it obvious that if the integrity of school boards is predicated on lies and questionable propaganda or outright subterfuge, it detracts from the real purpose…educating children? That responsibility hardly has been stellar in most South Carolina districts compared to 41 other states that ranked higher in comparative educational statistical evaluations. The school boards’ purpose is to ensure education of children as well as maintain prudent, responsibility for what voters can afford.

      

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April 28, 2004

New Zealand had an education system that was failing as it is in many states in the U.S. It was failing about 30 percent of its children - especially those in lower socio-economic areas. They had put more and more money into education for 20 years, and achieved worse and worse results.

It cost twice as much to get a poorer result than it did 20 years previously with much less money. So they decided to rethink what we were doing here as well. The first thing they did was to identify where the dollars were going that were pouring into education. They hired international consultants (because they didn't trust their own departments to do it), and they reported that for every dollar that was spent on education, 70 cents was being swallowed up by administration. Once they heard this, they immediately eliminated all of the Boards of Education in the country. Every single school came under the control of a board of trustees elected by the parents of the children at that school, and by nobody else. The government gave the schools a block of money based on the number of students that went to them, with no strings attached. At the same time, the government told the parents that they had an absolute right to choose where their children would go to school.

New Zealand converted 4,500 schools to this new system all on the same day. But it went even further: It made it possible for privately owned schools to be funded in exactly the same way as publicly owned schools, giving parents the ability to spend their education dollars wherever they chose. Again, everybody predicted that there would be a major exodus of students from the public to the private schools, because the private schools showed an academic advantage of 14 to 15 percent.

It didn't happen, however, because the differential between schools disappeared in about 18-24 months. Why? Because all of a sudden teachers realized that if they lost their students, they would lose their funding; and if they lost their funding, they would lose their jobs. Eighty-five percent of the students went to public schools at the beginning of this process. That fell to only about 84 percent over the first year or so due to the reforms. But three years later, 87 percent of the students were going to public schools. More importantly, the public schools moved from being about 14 or 15 percent below New Zealand’s international peers to being about 14 or 15 percent above international peers in terms of educational attainment.

That's just one of the many free-market reforms New Zealand adopted to rescue itself from suffocation by a government that was too large and expensive.

After reforms started in 1984, New Zealand reduced the size of government by 66 percent, measured by the number of employees. The government's share of GDP dropped from 44 to 27 percent. They reduced income tax rates besides.

Why can’t South Carolina with near 50% failing rate and the bloated U.S. Government do that? Answer: No guts…too many on the feeding line.

The Dorchester County Taxpayer association was able to help defeat the $98.3 million dollar bond referendum last March mainly because taxpayers were made aware that such an amount would seriously affect their tax bills and raised the question whether the new construction is really necessary.

But that win was not the end of the power struggle between the special interests and the taxpaying public.

The School Board’s Growth Facilities Committee’s new initiative is to present to the public a choice between five plans of which the headings for each plan are as follows:

• Plan I: $21,000,000 to build only 2 elementary schools and move the 9th grade students into the middle schools thus reducing the number of students in the high schools.
• Plan II: $35,500,000 to build only 1 new high school, Grade Level Structure 9-12.
• Plan III: $73,500,000 to build 2 elementary, 1 middle, and 1 high school
• Plan IV: $5,000,000 for trailer/mobile units 90 @ approx. $55,000 ea. Cost includes canopies, sidewalks; furniture, technology, wiring, fire alarms, etc. for these units.
• Plan V: No building plan

The flyer the committee distributes lists numerous advantages for Plan III and only two innocuous disadvantages, whereas the reverse is true for the other so-called plans. Note Plan VI’ heading stipulates sidewalks, furniture, wiring, fire alarms, technology and canopies as if the other plans would not require these items except for the canopies.

The whole purpose of the flyer is not to be balanced, but to sell the public on Plan III. It is supposedly a reduced or scaled down version of the $98.3 million dollar referendum. The property adjacent to the Dubois Middle School was sold and part of the proceeds will be applied to purchase the land for the preferred Plan III schools. The proceeds from the sale may be one of the reasons why the $73,500,000 price tag is lower than the original $98.3 million as needed in the referendum that was turned down by the taxpayers.

Taxpayers are aware that new schools built in locations that are planned by developers are a sales tool for the developers. The more grandiose the school the better the advertisement to sell lots and build homes for the new residents arriving from not only out of state but from the surrounding counties. Better facilities and scholastic achievements of the school district are attracting pupils whose residences are located outside of Dorchester County.

Each year, the student population is much higher than at the end of the year. There are two ways to determine the requirement for more schools. One is the Average Daily Attendance (ADA) or the daily average of enrolled pupils and the other is those enrolled in the system at the beginning of the year. School boards traditionally base their projections and budgets as well as the need for new schools on initial enrollments, but by the end of the school year, the ADA results show a large disparity between the beginning of the enrollment year and the end. The reason for the reduced number of student population is the screening out of students living outside of the county; transfers out of the county and dropouts.[1] The rate of student growth since 1998 thru 2002 was 5.8% according the U.S. Department of Education, but the cost of operation increase was 27% The rate of increase in student population doesn’t reflect the need for Plan III.

The Summerville Journal Scene, August 27, 2003, reported a 6,000 acre planned development in Ravenel, 4,500 acres are in Dorchester County, the rest in Charleston County. The developers will expect taxpayers to pay for the schools and other infrastructure costs. This development is located near Savannah Highway.

This is the major reason why no new schools should be built in Dorchester County. For every new house built within the county the immediate infrastructure cost is around $14,000 to support additional roads, sewer and water systems, schools, police and fire protection, emergency medical response support, welfare and the list goes on to include training the children of illegal immigrants. Thus far, neither the legislature nor the governor has made an effort to rescind Governor Hodges executive order not to allow impact fees for new school construction. With over 73% of county taxes going to support schools, tax payers are funding those who benefit the most from new school construction - the lawyers, the lending institutions, the contractors, the builders and the developers. All of these interests want to increase the sprawl, the over population, the congestion. If no new schools were to be built, developers would concentrate in other areas of the state and the civic leaders could then plan for orderly growth rather than what is going on at the present time. Impact fees would pay for orderly development and unless legislation is passed to permit the counties to take back their authority, DCTA says NO to new schools.