The Garnet Spy

In July, I posted a piece titled “Do Public Educators Hate South Carolina’s Children?“  Yesterday, “Karen Fitzgerald” commented on that post with some very interesting points – so much so that I’m using those comments as the body of this article.

I disagree with “Karen” one one point, though.  In her understandable frustration, she writes:

The irony is that we voted in every election there, and each time we voted against who was seeking re-election because we could see just how badly change in Berkeley County was needed. Yet, it made no difference. Gov. Sanford has a well established history of doing nothing to make SC a better state. However, he was re-elected!

Her complaint would be more accurately aimed if it were pointed at Jim Rex and the Department of Education Politburo.

Karen Fitzgerald //

I wish this was enough of an issue in SC for people to be talking about it, and for the papers to be really focusing in on it.

We lived in the Low Country for 6 years, our daughters went to school at Devon Forest Elementary from K through grade 3 at that same school.

We found that the teachers at Devon Forest were some of the kindest, hardest working people in Berkeley County. They really cared deeply for how our daughters did. We also found that the staff of DFE were also very proactive in dealing with issues, and some of the most effective at it when it came to bullying.

So, we wondered from one year to the next WHY DFE failed every single year. It certainly was never the teachers or staff at DFE.

What it was was the Berkeley County School Administration. DFE one year had so few funds that all of the staff had one printer/copy machine to use that included the teachers. The very same school administration and the SC department of education changed the school curriculum EVERY YEAR, so instead of the teachers being able to just focus on teaching, and the kids just being able to focus on learning, both kids and teachers were forced to run a rat race of catch up.

It was depressing, because DFE catered to children in a middle class area of Berkeley County. It is surrounded by newer neighborhoods, and hard working tax payers. Yet the quality of care DFE was able to provide our children was akin to that of an inner city school.

The school meal programs were beyond pathetic as well. The kids “breakfast” menu consisted of cold cereal and crackers, except for one day a week when the kids would be given microwaved french toast sticks. The school lunch was even worse. Our youngest daughter would eat lunch before our oldest daughter, and by the time our oldest daughter and her classmates got to the cafeteria there were NO vegetables left to serve the kids. The vegetable that was served was canned, water logged badly enough that most of the kids WOULD not eat it anyway, but the fact that they actually would not have a vegetable to offer and the fact that it happened several times a month was unbelievable.

The cafeteria also spent a large portion of what money they did have on “junk food”, through their a la cart menu. So instead of the elementary school kids getting a well balanced diet, most of them lived on frozen pizzas/burgers and fries throughout the year.

The school administration went out of its way to DEMAND more from the staff at DFE and the parents, but did so while severely underfunding the school.

We were a six figure single income in SC, paid a small fortune in state and county taxes, yet we and our daughters were nothing to them. And we saw firsthand that it was NEVER the teachers and staff, it was the school administration and the SC Department of Education. They were well paid to do a job, but NEVER did their job. They chose to instead blame the failings of our school on the teachers and the kids.

After 8 years of life in the low country, we put our house up for sale and moved out of the state. We moved to a small town (pop. 12,156), in a poorer state, Arkansas, took a huge pay cut to live here, but guess what?

Our daughters are in a school that is above average on the national scale, they are in grade 4, which finished 90% above the national average, and while the school has poorer rural tax payers, the quality of care and education is far beyond what we had even expected. The teachers are as hardworking and wonderful as the teachers at DFE were, but because the school is funded adequately, and the standards are not changed from one year to the next, the teachers are actually TEACHING the kids, instead of playing catch up.

The school is much older, but the school is succeeding. They put a solid focus on physical health in some of the most simple things, from the activities the kids have to do on the playground (4 square, hop scotch, jump rope, basketball, kickball), to providing ONE MENU for lunch and breakfast that far surpasses what the kids at DFE had.

The kids not only get a vegetable at every lunch, they also get a fresh fruit, and the meal is of a quality that the kids actually LOVE to eat it. Breakfast at the school is AWESOME, they get cereal, fresh fruit, and get blueberry muffins, bisquits with gravy, fruit pastries etc..

An example of the vegetable they are served at their school is baby carrots with ranch dressing to dip them in. They do not have a la carte at all. The kids can not buy ice cream or junk food anywhere at the school, the school store sells pencils, erasers, and art supplies ONLY.

The kids get one recess and are in school for one hour longer than they were at DFE. They have one homeroom teacher, and go between 3 teachers throughout the day, and each teacher focuses on specific subjects. They went from having between one and two hours worth of homework in Berkeley County, to a half hour of homework here. And the only time they have homework here is when they didn’t have time to get the work done during school hours.

The teachers are very busy here, but they appear to have it a lot easier than the teachers at DFE did. They have to deal with the same issues that DFE teachers did, in trying to deal with parents who refuse to be involved, kids who act out during class hours etc., but these teachers are far better treated and funded here.

The end result is that for the first time since kindergarten our oldest daughter LOVES school. She LOVES learning. Both of our daughters came into the 4th grade behind their classmates, but have managed to catch up to everyone else even though they are not over achievers, they are just average kids who will only give the quality work if the opportunity exists for it.

Our state and county taxes are a little lower than they were in SC, but we are getting so much more and our daughters are enjoying a quality of life that is so much higher than anything they could have had in SC.

The irony is that we voted in every election there, and each time we voted against who was seeking re-election because we could see just how badly change in Berkeley County was needed. Yet, it made no difference. Gov. Sanford has a well established history of doing nothing to make SC a better state. However, he was re-elected!

The SC deficit will NEVER get paid down, the improvements needed to make the state worth living in will NEVER take place, and the schools will continue to fail, because no one cares. Its not about what you contribute, its about WHO YOU KNOW.