The State Senate late Wednesday voted not to fund non-public school students with state money.

In a  23-18 vote,  senators narrowly defeated a change to the budget to give tax credits of up to $4,000 to students who attend private schools. The bill would have allowed people tax credits for contributing to a scholarship fund to give private school scholarships to needy students.

Berkeley Senator Larry Grooms was the sponsor, saying public school does not offer good choices for everyone.

“There’s lots of things we can do to improve public education in SOuth Carolina, but there’s generation after generation after generation that’s been waiting for their school to improve and they haven’t. There are some that absolutely haven’t. And to trap another family without giving them another option when we can make a difference in their lives?”Grooms pled.

Clarendon Democrat Kevin Johnson challenged,”Although we would be subsidizing or giving grants or credits to the tune of $40 million, we still cannot regulate these independent schools. Am I correct?

“That’s correct, because if I want my son to be at a school to be at a school that teaches the Twenty-third Psalm, that teaches John 3:16, I don’t want the government coming in and saying ‘You can’t do that,’” said Grooms.

Richland Sen. John Scott questioned where the funding fit into the state’s priorities this year: “I sat here and watched you fight four-year-old kindergarten, fight Medicaid expansion and I’m supposed to now really enjoy the fact because you have a grand idea, the same group of folk,  that you want to find a private school to give a tax deduction or tax credit?

 Scott says the scholarship of up to $4,000 was not enough to cover the cost for people who could not afford the rest of the tuition and costs of private school.

Grooms said that all schools need competition in order to improve.

The Senate version of the 2013-14 budget includes $25 million to expand a four-year-old kindergarten program into counties along South Carolina’s I-95 corridor, also known as the Corridor of Shame and beyond.

The proviso funds the further expansion of an ongoing pilot program known as the South Carolina Child Development Education Pilot Program (CDEPP).  The 4K classes were first offered to children from the following eight trial districts in Abbeville County School District et. al. vs. South Carolina: Allendale, Dillon 2, Florence 4, Hampton 2, Jasper, Lee, Marion 7, and Orangeburg 3 and children who lived in school districts with a poverty index of 90 percent or greater. The district and others brought suit in the South Carolina Supreme Court over how the state provides poor, rural school districts with enough money for students to get the same constitutionally guaranteed “minimally adequate” education as do students in wealthier communities’ schools.

The South Carolina Supreme Court has not yet ruled in the case, which was argued again in September of 2012. Despite that, the Legislature has funded CDEPP since 2006, working through the SC Department of Education and South Carolina First Steps. 

For the current school year, the proviso makes CDEPP eligible to children residing in school districts with a poverty index of seventy-five percent or greater.

“We think we are going to show significant progress this year,” says Senate Democratic Caucus spokesman Phil Bailey. “We’re going to try to keep it going forward and expand it to all of South Carolina.

“Right now, North Carolina and Georgia have full day four-year-old kindergarten and look where they rank compared to South Carolina,” Bailey says.

According to a 2012 report by the South Carolina Education Oversight Committee, South Carolina lags behind its two neighboring states in college readiness in English, reading, math and science.

Republican Senator Shane Massey says everyone wants to make sure children are prepared to learn and to “combat poverty in that area if we can.” Yet, he questions further expansion of the 4K program.

“The real question I have is whether we need to be expanding a program when we don’t have the funds to do what we need to do with the existing programs,” he says. “Look at K-12, not just 4k…do we have enough money to do what we want to do?”

“Most of the new money that is going into the Medicaid program this year is coming in non-recurring dollars. Those are clearly recurring costs and we are using recurring money to expand a program with 4K and not funding Medicaid the way it ought to be funded,” Massey adds. “It’s a question of priorities, which is what the budget is all about.”