Easley School Board Candidates Debate Issues

The candidates vying to represent Easley on the Pickens County school board met Tuesday night for a debate.

The event was organized by PCVotes.

“One of these three individuals will be the District 5 Board Member,” said moderator David Merck, of incumbent Judy Edwards and challengers Dr. Valerie Ramsey and David Whittemore.

A panel comprised of representatives from a number of area organizations posed questions to the three candidates, and questions were taken from the audience at the end.

A wide variety of issues were touched upon during the debate.

Question: Do you think parents of students should have choices of types of schools and if so, should they be financially supported in choosing the type of school to attend, as with tax deductions for the parents or corporate scholarships?

“Every parent should have a choice as far as where they want their children to go,” Edwards said. “We have school  choice in Pickens County as far as going to different area schools as long as there’s room. Do I feel like it should be supported by tax money? Not really, simply because, unless we can work out something that’s very, very equal, not everybody can afford to have choice, because they can’t necessarily afford to get there. Even a charter school, it takes money away from the public schools.

Any time you do a special type of schools, it’s going to take money away from the public schools,” she continued.” Not everybody can have their choice and go somewhere else – everybody  can go to a public school.  Everybody is guaranteed a free public education, if they want it, in the public schools. I feel like we need to put the majority of our money there because that’s where the majority of our children are going to go, and we need to make sure that everybody has that equal opportunity.” 

Whittemore said parents do have freedom of choice in deciding where their children should attend school.

“When you get into charter schools, it does take money away from the public schools,” he said. “When you talk about the different vouchers and all that, you’re getting into the General Assembly in Columbia and they bounce it around, one thing after another.

“I think what we’ve got with the money we’ve got is adequate,” he continued. “It’s about jobs. We’re trying to train people for jobs. Not everybody is going to go to college. And we’ve got some tremendous opportunities that are available for people, not only at the Career Center, but in other places, if you just choose them. Ray Farley with Alliance Pickens is real quick to tell you that people can get out of the Career Center and make $50,000 doing a job their first year – some of them have made $80,000. We need to look at some more of those ways. We do have choice.”

Ramsey said, “I do not believe that they should get any special tax breaks if they choose to send their children to a charter school or some other school that’s more costly.”

“But I do believe they have that choice,” she said. “As taxpayers, I know that’s an argument that they should be able to get some kind of tax break or deduction, but again, that’s their choice. It’s like choosing to go to a private college, it’s going to cost more, but that’s your choice. I don’t think we should prohibit from parents from wanting to do that, if they think that’s where their children will flourish.”

Public education is “a wonderful thing,” Ramsey said.

“I think we’ve kind of given up on it,” she said. “Most of us came up through public education, and I think if we all get on board, we can make it flourish again, so we don’t look at public education as the stepchild of the educational system.  But again, I would not dare to take away a parent’s choice to do that.”

Question: At the July 25^TH School District of Pickens County board meeting, board members passed chairman Alex Saitta’s motion that the balance of the unused interest funds, which was over $13 million, be given back to the taxpayers in the form of paying down bond debt. Some of the members wanted to spend the $13 million on various projects. How would you have voted on this?

“Given that I was not on the board, it would be hard for me to answer that question, with any authority, per se,” Ramsey said.

Calling herself a “situational leader,” Ramsey said she would need to know more about the $13 million.

“Where did it come from? What was the intended purpose of it?” she said. “At the same time, I don’t believe you should make permanent commitments on temporary funds. If the $13 million built up over a period of time, I don’t think you can take non-recurring funds and use it to fund something that is recurring. You don’t make permanent decisions on temporary money. If it belonged to the taxpayers, and it was funds that was over-collected, I think it should be returned to the taxpayers, unless there is some plan, some need that has been there, that the funds could be used for that would not require recurring funds.

Edwards said she voted against returning the money at that time.

“I felt it was a premature vote,” Edwards said. “That money is part of the building program money that is extra and it cannot be touched for two years, until the building program is completely finished. It can only be used for building purposes, construction or repairs. It cannot be used for anything else. I felt like voting for it at that time, two years before we know what’s down the road, is premature. We cannot do anything with it, so why not wait until we see what’s down the road. We have lots of things going wrong in the schools that are going to have to be fixed, that we have no money set aside right to do. We don’t know how that’s going to be fixed. We don’t know what money’s going to come from the state in the next 2 years.”

Whittemore said he’d been asked that same question by the Pickens County Taxpayers Association before.

“My answer was that I would not spend it, and return it, and I stand by that,” Whittemore said. “I’m not a tax attorney, I’m not a bond attorney and I don’t know how all that was set up. But I have been in government for quite a number of years a few years back. It’s been about six or seven years since I served on city council. It sure is easy to spend other people’s money. These department heads can come up with ways that you wouldn’t believe to spend money.”

Whittemore said he knew there could be catastrophes in the future and that “insurance companies have deductibles and all that, the wise thing to do, would be … to return that money to the taxpayers, rework the bonds, not use it.”

Question: The United States has been ranked as low as 27^th in the world in math and science. How can our Pickens County schools improve our math and science scores for both males and females?

Whittemore said the question was a hard one.

“I think again, it’s all about money, trying to add the proper courses, put the proper emphasis that want to get into the various aspects of science, or engineering,” Whittemore said. “Of course, if they can’t read, they can’t do anything. We need to have people, starting at 4K, read. When they get to the eighth grade and they can’t read, they’re going to drop out sooner or later. Reading is extremely important. Our superintendent just a comment about that, that you can have a kindergarten teacher and he or she can pick out right now the students that will probably not make it. They can just tell about their reading skills and everything. So we need to have remedial reading immediately.”

Ramsey said while the country is focusing on STEM education (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), the system needs to get back to the roots.

“Reading, Writing and Arithmetic,” Ramsey said. “We should not be graduating students that can’t read. That doesn’t make any sense.” 

She said county graduates will be competing with the entire world for jobs, not just with Pickens County or South Carolina graduates. 

“But it starts at home,” Ramsey said. “So we think globally, but act locally. There are some best practices in this country, and we need to search for those best practices of how to increase the learning of girls as well as boys in science and mathematics. Those are critical.”  

She said she didn’t know how she felt about single gender schools or classes.

“In Pickens County, we have tried to stress the math and the sciences,” she said. She said the district needs to push forward those who are interested in math and science fields, by giving them more opportunities like the robotics program at the Career Center. 

“Very often, I feel like our sometimes in our middle schools, we hold our students back,” Edwards said. “We want the honors classes and we want these students who are good in math and science to take those honors classes. Yet sometimes we hold them back, because we don’t want those classes too large.”

She said some students miss out on honors classes due to a single test score.

“We have to look at those tests and say ‘Is this going to determine that child’s life or should we be looking at everything they do?’” she said.    

Check back with Patch for a complete video of this debate.

A senatorial debate between Sen. Larry Martin and challenger Rex Rice is slated for October 23. Check back with Patch for more details on this debate.