Educator Assistance Act

BY STEVE NUZUM

What is the SC Educator Assistance Act? 

The South Carolina State House has not been the site of much hopeful news this session. The most high-profile and quickly-moving pieces of legislation have been decidedly anti-public school. 

S. 62, a bill intended to respond to the SC Supreme Court’s recent decision finding (again) that providing publicly-funded school vouchers for private school students is unconstitutional by… creating publicly-funded school vouchers for private school students. 

H. 3927 seeks to ban diversity trainings and other attempts by schools state agencies to respond to systemic inequalities. 

One glimmer of hope is H. 3196. While it hasn’t seen the kind of flash or traction of the other bills, it did pass the SC House and has received some serious discussion in the Senate Education Committee. 

H. 3196, the “Educator Assistance Act,” is a compilation of many of the smaller asks that have driven teacher advocacy for the past several years. 

The bill, as currently written and amended, would make some minor but significant changes to the rules governing public school teacher duties and obligations:

• Districts would be required to publish projected new salary schedules before requiring teachers to sign contracts for the following school year.

• School employees would be able to access sick leave banks.

• More of the state-mandated professional development days would be required to be work days for teachers.

• Districts would no longer be required to challenge teacher certificates when teachers leave their positions, and the State Board of Education would not hear challenges made after 60 days.

• The state would no longer be able to revoke teachers licenses for a calendar year for “breaking” a contract; the maximum penalty the State Board could set would now be six months, starting from the date of the challenge. The Board, after hearing a challenge from a district, would also no longer be required to revoke a teacher certificate. 

Could the General Assembly go much further? Of course. And it is likely that at least some of the energy behind this particular bill is aimed at responding to valid critiques of the much vaster effort directed toward the voucher and anti-diversity efforts? Definitely.

But this seems like a good bill to support, and also evidence that educational advocacy does work, even if it often works much more slowly than we would like. Calls for many of these exact changes date back at least to the 10,000-teacher march led by SC for Ed in 2019. For example, in 2020, SC for Ed and other organizations called for more work days. The group’s 2021 legislative agenda called for bills that would have created similar reforms to teaching contracts: S. 348 (which died in the Senate Education Committee and was never introduced in the House), and its sister bill H. 3246, which died in the House Education Public Works Committee. Similar contract reform is also part of The SCEA’s current legislative agenda, and has been for the past several session.

And, of course, it’s possible that the Educator Assistance Act won’t pass this year. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a major priority. 

But there are two things working in its favor.

The first one is unfortunate: teacher morale is arguably at an all-time low in South Carolina and across the country. SC has been breaking records for the past several years in terms of teachers leaving the profession, and the main response of the legislature and other state officials has been to accuse teachers of “indoctrinating” students, to pass a confusing and inconsistent book ban regulation, and to argue repeatedly on behalf of vouchers by calling our schools and teachers “failing”. 

The second is more hopeful: advocates from multiple pro-public school and pro-educator associations and organizations worked very hard behind the scenes to help write and promote these bills.

So while it’s important not to lose sight of the serious dangers facing public schools and the many still-ignored pleas from public educators, hopefully the existence of a piece of legislation that does seem to represent some of what we’ve been asking for for years represents a positive chance to get involved.