Finland

I read the op-ed by Superintendent Dr. Danny Merck in the Pickens County Courier, touting his trip to Finland. Merck came back thinking the way to improve academic performance in Pickens County is by better feeding the students, having them use their hands to build things, test them less, and increase recess and playtime.

Good grief. I can picture our rubberstamping school board nodding their heads in agreement to all of that nonsense.

According to the most recent SC Ready results, in Pickens County only 45% of the students read at or above grade level. I would have said, how about focusing on teaching the students to read better instead?

Sadly, group think has settled in. No one is challenging anything. For instance, looking at the latest district report card, how are less than half the students performing at grade, yet 85% of them are being handed graduation diplomas. According to their own figures, many students are just being pushed through the system.

Examining the most recent figures in our school district, K-12 enrollment has fallen five years in a row and is now nearly 600 students less than it was in 2013-14.

I remember sitting on the school board listening to the administration and the board members who passed the Greenville Plan saying, if we borrow all this money and build all these new schools then the businesses, jobs and students will come. I remember the words like it was yesterday, “build them and they will come.” They said it over and over.

I remember saying, if you want to upgrade our school buildings, OK, but it will not generate the business boom you are predicting. Until businesses see Pickens as a place where they can make more money, they won’t come here or expand, and the job creation will be very limited. As a fiscal conservative, I went on to say the massive school board hike of 39 mills for all these schools will harm business development, not help it.

Since the new schools came online, the total number of jobs within our county has fallen from 37,860 to 36,689. The number of business establishments has fallen from 2,462 to 2,284. And like I said, enrollment in these new schools has fallen nearly 600 students.

As charter schools increase, as the economy continues to grow and private schools became more affordable, and as home schooling has grown, when parents have been given a choice, they have left the system.

Part of it is when the vendors and providers get their finger in the design pie, they push for bigger and bigger. The architects alone made $25 million on the projects; they were paid based on the size of the overall plan. The bond issuers made about $15 million on the initial bond sale and the recurring bond sales that occur each of the 25 years to follow. The technology people who push the latest and greatest and constant refreshes -- tens of millions they made.

When you look at the leaders of the labor movement in education -- like these Red for Ed people, they are pushing for: higher salaries, more job security, better working conditions, medical benefits, retirement and more generous work day hours and annual calendars.

The education lobby in Pickens County, pushed for better working conditions. Like I said, the kids did not need $3 million football stadiums. It was the athletic managers that pushed for all of that. Amber is probably the fastest girl in Pickens High School. She doesn't need nor demand to be running in a $3 million stadium.

What’s more frightening now, is how teachers are also beginning to vote with their feet as well. Back when, the teacher turnover rate in our district was 6%. It then rose to 7.1% in 2013, 7.6% in 2014, 8.9% in 2015, 10.3% in 2016, 10.6% in 2017 and this past year it was about 10%.

None of this rocket science nor does it require junkets to Europe to figure out. Just ask the teachers in one of our schools what the problems are. They will tell you.

First, teachers become teachers because they want to go into a classroom and freely teach children as they see fit. Unfortunately, that freedom is being grinned out of the classroom by top-down bureaucrats who haven’t taught in a decade or two. They tell teachers what to teach, when to teach it, how to teach it and how long to teach it. Those at the top are constantly hoisting new initiatives on teachers. And teachers are observed, evaluated and have to report on it every inch along the way.

Second, there is a lack of discipline — too many students do not follow instruction, are disregarding the rules, disrespecting teachers and bullying other students. Students need structure, boundaries and consequences. Teachers are now afraid to discipline students because they fear ending up on the 6 o’clock news. Administrators are doing little to nothing about discipline these days.

Third, more students are now struggling with social, psychological and emotional issues and they are not getting the clinical support they need. Simply put, the leaders of our schools and in the district office do not see or understand these clinical problems.

If a second grader is not reading at grade level, it is not because he doesn’t get enough recess time. Likely, the parent doesn’t read at home with the child. This is a social problem to do with the parent-child relationship.

If Janie is coming in everyday crying her eyes out because mommy is on meth, daddy is MIA and she is being bumped from DDS to Grandma’s to Aunt Louise’s, urging her to work more with her hands isn’t going to help either. That is an emotional issue.

Low teacher turnover and a stable core of teachers was the bedrock support of our school district and districts throughout the state. That is no longer the case and another sign the system is crumbling bit by bit.

We can pay teachers higher salaries to tolerate all this (much like the new state education law coming down the pike), or we roll up our sleeves and fix these problems. Unfortunately, most of the leaders of the system do not see or understand the problems, all of which are right under their noses.