Sen. Darrell Jackson remembers his days at racially segregated Atlas Road Elementary School as good days.
He knew the teachers. He knew the principal down the hall and the school superintendent, too.
Just as importantly, Jackson said, the educators knew him. They knew his siblings and his family. They also understood his academic potential.
�Many, many African-Americans are longing for those days again,� said Jackson, pastor of the 10,000-member Bible Way Church of Atlas Road just outside the southeast Columbia city limits.
Jackson, 50, is among a handful of black lawmakers who say they are concerned that S.C. public schools are failing to educate poor and minority children. Their concern could push the state�s years-long debate over school choice and vouchers or tax credits for private school tuition over the finish line in 2008.
Standing in the well of the Senate during a debate in May, Jackson, long considered a public school defender, said he could see the day coming when he would support school choice.
It would be a historic alliance � traditionally pro-public school black Democrats, such as Jackson, joining with school choice advocates, largely white Republicans � to allow parents to use public money to send their children to better-performing public or private schools.
Jackson says he�s not alone as he reconsiders school choice, ticking off the names of colleagues: Sens. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, and Kay Patterson, D-Richland, and Rep. Leon Howard, D-Richland, chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus.
COURTING RESEGREGATION?
School choice � whether allowing students to choose their public school through open enrollment, or giving state vouchers or tax credits to pay private school tuition � is one of the most heated issues in South Carolina.
The state�s long history of supporting segregation has made black lawmakers reticent to support using public money to pay for private schools.
They fear vouchers would pay for �white flight,� hurting public schools.
The South Carolina Independent School Association accredits at least 100 private schools in the state. More than 200 others are either not accredited or are accredited by other organizations.
Many sprang up in the early 1970s, when federally mandated school integration became the law in public schools.
School choice became a political drumbeat with the 2002 election of Republican Gov. Mark Sanford. He backed a plan called Put Parents in Charge, designed to allow parents to use vouchers, drawn on public funds, and credits, reducing state taxes, to pay tuition for their children to go to private schools.
Critics said PPIC, which has failed to gain traction in the General Assembly, was designed to help middle- and upper-income white families flee the state�s public school system, a claim Sanford rejects.
With the Republican-controlled Legislature skittish about putting taxpayer money into private schools, choice supporters sharpened and refocused their pitch to concentrate on poor children. Those children, choice advocates say, are �trapped� in failing schools because they have few or no available options.
A THIRD WAY?
The debate over vouchers or tax credits for private schools has been between public school defenders, who say public money should go only to public schools, and those who advocate private school vouchers or tax credits.
Jackson wants to create a third model.
School children, blacks in particular, might have been better served in their neighborhood schools, Jackson said. There, each child was more likely to be in a culture of academic achievement and success aimed specifically toward them.
�Tell me the difference in a Booker T. Washington High School, where blacks attended and loved it, and a Dreher High School, where they were forced to attend,� Jackson said.
Jackson recalled that when he and other blacks were sent from their segregated schools to Dreher, his parents had to force the school to put him in college preparatory courses, such as geometry and algebra.
�Certain people assumed I could not take those subjects and would have had no need,� Jackson said. �They did not want me to be here, and I did not want to be there.�
Jackson, who went on to graduate from Columbia�s historically black Benedict College, said kids who �are bright and smart,� who �come from the right background� and have involved parents will make it through today�s public schools.
But, he added, �I�m not sure every kid gets that.�
Some students are not going to be reached by public schools, he said, and in those cases, he supports public money going to parents to send their children to private institutions.
�Some parents are saying, �If it�s all black, I don�t care,�� he said.
FIGHTING FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Jackson refuses to endorse vouchers, saying he does not want to hurt public schools. Similarly, he is careful to say that he does not advocate a return to segregation.
Other black legislators remain adamantly opposed to any change that would siphon public money away from public schools, even if advocates say that competition would improve public schools.
�For me, South Carolina has never delivered on its promise for equal education for all its children,� said Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland, one of the General Assembly�s most ardent backers of public schools.
State Education Superintendent Jim Rex is equally cool to Jackson�s vision of the future of public schools.
Rex, who defeated an advocate of school choice in the 2006 election, pushed an open enrollment bill for public schools this year. It would have offered parents more, but limited choices in the public schools that their children could attend, opening enrollment to allow some students at inferior schools to attend better schools.
Sanford vetoed the bill, and the Legislature, including voucher supporters, upheld the veto, one of only 15 of 243 vetoes that were sustained.
Instead of vouchers or tax credits, Rex advocates public schools with lots of choices � schools open to everyone, regardless of race or attendance zones, Montessori schools, language-immersion schools, single-gender or uniformed with high expectations in terms of behavior.
�That�s what we used to have,� Rex said, �and not just in the black community.�
�A STATE OF EMERGENCY�
Another minister with emerging prominence in the school debate is the Rev. Richard Davis, executive director of Clergy for Educational Options, a nonprofit group of 300 black churches.
Whether through vouchers, tax credits or open enrollment, Davis said, parents of poor and minority children must have the same school choices that those with more resources already have.
�Keeping the door to choices closed to African-American parents means their children are more likely to not read at a proficient level by the eighth grade,� Davis said. �That means they will not receive a high school diploma, much less be able to attend college.�
He, too, says black children �fared better when we were segregated.�
Like others, Davis points to studies showing almost half of S.C. high school students fail to graduate within four years � the lowest graduation rate in the nation.
�If that were any other group, the government would declare a state of emergency,� Davis said. �What has happened at the S.C. State House is we have played politics with our children.�
Black politicians agree something needs to be done, Davis said, but they are afraid to make a move without the support of their friends.
Still, he sees a change coming.
For instance, Davis wants black churches to be able to use public money to open or expand private church schools.
NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS
Darrell Jackson says his church might start its own school.
His goal now, he says, is to start a dialogue that will determine the level of interest in forging a neighborhood school model, like those that existed in black communities before 1970.
At the same time, he wants to find a way to meet the needs of those who rely on and support public schools and those who want school choice.
The complexity and strain of the schools debate already has made for some strange political alliances, Jackson said, and it will continue to do so.
For example, at least nine black House members voted with legislators who favor vouchers to sustain Sanford�s veto of Rex�s open school enrollment bill in June.
But some of those black legislators said their vote did not represent an alliance with voucher advocates.
Freshman Rep. Chris Hart, D-Richland, said he voted against Rex�s open enrollment bill because it was poorly conceived.
�The plan was not well put together, and the money did not follow the child� who moved from one public school to another, he said.
But the time might come, Jackson said, when groups such as South Carolinians for Responsible Government � the prime backers of Put Parents in Charge � will muster enough legislative votes to win the voucher/tax credit debate.
That group, created to pass school choice, is an aggressive coalition of groups that range from conservative white Republicans to black religious leaders.
�South Carolinians for Responsible Government realized early we would have to get the African-American community on board if we were to have a chance at passing school choice,� said Denver Merrill, the group�s spokesman.
That�s because evidence in other states shows school choice benefits middle-income white students and low-income and black students, Merrill said.
The group, which favors tax credits but also supports vouchers, sees Jackson�s reconsideration of school choice �as a very positive step forward in this movement,� Merrill said.
�Our educational efforts are paying off.�
If the pro-school-choice forces win, it would not be the first time that a seemingly unlikely political alliance changed South Carolina.
A coalition of black Democrats and white Republicans passed a reapportionment plan in 1995 that led to the GOP takeover of the Legislature.
�Eventually that coalition may get the votes to go to that and ram something down the throats of African-Americans that they don�t want,� Jackson said. �So the time to act is now.�
Reach Burris at (803) 771-8398.
THREE SIDES
On the issue of spending public money for private schools, lawmakers are breaking down in roughly three camps.
PUBLIC SCHOOL SUPPORTERS SAY:
� Public money should be used only to pay for public schools.
� The Legislature should fully fund public schools at the base student cost, a formula that sets how much it will cost the state to educate each child for a year.
VOUCHER/TAX CREDIT PROPONENTS SAY:
� Parents should be able to choose the school their children attend � public or private.
� Money that would have been used to pay to educate those children at a public school should follow them to the school they choose.
� Independent private or religious schools that set their own standards and are unaccountable to government should receive public money.
PEOPLE IN THE MIDDLE SAY:
� Neighborhood schools might be better equipped to serve some poor and minority students who struggle with achievement.
� Using public money for private schools or giving parents more options within public schools could help struggling students, but existing voucher plans won�t help poor children.
PUBLIC MONEY, PRIVATE SCHOOLING
How the idea has fared in the General Assembly
2004 � The �Put Parents in Charge� bill introduced in the House promises to �restore parental control of education, improve public school performance; and expand educational opportunities for children of families in poverty.� It would allow parents to receive public money to pay for a private education. Introduced mid-session, the bill dies in the House.
2005 � �Put Parents in Charge� is reintroduced for the 2005 legislative session. The bill dies without ever getting to the House floor for debate.
2006 � Using public money to pay for private schools becomes an election-year issue for many Republicans. Advocates of this form of school choice raised money to defeat House members who did not back their efforts.
2007 � Voucher proponents attach to several Senate education bills amendments that would have given $2,500 private-school tuition vouchers to students who leave public schools rated �below average� or �unsatisfactory� on state report cards. None passed.