SC teachers frustrated as legislative help on teacher shortage dies on session’s last day
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South Carolina teachers’ hopes for assistance from the state Legislature during an ongoing teacher shortage were dashed last week, as multiple bills aimed at alleviating the problem died with the end of the legislative session.
At one point, the state’s educators had grounds for hope. As far back as a year ago, the S.C. House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass the Educator Assistance Act, which among other things would make it less likely that a teacher who quit would end up having their teaching certification suspended. Two other bills that would help fill teaching jobs managed to pass both the House and the Senate.
But when the 2023-24 legislative session came to an end at 5 p.m. Thursday, all three bills died without passing into law. The Educator Assistance Act never came up for a vote in the Senate, and because different versions of the two other bills were voted out of both chambers in the final two weeks of the session, they failed to become law when legislators ran out of time to reconcile their competing amendments.
“People are feeling very uneasy right now,” said Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, summing up teachers’ attitudes after the bills’ collapse.
The State previously reported that more than 100 Palmetto State teachers had their certification suspended for a year or more in 2023 because they quit a teaching job before the end of a year-long contract with their school district, even though many were eager to return to teaching in the classroom.
At the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, South Carolina school districts reported 1,613 open positions, a 9% increase over the year before, according to the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement. An update from February 2024 showed another 924 teachers had left the classroom since the school year began.
State Rep. Shannon Erickson, R-Beaufort, who chairs the House Education and Public Works Committee, pushed her House colleagues on three occasions to pass H.4280 or the Educator Assistance Act, a bill that would give teachers more protection and flexibility in their contracts.
“The teachers gave us a long list a few years back on what was important to them,” Erickson said. “In the last several years, we’ve addressed pay. Starting teacher pay has raised 47%, which is remarkable. What we have not done is red tape, the stuff that really hurts them and doesn’t treat them like professionals.”
The act would have:
- Allowed teachers to opt out of their contracts within 10 days of the publication of the district’s salary schedule, which often comes after teachers have already signed their contracts for the next year;
- Limit the amount of time a school district has to report a breach and give the State Board of Education more flexibility in issuing suspensions;
- Move the starting date of a suspension from the date of the state board’s action to the day a teacher quit, which would allow a suspended teacher to return to the classroom sooner;
- And cut the maximum suspension for a breach of contract from a year down to six months.
Erickson said the split between when educators are expected to sign a contract for the following year and when they find out what they will be paid is especially galling.
“Who signs a contract without knowing what they’re paid?” Erickson said. “They’re signing with only part of the equation. ... The very basic thing they need to do is a budget for their family, and we need to give them a realistic view of what it’s going to be.”
Patrick Kelly, director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, said contracts need to be addressed as the start of the school year in many districts is creeping earlier into the summer.
“One change we’re seeing is more districts start as early as mid-July,” Kelly said. “The 10-day window could fall within 10 days prior to the start of classes, and that was not remotely conceived when this was introduced.”
Worried by the Senate’s inaction on the bill after it passed the House 111-0, House lawmakers on May 2 added the measure in its entirety to the text of two other education bills that previously passed the Senate: S.124 would have created a pilot program for hiring non-certified teachers, while S.305 would have counted some prospective teachers’ prior work experience outside of education toward getting their certificate.
Erickson said the certification process has been a barrier to the profession even when teachers don’t get suspended.
“All kinds of professionals do continuing education, but they don’t have to go through the paperwork of doing it every time,” she said. “I’ve had numerous reports that one of the biggest jobs of assistant principals is running down certifications of the staff. They have spreadsheets of who needs to be renewed when. I would rather have good, background-checked staffs with degrees that cover what they’re teaching, and the district and the staff decide what that career development looks like.”
On Wednesday, senators added their own amendments to both bills to re-insert the initial language before the bills were changed by the House. The next day — the final one of the session — House members voted unanimously to reject the Senate changes, drawing a curtain on the last chance for either to become law this year.
If legislators want to revisit any of the bills when they reconvene in January, the measure would have to start back over at square one of the legislative process.
“I’m really disappointed to see 305 not make it,” Kelly said. “It received unanimous support in the Senate and the House, and it would benefit some teachers to the benefit of thousands of dollars. That would have a real impact on the day-to-day of teacher families in South Carolina.”
Kelly said he hopes that strong support will allow the measure to pass relatively easily in 2025. “It shouldn’t need two years to get to the finish line,” he said. “It should come right out the gate.”
But, he added, “it is ultimately a moot point if school districts would act in good faith if a teacher resigns for a valid reason. They are not required to report a teacher. That is a district’s decision. If they simply do the right thing and, when a teacher resigns due to health reasons or moves to keep a family together, they don’t need to report that.”
East noted that while bills related to the teacher shortage were allowed to die, legislators will continue to conference on a bill meant to address ideas lawmakers associate with critical race theory in schools, while another recently passed law would require teachers to notify parents if a student seeks to change their gender identity, preferred name or pronouns.
She said she thinks this shows that legislators’ priorities when it comes to public education are not the same as educators’.
“What they did with the trans bill turns teachers into mandatory reporters, so we’re not feeling real good,” she said.
Erickson said she doesn’t know why the Educator Assistance Act didn’t move forward this year in the Senate, although she’s heard concerns from more rural school districts that changes might hurt their ability to recruit and retain teachers. But she said the bill incorporated a lot of feedback lawmakers received from school administrators’ groups in order to address some of their concerns.
The lawmaker said she remains committed to passing the Educator Assistance Act in next year’s session and said she’s been assured the Senate will take up a version of the bill next time.
And she said she hopes “teachers reach out and say this really matters to us,” Erickson said. “I’m not going to drop the issue.”
This story was originally published May 13, 2024, 1:17 PM.
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