The State
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SC teachers are quitting their jobs, citing discipline problems, threats from students.
CEO/editor @inewsource. ONA's Women's Leadership Accelerator '23. Past: Senior editor, politics & SC government @TheState @McClatchy.
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View as a gridWhy SC teachers are quitting in record numbers | The State
The State
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The year Teresa Schlosser decided to quit teaching, she had a first-grade student who panicked over simple tasks and lost his temper. Frustrated, he hit himself in the head, threw himself against the sink in the class bathroom, jumped off desks and shelves, threw pencils and crayons at his classmates and tossed backpacks from their cubbies.
How SCANA spent $1.25 million at SC State House before nuclear project collapsed
The State
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A look at the campaign contributions SCANA showered SC lawmakers with before the company's nuclear plans derailed
Medicaid is saving her daughter's life. She worries the GOP's bill could change that
The State
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Amy Bredeson hears the question but waits to answer until she moves out of earshot of her 11-year-old daughter, Chloe. Then, in a lowered voice, the 40-year-old Bluffton resident explains what she fears will happen if Congress passes a proposed rollback of federal spending on Medicaid, the program that provides insurance primarily to the poor and disabled.
Why SC families are waiting for autism therapy, a wait that is getting worse
The State
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What if your child had to wait years for therapy that, if started early, could keep him out of an institution? It's happening to some SC families. Here's why.
SC is 'breaking the law' by ignoring poor schools
The State
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In 1993, three dozen predominantly black, poor rural schools sued the state of South Carolina, seeking more money. In 2014, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled that the way the state's public schools are funded was unfair and unconstitutional. Two years later, little has changed, rural schools say.
EXCLUSIVE: Black S.C. students suspended, expelled three times more often than whites
The State
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African-American students were three times more likely to be suspended or expelled than white students in S.C. public schools last year. The same was true in the Richland 2 school district, which became the focus of a heated national debate about school discipline after a video went viral of a white sheriff's deputy wrestling a black Spring Valley High School student from her desk and tossing her across the floor.
Some S.C. students ride for 3 hours to and from school
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When Zoey White fell asleep one day last year during her hour-and-a-half-long bus ride home, she woke up in the wrong place. "(S)he made it all the way back to the school before they realized she was on the bus," said Zoey's mother, Michelle White of Camden. "Isn't that awful?" For some S.C. public-school students - including sixth-grader Zoey and her brother Denzel Washington-White, a ninth-grader at the Kershaw school district's North Central High School - getting to and from school can add up to three hours to their day. White's children are not alone.
Bernie Sanders tests presidential appeal with students, African-Americans at Benedict College
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Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders tried out his fiery populist message at Benedict College on Saturday - part of the U.S. senator's efforts to broaden his appeal to African-Americans and Southern Democrats. About 1,000 people came to hear the U.S. senator from Vermont speak at the historically black college in Columbia - his first in a few stops planned around the state Saturday. The crowd was diverse and mostly enthusiastic, giving Sanders several standing ovations. But overall, the audience was more subdued than the nearly 3,000-person crowds that packed a steaming hot conference center in Columbia and waited in a long line to hear Sanders speak in Greenville last month.
SC child-death panel's work mostly secret
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When a child dies unexpectedly in South Carolina, child welfare experts piece together the child's life story, how he or she died and who, if anyone, could have prevented the death. But the experts' insights into specific cases - once made public to highlight needed reforms - are kept secret. Instead, the public is told only how many children each year have died from which causes in which counties - not whether the state agencies charged with protecting children missed a chance to intervene.
Then-Rep. Nikki Haley's House vote helped another lawmaker's spouse become judge
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Gov. Nikki Haley - who lambasted the Legislature for electing a lawmaker's spouse as a judge Wednesday - cast a vote as a state representative in 2009 that helped another legislator's spouse become a judge. Then-Rep. Nikki Haley, a Lexington Republican, cast a vote that helped Kaye Hearn, whose husband was a S.C. House member at the time, win a seat on the S.C. Supreme Court. In 2009, Haley voted with an overwhelming majority of lawmakers to defeat an attempt to remove Hearn from the Supreme Court race and start over, seeking new candidates.
EXCLUSIVE: Investigators looking into allegations of illegal State House vote swapping
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State and federal law enforcement officials are questioning S.C. legislators about potential illegal vote swapping in February's race that re-elected the state's Supreme Court chief justice, multiple sources have told The State. State Rep. Tommy Stringer, R-Greenville, said he met with State Law Enforcement Division agents last month. He said agents asked him about connections between lawmakers switching their commitments to vote for a candidate in a Greenville County Family Court race and the chief justice's race. State lawmakers elect judges in South Carolina. However, swapping judicial-vote commitments in exchange for a promise is illegal under state law, punishable with a $1,000 fine or 90 days in prison.
Expenses quietly inflate S.C. legislators' salaries
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South Carolina's part-time lawmakers say they work hard for their $10,400-a-year salaries from taxpayers, adding their obligations continue long after the clank of the gavel in June that ends each legislative session. But their actual pay is far higher, according to an analysis of records The State obtained through an open records request. Added to their salaries, legislators received money for expenses that raised their income to about $31,000 on average last year, according to that analysis. Lawmakers are not required to report whether they actually spent that added money on expenses. They just can pocket the added money.
Survivors' grace led to SC's lowering of Confederate flag
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A painful, historical wound reopened in South Carolina when nine African-Americans were shot dead in a Charleston church last month. In shock and disbelief, state leaders sang "We Shall Overcome," swaying hand-in-hand with a community in anguish. Then mourners robbed of their dearest treasures showered the accused killer with forgiveness. That stunning act of grace toppled a divisive symbol of heritage and hate, setting the state on a path toward healing. Twenty-three days of grief, remorse and hope wrought what 54 years could not - the expulsion of the Confederate flag from South Carolina's seat of power.
As manager, SC Gov. Haley has failed, critics say
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Gov. Nikki Haley and her "rock star" child-welfare director, Lillian Koller, beamed at the cameras in October 2012 as they announced big news about the state's welfare program. "People always think of the Department of Social Services as taking care of children, but we take care of children in lots of ways," Haley said, announcing that Koller, under her direction, had moved more than 12,000 South Carolinians off of welfare and into jobs. Less than two years later, Koller resigned amid mounting evidence that the agency that she ran for Haley had failed to meet another obligation -preventing S.C.
EXCLUSIVE: SC parents pressured to donate to scholarship group
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The leader of a West Columbia private school says her students' parents are being pressured to donate to the new private-school choice program, created to help parents of children with disabilities afford private school. The pressure, said Susan Thomas, head of Glenforest School, is coming from Jeff Davis with Palmetto Kids First - one of five nonprofits set up this year to grant private-school scholarships made possible through a new state tax credit. Emails to parents leave the impression - without directly offering a quid pro quo - that if the parents donate to Palmetto Kids, it will grant them a scholarship, Thomas said.
EXCLUSIVE: Financial, legal troubles dog SC school-choice advocate
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The unofficial leader of one of the new S.C. nonprofits created to help students with disabilities pay for private school has a bankruptcy that disqualifies him from being on that group's board of directors. Palmetto Kids First has avoided any impact because of Jeff Davis' 2011 bankruptcy, following a failed business deal and a lawsuit, because Davis has assumed the role of volunteer and advisory board member with the group. Davis said he took those roles, in part, because of his financial history. He said, eventually, he hopes to move on to other endeavors, handing the reigns of Palmetto Kids First entirely to his wife, the nonprofit's operations director.
SC's Scott poised to make history, but not with black votes
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U.S. Sen. Tim Scott is favored to win a U.S. Senate seat next month, becoming the first African-American ever elected to the Senate from South Carolina and the first black elected to a statewide office since Reconstruction. But, if political polls hold true, black S.C. voters will reject Scott on Nov. 4, casting their ballots instead for his black Democratic challenger, Joyce Dickerson of Columbia. Republican Scott, who is running to keep the seat Gov. Nikki Haley appointed him to when U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint resigned in 2012, does not dwell on the fact that his approval among fellow African-Americans is low.
Exclusive – Robert Guinyard’s life and death in SC’s child welfare system
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What the public knows about Robert Guinyard Jr. – the 4-year-old autistic boy beaten to death with a metal rod in his Richland County home last year – comes from his parents’ trial for his murder and child advocates, who have urged lawmakers to reform the state’s child welfare system.
But confidential court documents, obtained by The State newspaper, tell much more.
SC GOP has grown from a few to a fracturing many
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U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham did not say his opponents’ names at a campaign stop Wednesday in Columbia. But he did try to distinguish himself from the five GOP challengers who pose the greatest threat ever to his political career.
Lindsey Graham's Primary a Fight for Soul of GOP | RealClearPolitics
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Lindsey Graham's Primary a Fight for Soul of GOP | RealClearPolitics
State House for Sale: SC's unregistered lobbyists profit in 'gray area'
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The debate hinged on whether a bill reshaping the state's sex education law would ensure that public school students learn medically accurate information about sex and its risks or, indirectly, encourage them to have sex by showing them how. But driving the April debate before a S.C. House panel was a fight the groups did not mention - a tug-of-war for more than $1 million a year in state money. The stakes are high. For at least a decade, teen pregnancy prevention groups have been lobbying lawmakers to keep the money flowing to the programs they run.
New York millionaire, school choice advocate gave $153,000 to SC candidates for Legislature | New...
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Gifts given to candidates who could push through school choice bill Opponents of two Republican state senators received $45,000 from corporations tied to New York millionaire real-estate investor and school-choice advocate Howard Rich immediately before the November election. Groups tied to Rich also gave another $108,000 to at least 19 other candidates for the General Assembly, all Republicans except for state Sen. Robert Ford, D-Charleston. Joe Thompson, who ran against state Sen. Wes Hayes, R-York, and Rex Rice, who ran against state Sen. Larry Martin, R-Pickens, received $25,000 and $20,000, respectively, from several limited liability corporations sharing the same Philadelphia address tied to Rich, according to campaign contribution reports filed with the S.C.