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SCHOOL DISTRICT ORGANIZATION AND GOVERNANCE IN SOUTH CAROLINA

The views presented here are not necessarily those of the Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs or of Clemson University. The Institute sponsors research and public service programs to enhance civic awareness of public policy issues and improve the quality of national, state, and local government. The Institute, a public service activity of Clemson University, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, tax-exempt public policy research organization. Watt for the Anderson County Board of Education in 2007-09 exploring options for greater coordination among the county's five school districts. ACKNOWLEGMENTS The author expresses her sincere appreciation for the support provided by the Jim Self Center on the Future. The author also thanks Ellen Saltzman for data collection and analysis, the South Carolina Deparment of Education and the South Carolina School Boards of Association for assistance with background information, and Kathy Skinner for the final preparation of the manuscript. Two supplementary documents with descriptive statistics about school districts and a summary of the legislation covering the districts in each of the 46 counties are available on request from Ellen Saltzman at the Strom Thurmond Institute. • Two important events have shaped the governance of public education in South Carolina. One was the national school and school district consolidation movement that affected South Carolina in the 1950s, reducing the number of districts from more than 1,200 to less than 100, with 85 in existence today. The other event was the series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions that led to the partial abandonment of the uniquely South Carolina practice of " delegation government "-governing counties and school districts through local legislation passed by the General Assembly at the initiative of the county delegation. • Although counties have acquired a substantial degree of home rule, school districts remain largely under the control of the county delegation in terms of their governing structure—the size and composition of the school board and the number and configuration of districts within each county. • All children in South Carolina must be enrolled in a regular public school, a charter school, a private school, or a registered home schooling program. In 2008-09, 1,080 public schools (including charter schools) served 691,371 students in preK through 12 th grade. Adult education added another 59,663 students. An estimated 50,000 children attended private schools, and an estimated 6,000-12,000 were home-schooled. • At the state level, governance is the responsibility of the State Department of Education, …