Greenville County Schools has come out with their budget requests for the upcoming school year. They are looking to increase the budget from $721 million in 2021-2022 up to $788 million in 2022-2023. That’s an increase of $67 million with apparently $53 million coming from the State. The delta will need to be made up by tax inceases on property owners in the county. Contained in this budget is the goal to give teachers a pay raise of $2,000.
Here’s the Greenville County Schools budget in detail for the current year.
As if 2021 hasn’t had enough drama with the Covid situation and people trying to get back to doing things in person – including going to school. We’ve seen all kinds of supplychain and labor issues in the broader marketplace. Well now the labor shortage has reached a critical point for Greenville County Schools. Yesterday GCS sent out communications about the bus driver shortage and asked for parents to contact the district to let them know if they can drive their own kids to school. They said that they were short over 100 bus drivers and they can’t do all the routes. So parents are asked to carpool together to help get their kids to school. It seems the district will need to redraw the bus routes for the existing bus drivers that they do have.
I don’t know why there is such a shortage of bus drivers this year? I could guess. Perhaps with all the scaremongering over Covid, maybe the people who normally drive buses don’t want to expose themselves potentially to getting Covid or the Delta variant. Maybe they don’t want to have to wear a mask? Maybe they don’t want to have to ask each child that gets on the bus without a mask if they would like a mask. Maybe it just doesn’t pay enough.
In South Carolina, it’s my understanding that the state of SC owns the buses but the school districts need to furnish the drivers. Last week Molly Spearman, State Superintendent of Schools, issued a mask mandate for all school children riding state owned school buses. The one caviat is that if the student is not wearing a mask and refuses to put on the mask offered by the bus driver that the student must still be allowed to ride the bus – maskless. BTW, somehow the school districts are not allowed to issue schoolwide or systemwide mask mandates because it is prohibited by law in South Carolina now at least for the 2021-2022 school year.
Based upon the communications that I saw, this would seem to me to be the permanent state of affairs this year for business in the Greenville County Schools system. I hope I’m wrong and that they can find people to take these jobs but given the challenges many employers are having these days finding qualified candidates, I’m not holding out hope.
On Tuesday this week, South Carolina Governor, Henry McMaster issued a new executive order. He cut the legs out from the tyrannical city mayors and councils and school districts across the state with their silly mask mandates. It literally was CHECKMATE on the tyrannical actions of local schools and cities. It was brilliant.
There was immediate pushback from some places as seen on various posts on Facebook. Greenville County Schools which has been a huge proponent of the mask, was not going to give up their masks quietly. They issued a statement to the effect that they weren’t sure if McMaster’s EO was legal and their lawyers were taking a look. I believe it was then the next day that South Carolina’s School Superintendent issued her own statement saying they would drop the mask mandate due to to the Governor’s EO. I believe it was after that that Greenville County Schools succumbed to the dropping of the mask. However, I believe students need written permission on the specific state form in order to show up maskless. Then one by one, the mask mandates were dropped…cities and schools started to fall in line. The biggest one was the City of Greenville had to finally cave as they had no standing any longer.
All of this just shows me that this was all theater and there was no benefit to the mask. It just finally took political courage and leadership from our Governor to finally stand up to this nonsense. The maskers are ticked off of course. I’m sure the school districts are besides themselves and panicked as to what to do now. I like to say that Greenville became the Mask Capitol of the South. Good riddance to the mask but something tells me this isn’t over yet.
Apparently it’s still a Federal rule that school children must wear masks on buses. Good luck enforcing that. Businesses can still require masks so I’m sure there are plenty of restaurants in downtown Greenville who will leave their mask signs up and require their employees to be masked. But really, how silly is it at this point to require masks? Costco won’t give them up, that’s for sure. Put Best Buy in to that crowd as well. If they ever do give them up, you will know that the “pandemic” is truly over.
Earlier this week, a crowd of parents and students gathered outside of where the Greenville County Schools Trustees were having their meeting. They were calling for an end to the mask. Many of the maskers on Facebook were ridiculing these parents and kids for their efforts. However, the next day, the Governor dropped his Executive Order.
Now it’s on to continually reminding the voting public that these people put in the mask mandate. Every mayor, council member or school board member who voted for the mask must be voted out. Oh, and particularly for those in leadership at Greenville County Schools who are making it difficult just to drop the masks, I do hope you will continue to wear your mask until the last mask on a child is still showing up to school.
The South Carolina Department of Education has come out with busing protocols for the 2020-2021 school year. They have an entire web site called Dedication to Education to provide guidance as to how schools should operate this year during Covid-19. This comes from the work led by State Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman who convened school administration leaders and teachers from all over the state to participate in the AccelerateED task force.
From Dedication to Education:
“The first thing you should know is that all our focus, and every single one of our priorities, are directed toward protecting the health, safety and wellness of students and staff while giving students the best possible learning experience that is as close to normal as health and safety allow.”
There still appears to be a lot up in the air yet for this coming school year. We are waiting to hear from Greenville County Schools supposedly by July 21st as to what their plan will be for opening.
Governor McMaster yesterday suggested that schools should delay the opening until September 8th due to the spike in Covid cases right now in South Carolina.
This sounds serious folks. The Greenville County Schools Board of Trustees are holding a meeting tomorrow morning at 9am to discuss the upcoming school year.
Given the incredible rise in positive coronavirus cases in the past 6-7 weeks here in South Carolina, I’ve been of the opinion that they will not be going back to school this year and that everything will be virtual. Just today, South Carolina DHEC announced that we had 1,532 new Covid-19 cases and 13 new deaths…205 are on ventilators. We’ll see what the Trustees have to say after tomorrow’s meeting.
Note, I’d like to see the students go back to face to face education. We’ve seen the sharp spike in Covid cases but not a corresponding rise in deaths fortunately. Perhaps we’ve nearly achieved herd immunity? Maybe the virus is weaking? I don’t know but just following the data, I personally don’t have big concerns at this time.