The state sent a warning. Voters sent a message. Time for Richland 1 to listen. | Opinion
The only real October surprise in Richland County's elections was more like a scare. It came, fittingly, on Halloween when the state Department of Education sent the Richland 1 school board a three-page letter that used words like deficient, incomplete and insufficient to describe why an independent audit team would be brought in by the state to address "multiple, overlapping areas of fiscal concern" in a district approaching "a state of fiscal emergency."
"The District has not provided an adequate recovery plan to address financial concerns raised in the State Inspector General's (SIG) July report," the Oct. 31 letter from Kendra Hunt, the Department of Education's chief financial officer, says. "Additionally, some of the District's seemingly cursory responses have amplified the Department's concern regarding the District's apparent failure to grasp the gravity and full implications of the SIG's findings."
The scathing letter stopped short of declaring a fiscal emergency "at this time," but it illustrated just how bad things are in one of the Midlands' largest school districts. And it may have been the last straw for Richland 1 voters, who almost always re-elect incumbents and often only see unopposed candidates.
This year, voters sent a message, kicking two incumbents out of office, including one who was first elected in 2012, and giving two high-profile incumbents some anxious moments in tight early vote counts. Instead of encouraging business as usual, they sent a distress signal that the board must change direction, admit it has a problem and fix it.
The Richland 1 school district has made a recent habit of mismanaging money, as The State Editorial Board wrote last month in recommending that voters remove all its incumbents on the Nov. 5 ballot from office.
The state put the district on "fiscal watch" in December 2022 following misuse of procurement cards then elevated its concerns to "fiscal caution" in August after the Inspector General reported Richland 1 broke the law and cost taxpayers more than $350,000 when it began building a $31 million early learning center without proper permits. The board then violated public-meeting laws with two secretive votes on the project that it had to redo.
The project has been so mismanaged that state Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver advised the district in August her "strong and considered recommendation" was to "fully decommission" it. Last year, Weaver had criticized the district for making widely condemned mid-year teacher school reassignments with little notice.
Richland 1's problems manifest in its 22,000 students as well. The percentage of students in the graduating class deemed college or career ready has languished between 55% and 60% over the last three years, and barely 1 in 5 students in the graduation cohort were considered college and career ready last year, well below state averages.
Voters who could have returned four incumbents to office had had enough.
Jamie Devine, the husband of state Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, barely retained his District 2 seat, winning a fifth term in his closest race yet. The board's longest-tenured board got only 34% of the vote while two other candidates got 30% and 26%, respectively. If he had faced only one serious opponent in the race, Devine could have easily been ousted. There is no mandate for him now.
The second-longest serving board member Cheryl Hinton-Harris didn't keep her District 4 seat. She had won two terms unopposed and a third with 66% of the vote, but she got barely half that tally Tuesday against Ericka Roberson Hursey, a former principal who has sued Richland 1 and Hinton-Harris over claims of free speech violations and breach of contract and allegations of defamation by Hinton-Harris. The other unsuccessful incumbent, Tamika Myers, who was easily elected to the board four years ago, finished fourth in a race for two at-large seats.
Incumbent Angela Clyburn held onto one of those at-large seats, benefiting to some extent on her name ID as the daughter of U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, who was also on Tuesday's ballot. She will be joined on the board by newcomer Richard Moore after outpolling challenger Angela Brown by a mere 1.6 percentage points in a crowded field that left Myers in fourth place.
A message has been sent, loud and clear. Will it be received?
To help him get elected, Moore told voters, "It is never effective to keep doing the same thing over and over when it is not producing the desired result." Voters listened to him. Let's hope his fellow board members do as well.
