PRESS RELEASE

Governor McMaster School Opening

$32 Million for Private School

July 21, 2020

The Honorable Henry McMaster
Governor, State of South Carolina
2600 Bull Street
Columbia, SC 29201

Dear Governor McMaster:

The Greenville NAACP is disappointed in your willingness to move forward with opening school and only funding those school districts who do five days of in-person education.

Black parents have good reason to be cautious about blindly sending our children back to school, especially given the COVID-19 spikes in this state and the disproportionate number of black deaths from COVID-19. Public schools should not re-open unless all Center for Disease Control (CDC) protections and indicators (based on symptoms, based on cases, and based on hospital readiness measures) are satisfied. Decisions to re-open schools must be made based upon science and not the desire to grow the economy first. This CDC analysis must be done for each county where there are schools.

But if schools do re-open, we demand that the State provide quality, equally accessible, public, non-charter on-line programs for students whose parents or caretakers do not feel comfortable sending them back to school under present conditions.

And because the pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing structural race issues in education, we also demand that you re-examine the State’s approach to addressing the literacy crisis, that you address the digital divide in homes and schools, that the State provide equitable funding and resources for public schools, and that the State re-evaluate the negative ways black students are often perceived, treated, educated, and disciplined.
We support the work of the State Superintendent and the Greenville County Superintendent to keep our children safe and not having them to get sick and die due to politics and not science.

Secondly, your move to give $32 millions to private schools is a step backwards in education. This step helps to continue segregation in our classrooms and our society divided. As citizens it is not right to use public funds to support private education and then not hold these private schools to the same standards as public schools to receive the funds. $32 million for 5,000 students but this state has not fully funded programs for the 800,000 students in our state’s public schools.

As our nation mourns the loss of Congressman John Lewis and remember his stand against racism, segregations, injustice and inequity for Blacks, your administrative actions take us back to the 1965 era and divides our state along racial lines.
I can be reached at 864-444-2358 or greenvillenaacp5522@gmail.com and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

Sincerely,

J. M. Flemming
Reverend J. M. Flemming