Editorial: This SC law treats teachers like property, not professionals. No wonder they leave.
Police officers frequently quit their jobs to move to more prestigious or better-paying positions at a nearby department. Nurses and doctors move from hospital to hospital. Lawyers change firms. In profession after profession, people change jobs every day, either because they don’t like their boss or their co-workers or the work they’re doing, or just because they can make more money elsewhere.
But if South Carolina teachers try to do that except during a 10-day window each spring, they can be stripped of their legal right to teach for up to two years.
That’s not just if they try to move to a district that pays more. They can also get blacklisted if they need to stay home to take care of a child going through cancer treatment, or to care for a near-death parent, or to move across the state with a military spouse because they can’t afford to maintain two households.
And we wonder why a top reason teachers give for leaving the profession is the lack of respect. Even if they never get their teaching certificate stripped for quitting mid-year — or in the middle of the summer — they know that law is there. They know it represents what our legislators consider them: chattel.
Check that: That’s just how our senators think about them. The S.C. House passed a bill four times in the past two years to change the 1962 law that punishes teachers for having to leave or change jobs mid-year or for simply wanting to change jobs after they find out their pay. And every time, the Senate refused to even consider it.
On Wednesday, the House Education Committee once again passed the Educator Assistance Act, sponsored by Education Chairwoman Shannon Erickson, Speaker Murrell Smith and several other lawmakers; the full House could debate it as soon as Tuesday.
Under current law, teachers risk losing their jobs if they don’t sign a contract for the next school year before their district sets its pay scale for the coming year. If a school board sets pay lower than teachers expected and they try to move to a district that’s paying more, their current district can strip them of the right to teach in our state, in some cases for two school years. Ditto if teachers leave for a family emergency.
H.3196 would require those contracts to include the districts’ anticipated pay schedules, which could be reduced only if the Legislature shorted them on funding. It also changes the law to allow rather than require the State Board of Education to suspend teachers’ certificates for breaking their contract, shortens the suspension from a year to six months, and starts the suspension when the teacher leaves rather than when the board issues the suspension, which can be months later.
The bill also requires schools to tell teachers where and what subject they’ll be teaching at least 14 days before classes starts, and requires five days’ notice before they can transfer them to new subjects or schools midyear.
Just think about how damaging it is to students that some districts don’t already do all that.
Now think about how you’d feel if you worked in that situation.
Beyond improving teachers’ ability to be good teachers, Rep. Erickson’s bill treats them like professionals — and provides a dose of respect that’s difficult to legislate.
Teachers know it’s disruptive to quit in the middle of a school year, and most would do everything they could to avoid it even if their certification wasn’t at risk. But the punitive provisions in our current law are just one more way our state telegraphs its lack of appreciation for the vital work they do. It’s time for that to change.
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