6 days Ago
Charleston County schools Superintendent Anita Huggins would be well within her rights to take a victory lap. By nearly any measure, the statistics — and anecdotal evidence — coming out of 75 Calhoun these days paint a portrait of a school district making significant strides. In just the past two years: Also, some schools with a high percentage of students living in poverty have shown great improvement.
Frierson Elementary went from a state ranking of “unsatisfactory” to “excellent” in a single year, and Sanders-Clyde Elementary is one point away from a “good” rating for the first time in its history. Any one of those things would be reason to celebrate. But Huggins used her State of the Schools address Thursday to push for more improvement.
She wants more bilingual and multilingual teachers to better reach the district's growing number of non-English-speaking students. And she's advocating for another bump in teacher salaries to help with recruitment and retention. Huggins says all fifth graders should be reading at grade level by June 2027, a goal set by former Superintendent Don Kennedy.
That's a big lift, even if state law says students should be reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Point is, Charleston schools are measurably improving. The district’s latest report card shows a diminishing achievement gap for African American and Hispanic students.
But it's not closing fast enough for the superintendent. She wants to direct more resources to improving those students' education. That's not just common sense, it's strategic.
“While we are thriving, I don’t want where we are now to be the pinnacle of our success,” Huggins said in her address. The timing of her message cannot be coincidental. A new school board takes office this week, and the superintendent urged its members — all but one of whom were in the audience — to work together, keep the focus on kids and stick to basics.
Board members would do well to listen, because the surest way to halt the district’s recent momentum would be a repeat of the 2023 partisan culture wars. All that was so contentious and counterproductive that area mayors came together to publicly shame board members. Note that Mount Pleasant Mayor Will Haynie and North Charleston Mayor Reggie Burgess sat in the front row for Huggins’ address Thursday — a strong show of support from two of the district’s largest municipalities.
County Councilman Teddie Pryor and Charleston City Councilman Jim McBride notably showed up as well. The school board should take that as a message. To the outgoing board’s credit, things settled down after its 2023 meltdown .
.. particularly when board members appointed Huggins, a veteran local educator, as superintendent.
She persuaded the board to make some of the most significant decisions in district history. At Huggins' request, the board raised teacher pay by an unprecedented $8,000, which was critical for retaining veteran educators and recruiting new ones. It adopted an innovative funding formula that targets resources at the students in every school who need help the most.
We're just beginning to see the success of that plan, as The Post and Courier’s Valerie Nava chronicled recently . The fact that an often hopelessly divided board approved that weighted student funding formula unanimously is a testament to just how persuasive — and good at her job — Huggins is. And that is Exhibit A for why the new board should listen to her now.
Huggins has a folksy, friendly style that belies just how shrewd she really is. Now, the superintendent isn’t acting — she really is as smart, kind and upbeat as she seems. But she’s also absolutely relentless in her mission to keep the district's focus on student achievement .
.. and to avoid divisive, unproductive ideological battles that do nothing to improve schools.
There’s no telling how the new board — which retains its conservative majority but includes three new members — will work together. But board members should note that voters ousted the most openly partisan member of the current school board (the only one on the ballot), a message that few want school governance to fall into the partisan bickering that's omnipresent in most politics these days. Instead they want results.
You know, like the district is delivering right now. And there's only one way to do that. “To continue this, we will have to work together,” Huggins said.
Again, that's just good sense. If these new board members want the district to continue on that current trajectory, they should listen to the superintendent. So far, it’s worked out pretty well.
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