Add public education to the list of American institutions that have collapsed. Like the legacy media, public schools don’t deserve the confidence or trust of Americans anymore.
These days, reading and writing are a sideshow to the feature presentation: crime, drugs, teacher-student sex, financial mismanagement, and violence. Don't pretend you are safe from the collapse in suburbia.
One suburban South Carolina school district has it all.
Richland Two School District just outside Columbia shows suburbia can’t avoid the collapse of public education.
Before we get to the violence, let’s start with the mismanagement.
What kind of mismanagement features at Richland Two? Every kind.
The Richland Two School Board is so dysfunctional that the South Carolina inspector general produced a thick report on the chicanery. The report sports chapter titles like “Board Decorum and Dysfunction,” “Surreptitious Recording of Board Executive Sessions,” “Board Member Travel Advances,” and, of course, that regular feature in corrupt government bodies, “Circumvention of FOIA.”
Richland Two yanked parental access to the school library catalog so parents could not see the books their children read. We all know why.
When the Manhattan Institute published a guide, “Woke Schooling: A Toolkit for Concerned Parents,” administrators went after parents, saying an organized conspiracy existed to disrupt school board business.
And what mismanagement would be complete without corrupt government contracts? Richland Two let custodial contracts to businesses in exchange for promises that the janitorial business would fund race-based hiring of teachers, as well as other gifts to the district.
The inspector general documented more perks bought with government money. Baltimore Orioles tickets, William-Sonoma merchandise, clothing at Lululemon, and more.
District officials set up a private charitable foundation and began to deposit local government funds into the 501(c)(3) corporation. This would have the effect of shielding financial decisions from the public behind a private corporate wall. The South Carolina inspector general “identified at least 35 checks ($138,575) made payable to the District” that were instead deposited with the private foundation. Shockingly, the foundation then cut checks to certain Richland Two employees.
It gets worse. Federal funds were also diverted to the private foundation, according to the inspector general's report. Federal Drug Free Communities Act “expense reimbursements claimed by the District were distributed by automated clearinghouse (ACH) payments to the Foundation bank account at Wells Fargo Bank.”
According to the state inspector general, this arrangement helped hide any financial tomfoolery run off the district books and instead into the foundation. This is rich:
This “Foundation did not conduct an annual audit nor did it provide an annual audit to the District superintendent as required by the Foundation’s by-laws. Because the federal funds were deposited into a Foundation account, the grant funds were not included as part of the District’s single audit, which contains a schedule of expenditures of federal awards the District receives each year.”
Perhaps it is a good time to meet the school board.
Richland Two Board members have been arrested for starting fights at board meetings. According to police incident reports, one board member "stated she was sick of" another board member “and wanted to 'beat her Mother F...... Ass.'" A melee ensued.
The Honorable Dr. Monica Elkins-Scott chairs the board. The Honorable Dr. Monica Elkins-Scott has a lengthy biography and keen interest in DEI, attending conferences around the country to refine ways to inject race into education policy. When she reads this, and she will, she will dismiss it as right-wing lies.
Good, keep whistling past the graveyard while others are taking a closer look at the redirection of federal funds to the sleazy Richland Two foundation. Those examining the chicanery might look at emails and records showing the involvement of school officials in the redirection of federal funds.
The Honorable Dr. Monica Elkins-Scott has also been arrested for shoving someone after a Richland Two Board meeting.
Now is a good time to catalog the violence that has characterized the collapse of the Richland Two School District. Remember, this is just one school district in suburban South Carolina. Public school districts across the country have their own versions of the Honorable Dr. Monica Elkins-Scott. The violence happening in Richland Two is happening in a “good” suburban school near you.
At Richland Two, there are shootings that school administrators don’t even know about.
Richland Two administrators initially told the press a student was shot with an “Airsoft gun.” It took an assessment from the emergency room of bullet holes in the abdomen to set things straight.
It wasn’t an Airsoft gun; it was a .22 caliber pistol.
Bewilderment seems to be a safer approach than competent awareness. Disappearing the handgun and replacing it with a Nerf gun in the press bought the Richland Two administration 24 hours of peace.
Maybe kids can still get a good education at Richland Two?
Ha! Gotcha there. You know what’s coming.
Only 40% of students in Richland Two met math standards, and only 54% of students scored a C or higher in English. That’s a whole lot of desperately failing students.
The Honorable Dr. Monica Elkins-Scott might spend less time on brawling and DEI and more time on reading and math.
This brings me to the awful experience of my United States Commission on Civil Rights colleague Stephen Gilchrist and his family. They have the misfortune of having a student in the corrupt and failing Richland Two School District.
After years of repeated and significant violent bullying of their son “D.G.” with no effective response from school officials, the Gilchrists endured what no parent ever should. Dylan Nolan said it better at Fits News than I could:
One such incident allegedly occurred in a school restroom, where “D.G.” claimed another student "used his cell phone to reach over a bathroom partition and take a photo of D.G. using the toilet," which he proceeded to widely distribute on social media. Individuals familiar with the social media post report the image was captioned “caught this n**** pooping."
The response from the school district? Nothing. Eventually, the police charged the digital voyeur.
The saga of Richland Two School District in suburban Columbia, S.C., is a cautionary tale about where government-run education is heading. Without solutions like educational choice, more will be condemned to endure it.
The Honorable Dr. Monica Elkins-Scott is no longer a wacky outlier. She is representative of the woke progressive school official coming to a small town near you. Financial and ethical mismanagement follow. Crime follows that. Don’t think you are immune.
Editor's Note: President Trump is fighting to dismantle the Department of Education and ensure America's kids get the education they deserve.
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