An amusing account of a battle between members of the South Carolina PTA and the dashing Republican firebrand who's running for a US Senate seat:
Both Democrat Inez Tenenbaum and Republican Jim DeMint were interrupted during remarks at Saturday’s annual meeting of the S.C. PTA —Tenenbaum by applause, DeMint by questions and murmurs. The reactions were of little surprise for the two major party candidates for U.S. Senate. Tenenbaum, for six years the state education superintendent, was with some of her biggest supporters — parents and teachers at public schools.
DeMint, for six years a U.S. House member from Greenville, supports programs many public-school supporters dislike, such as taxpayer-funded vouchers. But DeMint stood his ground and gave the crowd of more than 300 an optimistic message that education improvement can be found without drastically increased spending.
“A lot of good things are going on” in public schools, DeMint said. “But we have to admit some kids are falling through the cracks, and we have to decide — is it a matter of not enough money, or maybe not enough new ideas?”
The crowd was mostly polite to DeMint. They applauded when he finished each answer. But when he said that the state was not spending the education dollars it already had, one woman had heard enough.
“With the deficit we have, we have unspent dollars? You’ve got to be kidding us,” said the woman, wearing a Tenenbaum campaign sticker.
“We do,” DeMint said.
“We don’t,” Tenenbaum replied.
The auditorium at the Sheraton Hotel broke into murmurs.
Guess it's easy to see whose side the PTA is on. You'd think they'd be happy to hear that it's not all a matter of money.
Later, Tenenbaum drew sustained applause when she asked, “Aren’t you just tired of people dogging public education in South Carolina?”
I'm from South Carolina, and I love and respect the place. But they've had their issues with education in the past, and they still struggle with high school graduation rates and class sizes. If they're really tired of hearing people people "dog" them, they should stop complaining and do something about it.
The candidates clashed on several major issues: funding for special education, charter schools and vouchers or tax credits for students to attend private school. DeMint said what schools need is not more money, but new ideas. He was careful to say that is not a criticism of public schools.
Tenenbaum said that money is not always the answer, but that the federal government has promised the states more than $6 billion that has not been delivered. Education, she said, should not be about broken promises.
Tenenbaum’s message resonated with Amy Bralley, 38, a parent of a 7-year-old at Duncan Elementary School in Spartanburg County. Bralley said she walked in the door expecting to support DeMint.
“But hearing this, (Tenenbaum) is more in tune with the realistic world,” Bralley said. “I think she seems to be approaching it from a realistic, everyday, everyman place.”
With that place being, "Give us more money"?
Posted by kswygert at August 10, 2004 09:49 PM