Columbia, SC – As required by state law, the Education Oversight Committee (EOC) today approved Education Improvement Act (EIA) budget recommendations for Fiscal Year 2025-26. These recommendations focus on allocating EIA one-cent sales tax revenues and will be forwarded to the General Assembly for consideration in upcoming budget deliberations.

The committee’s recommendations prioritize improving student academic performance in mathematics and reading, and ensuring certified teachers are in SC classrooms.

According to Dr. Bob Couch, the Chair of the EOC’s EIA and Improvement Mechanisms subcommittee that brought the slate of recommendations to the full committee, each of the recommendations emphasize the importance of showing an impact to students and teachers using state dollars.

“In determining priorities for the use of state dollars, the committee took into account program results and ultimately if the use of state dollars was helping SC young people or putting more teachers in SC classrooms,” stated Couch.

According to the most recent estimates issued by the Board of Economic Advisors (BEA), the penny sales tax is expected to generate an estimated $1,304,219,000 dollars dedicated solely to public education. This represents an increase of $44.6 million funds for next fiscal year. For the current fiscal year, there is an estimated surplus of $87 million.

Subcommittee members held three public meetings to hear presentations from programs currently funded with EIA dollars. Existing programs requested increases of nearly $300 million in funding, an amount which cannot be supported based on current projections of $44.6 million.

“Given the number of requests for additional funding, the subcommittee opted to not consider requests for new program funding this year,” stated Couch. “A decision was also made to not consider requests to replace federal monies that were provided under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER.”

The committee’s budget recommendations for the EIA are summarized as follows:

• An increase of $30 million for the SC Department of Education to serve additional students in Summer Reading Camps 
• An increase of $5 million for Phase 2 of a Strategic Compensation Pilot, led by the SCDE.  
• An increase of $272,250 for a new Charter School Leadership Program led by the SCDE and an increase of $4.6 million for a School Leadership Accelerator 
• An increase of $250,000 for Reach Out and Read to expand their program statewide.  
• An increase of $356,500 to Science P.L.U.S. in the upstate to train more teachers in the new science standards. 
• A requested increase of $150,000 to the SC Council on Economic Education. 
• An increase of $1.4 million to the Call Me MISTER program which corresponds to a $1.4 million decrease in the SC State University (SCSU) BRIDGE program which appropriates that funding to SCSU and Claflin for the purpose of recruiting teachers into the profession. Since 2020, the SCSU BRIDGE program, has produced 8 certified teachers while Claflin University has produced 2 certified teachers. The committee recommended that the monies be transferred to Call Me MISTER, which has produced 140 certified teachers since 2020. 
• The subcommittee also recommends an appropriation of $6 million for SC to join 10 states that have implemented the Dolly Parton Imagination Library statewide. The program would be implemented by an established agency or program.

The committee recommended the following decreases in recurring funding, citing failure of the mentioned programs to produce intended results: 

• A recommended decrease for Teach for America from $2 million to $1 million. The committee stated the rationale for the cut was a significant decline in recruitment of teachers in hard-to-staff school districts.
• A recommended decrease for STEM Centers SC from $2 million to $1 million. The committee stated the decrease was due to a move away from purpose which is training SC teachers in the teaching of mathematics.

In addition to the above recommendations, the committee also passed revisions to several Provisos relating to the Teacher Loan Program revolving fund, the EOC’s Rural Recruitment Incentive report and a recommendation from the SC K-12 Military Readiness Task Force.