Education empowerment through advocacy and community.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 5, 2023

After careful deliberation, the board of SC for Ed has decided to indefinitely pause many of the
direct advocacy efforts the group has undertaken since 2018. As a group of unpaid teacher
volunteers, we feel we have given all that we had to give in support of the goal of putting a
highly-qualified teacher in every classroom. While the state has continually fallen short of that
goal, we do believe there is power in solidarity and fellowship among teachers, school staff
members, parents, and students, and we have seen the group provide a positive forum for that
solidarity. May it continue long into the future.

It has become clear that a small group of volunteers cannot maintain that solidarity alone, and that
to try to do so leads to overly slow progress at best, and burnout at worst. Although we plan to
maintain the SC for Ed social media accounts to some extent, we will no longer be updating a
website, responding to email or direct inquiries, or planning events. It is important for those who
support the preservation of public education to invest themselves, their time, and their energy,
into that goal. It has never been our goal to advocate for teachers; rather, we have always wanted
teachers to advocate for themselves, and it has never been more crucial that they do so. We also
hope that organizations with greater resources will continue with this work.

We encourage those who have supported our efforts directly over the years to continue to
support those efforts by contributing to groups like SC WREN, SC ACLU, Pro-Truth SC, Public
Education Partners, and other organizations and associations which champion the labor rights of
teachers, the intellectual freedom, health, and safety, of students, and investments in our state
which preserve and enrich our democracy.

The South Carolina state motto is Dum Spiro Spero– “While I Breathe, I Hope”. Recent years have
brought increasingly harmful and discouraging attacks on the rights of students, teachers, and
families— including the failure to equitably fund schools, the promotion of anti-teacher conspiracy
theories, and the passage of voucher bills that redirect funds away from our community public
schools and towards unaccountable private entities. Nonetheless, we continue to hope for a better
future for our state and especially for its children.

Yours in Education,
SC for Ed Board