The first headlines that caught my attention on Monday morning concerned school closings in Calhoun County.  My last constituent session on Monday evening was with Clarendon School District One Board Members.  Calhoun County’s only school district is considering closing two elementary schools due to budget cuts and declining enrollment.  Clarendon School District One is facing projected losses of nearly $1.3 million this year.  Both districts are operating with Interim Superintendents brought out of retirement to help turn around schools with failing grades and daunting budget crises. 

            These two school districts are suffering similar fates because their operating budgets rely on local tax revenue. Look on a map of South Carolina and you will see that these school districts lie opposite each other, on either side of upper Lake Marion.  They are the beginning and ending points of the proposed Clyburn Connector.  One serves students from Rimini, the other serves students from Lone Star.  Both student populations are nearly 100% minority. 

Calhoun County’s Interim Superintendent Walter Tobin will tell you -- as Clarendon One’s newly-elected Board Chair, Patricia Pringle, told me -- that building the Clyburn Connector could be the key to improving the schools they oversee.  The Connector is the only viable initiative that has been proposed to help bring economic development and a broader tax base to the region.  This isn’t rocket science.  This is a proposal that has been made time and again.  And each time it has been ignored. 

Why didn’t authorities act on the 1969 Wilbur Smith study, which gave merit to a bridge between Lone Star and Rimini?  Why wasn’t action taken on the1996 Fluor Daniel report that “the most important single project” to bringing economic development to the region is a bridge in the same location?  Why are opponents ignoring the findings of the recently released Draft Environmental Impact Study that the Connector will have no significant adverse impact on the environment or wildlife in the area?  Why today am I facing vicious opposition to this project, when all reports and studies indicate this bridge could be the solution to improving living standards in this region?

Those who are opposing my efforts to improve living conditions in this region have proposed no viable options.  These issues have been discussed ever since the lake was created, and only since I have championed the fulfillment of this 50-year-old broken promise has anyone focused on the plight of the residents of that area.  And yet all opponents to the bridge want to do is set up roadblocks rather than offer practical, common-sense solutions. 

          Achieving diversity in State government jobs and contracts is a great goal but how do we accomplish it without affirmative action?  Earning decent wages are noble goals.  But can such be achieved without economic growth and job creation?  Funding schools properly is a laudable goal.  But how can school districts reach parity when their tax bases are shrinking?  It is good to have noble goals but it is better to have fair chances of reaching them.

I once read that violence is the unjust use of force or power.  If this is true, severe acts of violence are being perpetrated on the students, parents, teachers, and administrators of Clarendon School District One and the Calhoun County School District.  As the recently published Southern Education Foundation study “Miles To Go” makes clear, this would never be allowed if the economic and racial composition of the area were different.  It is time for these children to have access to a future their parents and grandparents were violently denied.  It is time to build this bridge.

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