Our View: Keep pressure on Charleston school board for openness, good governance

Just four of nine members of the Charleston County School District Board of Trustees seem to understand they live in a democracy, not an autocracy. The five others, fueled by the support of the right-wing Moms for Liberty (M4L) group, need to take a refresher course on civics so they can understand they work for everyone, not just a group labeled “extremist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Ever since the M4L Five took control of the school board after the 2022 elections, school governance has been in chaos. Public meetings are run poorly. Despite rhetoric, decisions about school curricula seem measured against a narrow political agenda, not what’s best for students. Controversy and leaks pockmarked the decision on hiring a new superintendent.

And three months after Eric Gallien was hired, the M4L Five voted to put him on administrative leave to investigate some unknown complaint kept secret from the public.

This board is too quick to jump into private executive session — often illegally — to have discussions that likely should be in public. As we’ve written before, state law does not require any public body ever to enter into a secret session.
All of this painful controversy, lack of leadership and secrecy has caused a crisis of confidence in those elected to set policy and a future course for local public schools. The four trustees in the minority appear to be trying to do the right thing but are hamstrung by the recalcitrant M4L Five who keep a pointed iron grip on what’s happening.

But a backlash is bubbling. It first came last week when 16 courageous high school principals wrote a direct letter expressing “profound disappointment” in the board, essentially asking it to grow up and govern in the interests of Charleston County students. Then came similar letters of dismay from another 55 elementary and middle school principals.

This week, the four trustees in the minority called for the majority faction to rescind its vote putting Gallien on administrative leave. State lawmakers asked the state’s attorney general, governor and inspector general to start looking into the growing leadership dysfunction.

“The school district needs to follow the law,” Gov. Henry McMaster, a former state attorney general, said Oct. 3. “The Freedom of Information Act is very clear. Everybody ought to follow the law. … They ought to give the information out and give it out fairly quickly. It does not look to me like the school board has done that.”

Also on Oct. 3, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg called on the board to have a public meeting to explain what’s going on and start mending fences brought on by factionalism.
And activists called on parents and citizens to write school board members to let them know what they think of this mess. Write them. Here are the email addresses of each of the trustees with those in the M4L majority highlighted: