MICK ZAIS
Contributions: $33,489.07
(In-kind: $6,324.07)
Expenditures: $29,947.08
Cash on hand: $115,640.63

Significant contributions
Robert Royall, $1,000
Former director, S.C. Department of Revenue
Joe Edens, $1,000
Developer
Brian Boyer, $250
Developer
Ralph Norman, $500
State representative
Wayne Brazell, $100
Superintendent, S.C. Charter School District
Kristin Maguire, $500
Former chair, state Board of Education
Chad Connelly, $50
School choice advocate

Significant disbursements
Starboard Communications (printing), $4,179.49, $1,200, $500, $1,144.63
Ragley Public Affairs (campaign management), $5,000×2
The Mace Group (Web site, consulting), $2,500, $750

KELLY PAYNE
Contributions: $6,051.88
Expenditures: $10,242.58
Cash on hand: $743.85

Significant contributions
None.

Significant expenditures
Clark Solutions Group (ads), $6,100
Random Definition (Web site), $650

BRENT NELSON
Contributions: $60,219.95
(Loan: $50,000)
Expenditures: $52,089.34
Cash on hand: $14,082.41

Significant contributions
None.

Significant expenditures
Smoak Public Relations (printing, consulting), $4,750, $1,160, $23,033.20, $9,000, $3,000
NGS Consulting (consulting), $1,000, $2,764.01

FRANK HOLLEMAN
Contributions: $34,449.39
(In-kind: $3,160.39)
Expenditures: $24,872
Cash on hand: $222,924.80

Significant contributions
Drew Theodore, $500
Former comptroller general candidate
John Land, $250
Senate minority leader
Walt McLeod, $150
State representative
Don Fowler, $500
Former DNC chairman

Significant expenditures
The Macrina Group (consulting, expenses), $3,226.11, $2,000
The Rackes Group (consulting), $2,102.90, $1,500

TOM THOMPSON
Contributions: $200
Expenditures: $2,433.35
Cash on hand: $1,807.90

Significant contributions
None.

Significant expenditures
None.

By Kelly Payne

In South Carolina we are wasting one important educational resource, and we aren’t fully utilizing another. We can’t continue on this path if we are going to produce graduates that are college ready and career ready — continuing the downward social and economic cycles in our state. It’s time to better utilize our resources to transform our outdated public education system into a system that meets the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

The resource we’re wasting is money spent on bureaucrats and unnecessary, meaningless activities. Why do we pay three different bureaucrats to approve a visiting lecturer, like a legislator, in a high school classroom? Why pay millions for tests like PASS that do nothing to help a teacher improve the knowledge and skills of a student? We all know there’s waste.

Today, the underutilized resource is my focus. That resource is right under our noses, sometimes known and for some reason kept from being used, sometimes not even considered. The resource is collaboration among the leaders and institutions within our state and communities. Schools at all levels cannot perform at their best when isolated from the community. The community, outside the schools, has resources and ideas that lie fallow because they are not interacting with the schools. It’s time that collaboration became a way of life across South Carolina instead of an occasional happening in a few places.

The Michelin Mentor Program, for example, is providing needed mentors for students in numerous schools across the state. The result, students are excited about learning. Students succeed. What other businesses can bring resources to our schools and students if the schools opened their doors to collaboration? How would our students and communities fare if the door to collaboration was opened?

In Greenville, the Greenville Chamber of Commerce and the Greenville County School District collaborated on CPOE, private enterprise experts working with public school counterparts to review the district’s business and operational practices. The result — a savings of about $2 million annually in the district’s operating budget and improvement in many of the district’s business practices.

These are just a pair of examples of what can happen with collaboration — all costing the taxpayers not one more penny, and more importantly all improving the education that makes our students career ready and college ready. As our state’s economy continues its decline — reducing resources available to education — can we afford to let the resource of collaboration remain largely untouched? I think not. As your state superintendent of education, a priority would be facilitating truly meaningful collaboration designed to turn our education system in the right direction — a direction that returns the community and teachers to the center of educational excellence. Education is too important to be left to educrats and legislators alone.

Early in my administration I would invite the presidents of each of the state’s 16 technical and community colleges to provide a site on one of their campuses for a meeting of leaders in their service area to begin the process of making collaboration a reality. To this meeting would be invited the chief executives, not representatives, of each public school district and that district’s board chair; the chief executives of major businesses in that college’s service area, chief executives and board leaders of each chamber of commerce in the service area, chief executives and board chair of each institution of higher education in the service area, the board chair and chief executive of major non-profits, and the chair of the legislative delegation(s) in that college’s service area. These would be public meetings. The public would know who has been invited and who is participating. Journalists would be welcome. Where technically possible, SCETV would be invited to broadcast. The participants would be asked three questions:

1. Do you believe there is a need for South Carolina to have a public education system that is capable of making every graduate college or career ready, with a graduation rate of at least 90 percent?
2. What obstacle(s) prevent our community from achieving this status?
3. With whom in this room are you ready to collaborate now to remove at least one of those obstacles?

The collaborations created that day will be monitored in meetings at the same sites, with the same participants, four and eight months later. All meetings would be public. Results would be made public. Never before in our state’s history have these elements come together for collaboration. Just think of what would happen — at no cost to the taxpayers — when this massive collaborative resource is fully utilized.

Payne is a candidate for the Republican nomination to state superintendent of education, an award-winning civics teacher at Dutch Fork High School in Irmo, and mother of three school-age children. Further information is available at: http://www.votekellypayne.com/.

To recap: cops are staking out a park known to be a spot where men who would like to get down with random men in a public place would meet up and have some fun. So, the police say Burgess was there, rubbing his leg in a way known to be a signal that he was ready to go. A policeman who was there to entice would-be cottagers said Burgess exposed parts of his bits and pieces, the two talked at a table and when the deal was about to be sealed, the officer, with assistance from a few others, arrested Burgess.

At the trial, Burgess said that he regularly would go to the park to relax, and was there eating a Happy Meal. He explained that he scratched his leg because of a skin disorder and talked to the cop, showing him a leg injury, but ending the conversation when it started going into uncharted territory. Either way, he got off — erm, that is, the jury returned a not-guilty verdict.

Burgess has a fairly decent line of experience, but this allegation coupled with the issues surrounding allegations of intimidation of a school nurse would be hard for anybody to get past, regardless of the fact of getting into a primary race that already has three candidates.

However, for the Federal government, quite a lot of power is entrusted in the president to appoint cabinet members to oversee large parts of the government. We’ve been dealing with this system for a long time, and the record of presidential appointees isn’t any worse than elected constitutional officers around here. So, after much fighting, the bill to put one of the least objectionable offices, secretary of state, under the governor’s purview, failed. The tally was 72-38, with 14 representatives not voting. That caused the constitutional amendment proposal to fall 10 votes short of the two-thirds threshold.

If that’s not going to pass, the bill to place the superintendent of education into an appointed position is seriously in trouble. On Thursday, Rep. Walt McLeod took the podium and began making the case of why many legislators will vote no — the battle royale in South Carolina over the past eight years relating to the school choice debate. Public school advocates don’t want to see someone like Gov. Mark Sanford in power for two terms with only a minor check on his authority over education policy.

Naturally, there’s going to have to be some work going on over the next several days on that bill, and the restructuring effort as a whole. If these were any other pieces of legislation, the margin of victory would be considered comfortable. Amending the state constitution is not supposed to be an simple task, though, so working to get to 82 will not be easy.

MICK ZAIS
Candidate for Superintendent of Education (R)
Contributions: $132,955
Expenditures: $9,118.58
Cash-on-hand: $125,011.11

Significant contributions
Stokes-Trainor Chevrolet- Pontiac-Cadillac-Buick, $250
Car dealer

Significant expenditures
Starboard Communications (mail piece design, printing, postage and Web site), $3,032.42
Ragley Public Affairs (campaign management services), $5,000, $599.24

KELLY PAYNE
Candidate for Superintendent of Education (R)
Contributions: $15,755
Expenditures: $1,035
Cash-on-hand: $15,019.67

Significant contributions
McMullen Public Affairs, $250
Lobbying firm

Significant expenditures
Black Label Strategy (consulting services), $525

There are a few, though.

FRANK HOLLEMAN
Candidate for Superintendent of Education (D)
Contributions: $210,465.45
Expenditures: $47,644.98
Cash-on-hand: $171,945.47

Significant contributions
Boyd Brown, $100
State representative
Nick Theodore, $500
Former lieutenant governor
Jim Hodges, $1,000
Former governor
Marshall Meadors, $200
Former state senate candidate
Dick Riley, $200, $1,000
Former governor
ECPI, $100
Tech school
Inez Tenenbaum, $1,500
Former superintendent of education
Ferillo & Associates, $200
PR firm
James Smith, $250
State representative
Joe Erwin, $1,000
Former S.C. Democratic Party chairman
Mac McLarty, $500
Former Clinton chief of staff
Brad Hutto, $1,000
State senator

Significant expenditures
The Rackes Group (e-messaging, media design and Web development), $1,500, $3,601, $1,500, $300, $4,000, $1,200, $2,000
Fundraising Management Group (political consulting), $10,000

BRENT NELSEN
Candidate for Superintendent of Education (R)
Contributions: $3,084.97
Expenditures: $9,109.14
Cash-on-hand: $1,258.08

Significant contributions
None.

Significant expenditures
Gaines & Sherlock (consulting), $600, $855
Winning Edge Communications (printing), $721.50
NGS Consulting (consulting), $3,000

HUGH WEATHERS
Commissioner of Agriculture (R)
Contributions: $89,944.92
Expenditures: $9,621.06
Cash-on-hand: $138,584.53

Significant contributions
Darla Moore, $3,500
Businesswoman
Piggly Wiggly Carolina, $1,000
Grocery store
Roger Milliken, $1,000
Businessman

Significant expenditures
Homeyer Strategy Group (event planning, postage, printing), $6,532.94

CONVERSE CHELLIS
State Treasurer (R)
Contributions: $74,872.03
Expenditures: $18,682.33
Cash-on-hand: $500,365.03

Significant contributions
Palmetto Leadership Council, $3,500
PAC of Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell
Bart Daniel, $1,000
Attorney
TitleMax, $3,500
Car title loan firm

Significant expenditures
Ragley Public Affairs (campaign consulting), $1,588
Homeyer Strategy Group (campaign consulting), $12,067

In his statement, Zais said, “After much thought and prayer with my family, and with strong words of encouragement from Republican activists, business leaders and education professionals, I am proud to announce I am a Republican candidate for the office of state superintendent of education. We have some superb public schools in South Carolina –- but more can be done to ensure that every child in our state has access to an excellent school, is led by an excellent principal and is taught by an excellent teacher.

“Every child is special and every child learns differently. Parents must be empowered to have a choice in the educational environment of their child. Strong incentives for teachers in our public schools must be employed to retain as many excellent teachers as possible. Principals must receive world-class training so they can lead, inspire and motivate their teaching staff. Legislators, district superintendents and school boards must ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent on items that affect educational outcomes and these expenditures must be transparent to the public.

“This campaign will be a marathon and not a sprint. We face many challenges in education, but we can and we will overcome them. My leadership ability, experience in education and proven results of improvement qualify me as the best candidate for the office of state superintendent of education. I look forward to sharing my optimistic vision for education with all South Carolinians in the months ahead.”

[Rex] announced he will not seek re-election to the office of State Superintendent of Education, regardless of decision to run for Governor. Statement coming soon.

There you go. As of right now, he’s one of five Democrats running for governor (according to state law, there is no such thing as an exploratory committee). While we think that Sen. Vince Sheheen and lobbyist Dwight Drake are the two strongest candidates in the field, Rex could always pull something out that could make a run worthwhile.

Of course, former gubernatorial candidate Brent Nelsen has been running for the Republican nomination for superintendent for a few weeks, as is Dutch Fork High School teacher Kelly Payne. As of right now, it doesn’t look like the GOP primary will be as contentious as the 2006 version, but it’s still relatively early.

Also, we’ve been told that S.C. Association of School Administrators executive director Molly Spearman is looking at a run, but hasn’t made a decision yet.

UPDATE: Rex put up the following statement, on Facebook, shortly before 9:30 a.m.

I have decided that I will not seek re-election to the Office of State Superintendent of Education in 2010, regardless of whether or not I decide to run for Governor. It is clear from my time in this office that there is a limit to what we can accomplish to move South Carolina’s schools and our state forward so long as we do not have someone in the Governor’s office who is making education, jobs, and economic development the top priorities of this state. I am in the final stages of making a decision about whether or not to offer myself to South Carolinians to be that kind of Governor – a “turnaround” Governor – or whether to return to the private sector and continue to work to make a difference there. Sue and I appreciate the support and encouragement we have received as we have moved around the state in these last few weeks, and I look forward to a final decision very soon.

That was quick. Just after Furman professor Brent Nelsen decided to run for the Republican nomination for state superintendent of education, he’s drawn opposition. According to a post on conservative activist Mike Reino’s blog, Dutch Fork High School teacher Kelly Payne has thrown her hat into the ring.

She’s got a few things working for her, not the least of which is her Internet notoriety. There’s also the quite nice fundraising base of the Columbia suburbs. When we moved from North Carolina and went to DFHS, we were pretty surprised at the number of brand-new Mustangs and BMWs in the student parking lot. If these kids’ parents have the money to drop a very nice car on a first-time driver, they shouldn’t have an issue maxing out to a local candidate.

She hasn’t filed a report with the State Ethics Commission yet, so this looks like a relatively recent decision.

Despite having a classroom teacher in the race, this may be good news for current Superintendent of Education Jim Rex. He will be able to fix his fundraising issues and get ready for the general election while a couple heavy-hitters go at it in the GOP primary.