Get to know Lisa Ellis and Sylvia Wright, Democratic candidates for SC schools chief

Veteran educators Lisa Ellis and Sylvia Wright are facing off for the Democratic nomination for state superintendent Tuesday.

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Ellis, who lost to Republican Ellen Weaver in the 2022 general election, is the founder of teacher advocacy group SC for Ed and currently serves as student activities director at Blythewood High School in Richland School District 2.

Wright, a North Charleston native and military spouse working on a doctorate in education, has taught in four states and most recently served as district coordinator for secondary education in Dorchester School District 4.

The State Media Co. spoke extensively with each candidate about why they were running, their issue platform and their qualifications for the job.

Below is a rough transcript, edited for concision and clarity, of each candidates’ responses to the newspaper’s questions.

Why are you running for state superintendent?

Lisa Ellis: I figured that I would give it a chance in 2022, and ended up obviously being disappointed by the results, but went back to work. And over the last four years, I have continued to be frustrated in the position of teacher, director of student activities, and seeing the negative outcomes for students and teachers.

I’ve been advocating for positive change for our school system since 2018, and I have realized that people who have the power to make change don’t really listen to teachers, still, even after all this time. And so I decided that I needed to try one more time.

I feel like everything that has happened since Ellen Weaver has been superintendent of education has had a negative outcome on our students, our teachers, our public schools.

Just being in the trenches, I’ve seen how to fix that. And the way that you fix that is continuing to increase teacher salaries, but really work on teacher working conditions.

If nothing else, the narrative is a different story than what we continue to hear coming out of the Department of Ed, and hopefully this time, I win, and we can focus on fixing the broken systems.

Sylvia Wright: I have a grandson. And when my grandson turned 1, I started looking up private preschools for him, and I felt a conviction. The thought of, ‘What about the other kids?’ comes to my mind, because there are other kids who don’t have that same access.

I sat back in my chair, and I said, ‘OK Lord, what would you have me to do?’ And that’s when superintendent came to my mind, state superintendent.

I’d never thought about being state superintendent, so as I started looking up what was required, I was like, this is stuff that I’ve already done as a leader – building the relationships, managing funds, initiatives, managing people, departments, building capacity in others, using data to move things forward.

That’s what I’ve been doing my whole career. So I’m prepared, not only with experience, but I also have the professional training to do it. So it’s like the perfect storm.

How would you describe your issue platform?

Sylvia Wright: No. 1, early childhood education. That’s been neglected for so long. Money has been put into early childhood education, but where’s the money going? We need to do a better job or be more intentional and strategic about how we use that money.

What I want to do is have every 4-year-old with access. That’s my goal. Universal pre-K. Every 4-year-old will have access, regardless of income, to an early pre-K program. Because that’s the foundation.

The next policy priority would be school safety. And when I talk about school safety, I’m not just talking about intruders. We have buildings here in South Carolina that have mold. There are buildings that when it rains, it floods, and so kids have to relocate to other sides of the room. We have overcrowded classrooms. We have student misbehavior. These are all the things that go into school safety.

We need a better system for how people report bullying, and the consequences for that. Holding people accountable. Mental health issues that we have in our schools, because kids are dealing with so much, and they don’t have that support. There’s waiting lists for kids to talk to mental health therapists. So we’ve got to do a better job with meeting the needs of the students.

The first thing I want to do is convene a school safety advisory council. And with that, I want to do an audit of school safety, and then create policy — how we can make our schools safer.

And the final thing, the most important thing, is our educators. We can’t do this without our educators. I want to strengthen our teacher pipeline. And in order to do that, I’m going to create a compact with our universities, our South Carolina universities and technical schools, including HBCUs, and offer tuition support in exchange for five years of teaching in South Carolina.

This on top of a $60,000 starting salary. And I know we’re heading in that direction, so I will continue to work with the legislature to increase teacher pay.

And then also improving working conditions. I’m talking about cutting that administrative paperwork that teachers have to do. For example, writing extensive lesson plans. I’ve been at a school where a principal required teachers to write detailed lesson plans, and it was like checking a box. They weren’t really using the plan. So that’s just wasting time.

Lisa Ellis: First and foremost, we have got to take care of our school-based personnel. When I say teachers, I’m talking about teachers, instructional assistants, anybody who has direct access to our students that we see every day. That includes your bus drivers. That includes your cafeteria workers, your instructional aides, your school admin. They have more and more placed on them with less and less time.

I’ve said for years that a teacher’s working conditions are a student’s learning conditions. And so we’ve really got to take care of those people that are interacting with our students every day.

And then we’ve got to take care of our students. We’ve got to make sure that we are looking at standards that are developmentally appropriate. We’ve got to look at access to technology. We saw a huge increase in access to technology during COVID, and we’re seeing sort of the negative impact of that. And so, it’s really looking at what is in the best interest of our students.

From social emotional learning and making sure that students are regulating their emotions correctly, which leads into student discipline. Teachers are leaving because we’re not taking care of our teachers in terms of altercations between students and teachers.

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So it’s a lot of things that are sort of connected to each other. You look at your discipline, you look at your working conditions, you look at your funding, you look at the systems that are in place that are not working for our students and teachers. And we start to peel away at those systems to get back to what is important for our students in South Carolina.

What distinguishes you from your Democratic primary opponent?

Lisa Ellis: I’m still in schools. I’m still in the classroom. I still see everyday things that are happening that I’m like, well, here’s how you make that better immediately.

Having that direct connection to students, to my colleagues at Blythewood High School in Richland School District 2, still talking to teachers across the state, you have that personal connection.

An assistant principal the other day said, ‘When you’re superintendent, you’ve got to fix this.’ And I’m like, ’Well, let me just add it to the list.’ And a lot of the stuff, they’re not difficult fixes. It’s looking at things that we’ve been doing for decades that no longer work for the students and schools that we’re dealing with and making those quick changes.

I think the other piece of it is, I’m looking at whole systems. My plan is to look at the whole system and say, ‘OK, here’s where this system is broken. Here’s what we’re going to do to change the system.’

We’ve been Band-Aiding public education in South Carolina for decades. It’s not working. So we’ve got to go back and look at the systems and fix the systems. And I think that is the main difference, is I’m all about changing the systems and improving the systems that way. Going upstream and fixing the problem.

Sylvia Wright: The first thing I want to do is acknowledge the fact that we are both educators, and I respect Lisa.

The biggest difference, though, between Lisa and I, is that I have leadership experience on the school level and the district level. With that being said, my perspective is different, and my experience with working with people on the different levels is different.

South Carolina needs someone in the superintendent role who actually has worked in every level of the system, who has built relationships, who knows how to use data to move things forward.

I’ve taught in different states and I’ve also taught in different school settings. So my experience, my knowledge of education and the system, not just as a classroom teacher, but as a leader, as an educational leader, is far above Lisa’s.

I’m not saying that in a disrespectful way, because I respect the fact that she’s a teacher, and she’s campaigning on the fact that she’s still in the classroom, but when you’re in the classroom, that’s a limited perspective. That’s a limited view. And what we need with our educational system is not that limited view.

As a Democrat, how would you navigate a political system dominated by Republican lawmakers?

Sylvia Wright: The key thing is relationships. Building relationships. And I’ve already started talking to Republican elected officials, like state senators and members of the House of Representatives.

I spoke to (Senate Education Committee Chair Greg) Hembree for a good 15, 20 minutes the other day, and, honestly, we have more in common than we have separate. And talking to him just reaffirmed that.

So I actually look forward to working together with the other side, with people from another party. And I feel like with education, and again, this is from my conversation with Sen. Hembree, we all care about elevating our kids.

Improving education in South Carolina is the goal. The issue that we are facing right now is the person who’s in charge, it’s more of a political agenda for her, versus really looking at what are the needs in our state when it comes to education. How can we support those needs, provide the resources strategically and intentionally. That’s not her focus.

And so, that will be my focus. That’s how I would talk when it comes to my conversations. How can we elevate education in South Carolina? Because if we continue down this track, it’s going to eventually affect South Carolina’s economy. If our kids are graduating from school and they’re not able to get into the workforce opportunities that are vast here in South Carolina, it’s going to affect South Carolina.

Lisa Ellis: I think it’s all about having conversations and trying to understand where the problem started and figuring out where’s the push for this legislation?

I think school choice is great. I think that we have all kinds of different learners in our students in South Carolina, and so they should have choice. Now, do I think that means my tax dollars should go to fund somebody’s private school tuition when they’re 400% over poverty? That’s not poverty.

So I think that it’s having those conversations, trying to understand what the ultimate goal is, and then getting that narrative straight that, ‘Hey, our public schools aren’t failing our kids.’ I mean, that’s the narrative, right?

We’ve made enemies of teachers who are trying their best every single day to do what is in the best interest of their students, but all of a sudden, we can’t trust them. That’s the rhetoric that’s coming out.

At the very least, as superintendent of education, I can change that narrative. I can point out where our schools are succeeding, where we’re doing well, where we can improve if X, Y, and Z is taken off of teachers’ plates.

During SC for Ed, I had lots of conversations with Republican lawmakers. And when we got in the same room and had the conversations, we agreed on a lot of the same things.

But when people put it into sound bites, and when you put it into party politics, that’s when the trouble starts. I fully believe that if I can sit in a room with somebody who wholeheartedly disagrees and we can figure out why, then we can figure out what the next steps are.

I’m willing to have those conversations, and I would assume that anybody who was in a position to affect public education is willing to have those conversations as well. Maybe that’s the positive Pollyanna in me, but while I breathe, I hope.

Read more Get to know Lisa Ellis and Sylvia Wright, Democratic candidates for SC schools chief