Weaver says she’ll support students; GOP education candidate speaks in St. Matthews

ST. MATTHEWS – Ellen Weaver says she’ll work to make sure state education dollars are helping students if she’s elected South Carolina’s next superintendent of education.

“We face incredible challenges,” the Republican candidate said Thursday. “It is urgent. We have a funding system that is one of the most complicated in the country.”

Education is not underfunded in South Carolina, but money is going to the wrong places, Weaver said.

“We have so much money stuck in programs and in bureaucracy – top-heavy bureaucracy,” she said.

Weaver spoke to Calhoun County Republicans at Town and Country Restaurant in St. Matthews.

She faces Democratic nominee Lisa Ellis and Green Party candidate Patricia Mickel in November.

“As superintendent of education the first thing I am going to do is to make sure my own house in Columbia is in order and fully audit and create transparency for every dime that is spent at the Department of Education,” Weaver said. “That is the fiduciary responsibility that I owe to you as voters, that I owe to educators across the state who are working hard on behalf of our children.”

“The money that you pay in taxes to support our educational system is not to support a system, it is to support students and the students are my ultimate constituency. That is who I answer to,” she said.

As superintendent, Weaver says she will aim to bring “empowerment, hope and opportunity” to all the state’s children, but especially those in rural areas and low-income students who have suffered most during the COVID pandemic.

“They have suffered incredible damage,” Weaver said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do to get back to basics, to make sure that our children are able to read on grade level, to do math on grade level.”

Early literacy is going to be a primary focus, she said.

“If you never got those foundational skills in the early grades, you are going to fall further and further and further behind the longer you are in school,” Weaver said. “We end up with discipline problems, with academic problems, with students who feel like they are dumb when in reality they just have not been given the tools they need to succeed.”

She supports teaching phonics.

“We have to do a better job of partnering with our colleges and higher education in their teacher education programs to ensure they are teaching teachers how to teach reading in the way we know science says works,” she said.

“I think that is the most important thing we can do to close the achievement gap, what I like to call the opportunity gap, between low-income children and those in higher income families who are succeeding,” she said. “That is going to be a huge initiative.”

Weaver also said she will make sure schools are places of learning and not indoctrination.

“We see these crazy ideas pushed on educators through professional development, through mandates that are tied to Washington dollars coming into our public education system,” she said. “We’ve got to say no to that. We have got to build a firewall to protect our children – the hearts and minds of our children.”

“Yes, we are going to teach the good, the bad and the ugly of American history,” she said. “We are not going to whitewash anything, but what we are going to do is say we can be better together not if we divide ourselves along race lines, along class lines or along gender lines.

“We are better and stronger together as Americans.”

Weaver said she will watch for unapproved resources or curricula, including critical race theory.

“I firmly believe it is an ideology that consigns children to be victims instead of victors. They need to have a can-do attitude and not be told they are limited by their income, by their race, by their gender or any other physical characteristics about them,” she said.

Weaver said she will also support teachers in the classroom that have been mistreated by students.

“All too often, our administrators are afraid to enforce discipline because of the woke mandates that come out of Washington,” she said. “We’ve got real issues that we have to deal with to support our teachers to let them know that we have their backs.”

Weaver said she’ll ensure parents have a say in their children’s education.

“Can we just all agree that parents are not domestic terrorists when they get involved in their children’s education?” Weaver said. “As a superintendent I will be an ardent defender of parents’ rights. Parents have the ultimate authority and responsibility make educational decisions for their children.”

Weaver defended herself from some critics who say that she does not have the experience needed to be the superintendent.

Under state law, Weaver must possess a master’s degree before she can take office as state superintendent of education. She’s currently enrolled in an educational leadership program at Bob Jones University to obtain her master’s degree, which she says will happen in October.

Weaver also answered critics who note she is not a teacher.

“I am not running to be a classroom teacher,” she said. “I am running to be the executive of a multiple billion dollar education system. That requires leadership and management skills.”

Weaver said she developed leadership skills during her 20-plus years of service in Sen. Jim DeMint’s Washington office and as the current president and CEO of the Palmetto Promise Institute, a conservative think tank.

Weaver said her focus will be on people and that she will be out visiting schools and listening to teachers’ concerns.

She also said she would engage the business and faith communities to encourage them to be involved in helping students reach educational success.

Weaver said when she thinks about what is at stake in the election, she thinks about U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a fellow Republican.

“He is the living example of why this fight matters,” Weaver said. “He talks about how education was his pathway out of poverty.

“When I think about what is at stake in this election, it is a bunch of little Tim Scotts. How many children are sitting in classrooms around this state not being prepared for what the world is going to throw at them when they graduate?”