Students and teachers cheered as nearly $100,000 was awarded to 17 teachers at the Allendale County School District (ACSD) on May 29.
As part of the South Carolina Department of Education (DOE) Excellence in Teaching Awards, federal and state funds were used to give Allendale’s teachers checks, ranging from as small as $500 up to $29,250. The ACSD is a teacher performance pay school district, meaning top-performing teachers are given bonuses based on student improvement.
“Teachers, I am so proud of you, and students I am even more proud of you,” said ACSD superintendent Dr. Vallerie Cave. “(Teachers) make the change happen in classrooms and they are the reason that children are successful.”
Following national trends, South Carolina is facing an acute teacher shortage; there were 1,613 vacant positions in the state at the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year, according to a report by the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Advancement. The shortage is driven in part by large numbers of teachers leaving the workforce due to low pay, burnout and poor working conditions.
As a high-needs school district, open positions at the Allendale County School District range from music teachers in the elementary school to English teachers in the high school. For new teachers, the district offers sign on bonuses of up to $15,000. Keeping current teachers, S.C. Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver said, requires financially supporting them.
“This Excellence in Teaching Award represents an investment in what matters most, and that is the people who make education work, and that’s teachers,” Weaver said at the celebration.
The need for teachers at some school districts is so severe that the South Carolina DOE has taken up virtual teaching, where educators are connected to classrooms virtually. Shawn Blanchard, an educator who lives in Atlanta, Ga., but teaches seventh grade math at Allendale-Fairfax Middle School, was one of the winners of the Excellence in Teaching Awards.
“I just came back to the classroom three months ago,” said Blanchard, who drove three hours to be at the celebration. “I Zoom in in the mornings, Monday through Friday. I have the kids working really hard.”
Concurrently, report cards released in October show that test scores have fallen sharply across the state of South Carolina since the pandemic, with test scores in Allendale County schools ranking below average in the state. Student improvement, Cave said, starts with championing teachers in the classroom.
“When you support teachers and give teachers recognition, it helps with recruitment and retention and it helps empower teachers to greatness,” said Cave. “It’s going to make a difference in the lives of those children and it’s going to make a difference in the lives of those teachers.”
South Carolina ranks 40th in the country for starting teacher pay, according to the National Education Association. In Columbia, various proposals to boost starting teacher pay have been floated, and in May 2023, the South Carolina DOE’s Teacher Recruitment and Retention Task Force released a report with numerous recommendations for improving teacher recruitment. These included student loan forgiveness, stipends for critical needs teachers, and streamlining the teacher certification process.
“One of the ways to retain teachers is to ensure that we are paying them,” said Weaver, who acknowledged that many teachers use money received through teacher performance pay to pay off student debt. “ is certainly one of the ways to retain great teachers in the classroom.”
But in addition to attracting new teachers to the district, the ceremony was about celebrating the district’s current teachers, like third grade teacher Tameika Tinsley, who won the largest bonus of $29,250.
“I made it to this point by working extremely hard with my students because I feel they have the potential to be great,” Tinsley said. “Sometimes they don’t recognize their full potential, so I try to push them to it.”
Elijah de Castro is a Report for America corps member who writes about rural communities like Allendale and Barnwell counties for The People-Sentinel. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep Elijah writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today.
