The Sun News: Select Postlewait for BOE

Posted on December 7, 2007 
Filed Under News

Normally, we don’t make snap recommendations of candidates for public office. But the instant we heard that Horry County Schools’ former superintendent, Gerrita Postlewait, has become a candidate for the S.C. State Board of Education, we resolved to recommend her to the voters.

The “voters,” in this instance, are the members of the local legislative delegations for Horry and Georgetown counties - 13 senators and representatives in all. At least two of them, Reps. Thad Viers, R-Myrtle Beach, and Tracy Edge, R-North Myrtle Beach, disapprove of Postlewait’s decision to see the seek the seat.

They see her candidacy, made public this week, as a ideologically questionable. Some delegation members appear to be focusing more on advancing their personal agendas than on what’s right for the people - the “people” in this instance being the schoolchildren of South Carolina.

Who better than Postlewait to further inculcate the S.C. education establishment with a hard-nosed results-driven view of school improvement? During her 10 years at the helm of Horry County Schools, Postlewait and her leadership staff systematically broke down and eliminated teaching and administrative methods that failed to focus on learning improvement for children.

This was painful for teachers and administrators unwilling to venture beyond the limits of their educational comfort zones. Some fell by the wayside. But those who stayed - and those who Postlewait’s innovative administration recruited to staff and lead Horry County schools - transformed the school district into one of South Carolina’s most effective learning institutions.

The State Board of Education is the perfect place for Postlewait to resume her service to S.C. schoolchildren. The board sets the policies by which local schools are governed, reviews and recommends public school budgets to legislators, oversees the certification of teachers, chooses textbooks and instructional materials and advises the state superintendent of education on school improvement.

So why wouldn’t local legislators want to inject the State Board of Education with Postlewait’s results-driven reformist spirit? Edge objects to her candidacy because her resignation from the superintendency last year was “sudden” and, in his view, not adequately explained.

Viers, meanwhile, complains that she’s not a conservative - by which he means (we presume) that she believes in public education and would not be receptive to public subsidies for private schools. His preferred candidate, Greg Killian of Myrtle Beach, who did well as a board member before, supports using tax money to subsidize private schools. (Killian did not make that belief the centerpiece of his earlier board service.)

In local legislators’ first round of voting for the post last month, Killian garnered five votes. Seven legislators, at the behest of Sen. Luke Rankin, R-Myrtle Beach, voted to delay the choice in hope more candidates would apply.

Now the best candidate imaginable has applied. The Sun News recommends that local delegation members put her on the board, with the expectation that her steely view of school improvement will become more deeply embedded in the culture of S.C. public education.

Select Postlewait for BOE
Who better to inculcate the S.C. education culture with reformist resolve?
S.C. BOE