Christian organization got $1.5M in SC budget to build private school. Is it legal?
An Upstate Christian organization that’s raising money to build a $14 million residential school for disadvantaged and at-risk youth has a surprising benefactor: the state of South Carolina.
In a move that legal scholars say raises constitutional questions, state lawmakers included a $1.5 million earmark in this year’s budget to help Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County get its new school off the ground.
The nonprofit organization, which provides free Bible instruction to public school students, pitched the governor earlier this year on its plan to purchase 10 acres of land and build a “first-of-its-kind, state-of-the-art residential school” for disadvantaged middle and high school students in Greenville County, documents obtained by The State Media Co. show.
“As the leader of our great state, we ask that you grant us (an) opportunity to make a difference in the lives of South Carolina’s children who cannot help themselves by approving our seed funding request,” Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County CEO Janice Butler wrote to Gov. Henry McMaster in a May 24 cover letter attached to her organization’s project proposal.
Three weeks later, the General Assembly passed a spending plan that funded the nonprofit’s proposal, and McMaster signed it into law.
State Reps. Mike Burns, R-Greenville, and John McCravy, R-Greenwood, cosponsored the earmark, according to a list of approved earmarks provided by the Senate budget director. The document identifies the earmark recipient as “Christian Learning Center of Greenville County,” but does not divulge the organization’s proposed use for the money.
Burns, who has longstanding ties to Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County — his campaign has sponsored a table at the nonprofit’s fundraising events each of the past six years, according to state Ethics Commission filings — said he considered the appropriation a worthwhile investment in an organization that has done great things for students in the county.
For the past 25 years, Christian Learning Centers has provided released-time Bible instruction for public middle and high school students in Greenville County. The organization buses students during the school day to off-campus locations, often churches, where they receive 50 to 90 minutes of Bible instruction before being bused back to their public schools.
“A lot of disadvantaged kids could benefit greatly from an expenditure to this school that Ms. Butler and her board are proposing to build,” Burns said. “I weighed all that in the balance and I put it in the budget.”
McCravy did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for McMaster said funding the proposal would serve the people of South Carolina.
“The fact that (any earmark recipient) has some sort of involvement with a religious organization would not have inherently resulted in a veto from the governor,” spokesman Brian Symmes said.
But the generous allocation of taxpayer dollars to Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County appears to violate the state Constitution, University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black said.
“If the state is cutting a check to an organization to build or finance the infrastructure of a private educational institution, that sounds like a pretty explicit direct contradiction of what the Constitution says,” said Black, a national expert in education law who directs the university’s Constitutional Law Center.
South Carolina’s Constitution expressly prohibits the state from directly funding religious or other private educational institutions, and the state Supreme Court has, as recently as two years ago, upheld that prohibition.
In the 2020 case, Adams v. McMaster, the state’s highest court found unanimously that the governor’s plan to use $32 million in federal COVID-19 relief money to provide tuition grants for students to attend private schools violated the state Constitution.
McMaster’s attorneys asked the justices to reconsider their decision, but the court stood firm, writing it had a responsibility to uphold the Constitution.
Black, who served as an expert witness in the 2020 case, said the recent allocation of tax dollars to Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County seems to go a step beyond the governor’s tuition grant program.
“In Adams, there was at least the argument that student choice helped direct the money to a particular institution and thus it wasn’t direct aid to the school,” he said. “That still was not enough to save the program in Adams, and now student choice is not even involved.”
Symmes said the governor continues to believe the Adams case was wrongly decided and did not let it impact his veto decisions.
He declined to comment on the possibility of a lawsuit being filed over the state directing taxpayer money to seed a private religious school.
Public school advocates question private school earmark
The decision to publicly fund construction of a private religious school also comes at a time when education advocates argue the state has failed to adequately fund South Carolina’s public school system.
Catherine Schumacher, president and CEO of Public Education Partners in Greenville County, questioned the fairness of sending taxpayer dollars to a private school when so many public schools are in need.
“There are districts all over the state that could use $1.5 million to do significant facility upgrades … pay teachers more and provide mental health counselors to support student success,” said Schumacher, whose organization opposes vouchers and education savings account programs that divert taxpayer dollars to private schools.
She conceded that many private and religious schools provide students excellent educational opportunities but said taxpayer dollars should not be given to schools that can choose whom they admit and aren’t held to the same standards as public schools.
“It’s an issue of accessibility, accountability and transparency,” she said. “That’s what we’re concerned about.”
Patrick Kelly, director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, said the state’s largest teachers organization also opposes taxpayer dollars flowing to schools that aren’t accessible to all South Carolina students and subject to the same accountability measures as the state’s public schools.
“Assuming that this school would be able to selectively admit students, that’s a big red flag for us,” Kelly said. “Because the state Constitution charges the General Assembly with providing a free public education for all students, and we believe that that’s where public dollars should go.”
Questions remain about school’s admissions policy, funding sources
It’s not clear how the proposed Christian Learning Centers school would deal with admissions.
When reached by phone, Butler, the organization’s CEO, requested The State email her a list of questions about the proposed school but failed to respond by deadline. In a written statement she provided late Monday, after publication, Butler said the organization was excited about the opportunity to expand services for students in the Greenville community, but did not respond directly to any of the questions.
Christian Learning Centers board chairman Stan Tzouvelekas, a Greenville County councilman, said in the same statement that the organization was still discussing details of the school proposal.
“When the funding is received, we plan to work conscientiously and as good stewards to get the school established to better position ourselves for meeting the special needs of vulnerable school-aged children (i.e., academic, physical, social, emotional, vocational, and life skills, etc.) particularly in Greenville County,” he said.
The proposal Butler submitted to the governor’s office said the school would admit students who “though disadvantaged and potentially at-risk, show promise given the needed support.”
“These students are academically unsuccessful in regular school, destitute, disabled, neglected, homeless, delinquent, and/or orphaned,” Butler wrote. “Many of them end up in alternative schools, group homes, wandering aimlessly in the streets, jail or some other institutions.”
The Christian Learning Centers school would “provide a specialized environment for their growth and development,” she wrote.
The school’s location had not been selected when the organization submitted its proposal to the governor’s office. According to the project’s proposed budget, Christian Learning Centers plans to acquire land (estimated at $2 million) and test and prepare the site ($500,000) before building the campus in phases. Construction would start with the school building, advance to gender-specific dorms capable of housing a total of 32 middle- and high-school aged girls and boys, and conclude with an administration office.
The school building would have six classrooms, a cafeteria, library, gym and several ancillary rooms, and the administration building would house a conference room, chapel and seven employee offices.
Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County currently operates out of a building it shares with a pediatric dentistry practice on Pelham Road in Greenville.
The organization’s proposal doesn’t state how many teachers, administrators and staff its school would employ or include an estimate of annual operating costs.
Beyond the $1.5 million pledged by the state — the appropriation, which will flow through the Department of Education, has yet to be disbursed — it’s not known how much additional money the organization has raised toward its $14 million goal.
Burns said the state funds are intended as seed money that Christian Leaning Centers can fundraise around.
“You got the seed, so you know you can be successful,” he said. “This board feels like it won’t have any difficulty filling in the skeleton around what the state is willing to do to help these kids out.”
Historically, Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County has reported average annual revenues of about $450,000, according to state and federal tax records. Donors to the nonprofit include individuals, local businesses, philanthropic organizations, churches and religious groups.
Two private Christian colleges in Greenville County — North Greenville University and Bob Jones University — also have financial ties to the organization.
Half of Christian Learning Centers’ board members are either administrators at or alumni of one of the two universities, according to their online bios, and Butler, the organization’s CEO, got her master’s in Christian Ministry from North Greenville.
North Greenville President Gene Fant wrote McMaster in June, asking him to support the Christian Learning Centers earmark, which he called a “personal project” for the university because so many of its employees, including he and his wife, volunteer for the organization and donate to it annually.
Steve Petit, president of Bob Jones University, also sent McMaster a letter of support on behalf of the Christian Learning Centers earmark.
“Over the years, BJU has counted it a privilege to partner with CLC, and we look forward to working with them on this new project as well,” he wrote. “As you consider this line item in the state budget, I would encourage you to support it so that disadvantaged and at-risk students in the Upstate can be served by organizations such as Christian Learning Centers.”
Randy Page, Petit’s chief of staff, said Friday the university had not contributed any seed money to the school project.
Increasing transparency around budget earmarks
In addition to the legal questions raised by the state’s support of the proposed Christian Learning Centers school, the opaque way in which those funds were allocated illustrates the need for greater transparency in the budget earmark process, said Kelly, a State House regular whose job involves lobbying lawmakers on behalf of South Carolina teachers.
“I watched pretty much every minute of every budget hearing at the committee level and the floor debate,” he said. “I don’t remember any public discussion of this particular line item or earmark in the state budget.”
Since late 2019, The State has written extensively about South Carolina’s earmark appropriation process, which critics say is cloaked in secrecy and ripe for abuse. Each year, lawmakers tuck tens of millions of dollars in pet projects — known as earmarks — into the budget unbeknownst to the public and even many of their colleagues.
Because the process occurs largely behind closed doors, lawmakers have not historically had to justify their earmarks and in some cases have sponsored appropriations for organizations to which they are personally connected.
For the first time this year, legislative leaders required the disclosure of earmark sponsors and recipients, which previously had been shielded from public view.
McMaster applauded the General Assembly’s increased transparency but said more must be done to maintain the public’s confidence in state government. He asked all earmark sponsors to provide his office detailed information about their requests in order to inform his budget line item veto decisions.
Many lawmakers, but not all, complied with the governor’s request. One of those was Burns, who packaged a letter from Butler, a project proposal, a federal tax form and architectural drawings of the proposed Christian Learning Centers school in his response to McMaster.
“Thank you for all you do for our great state,” Burns wrote. “I hope you will give favorable consideration for these earmark funds.”
McMaster went on to veto more than $52 million in earmarks and one-time appropriations in the state budget but did not touch the money allocated for Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County.
Symmes, the governor’s spokesman, reiterated Friday that religious affiliation was not a criteria McMaster used to automatically disqualify earmarks. He said the state budget has for years funded earmarks for religious organizations and that this budget is no different.
“This is not a new development by any means,” said Symmes, who theorized that the practice is only now coming to light because of the increased transparency surrounding the process.
“Prior to the governor’s insistence on more transparency in the budgeting process, we were largely unaware and the general public was largely unaware of where this money was going,” he said.
Kelly said he appreciated the governor’s efforts to shine light on the earmark process but said he wished the justifications lawmakers provided McMaster’s office could have been made public before the budget was signed into law.
“There would be value to the public having access to the same sort of justifications that the governor has asked for in regards to earmarks,” he said.
Symmes said the governor’s office already has made the earmark justifications available to anyone who submits a public records request but that it would continue to explore how to make the state’s budgeting process more transparent.
“This year was an extremely good step, but it’s not the end-all and be-all, and there’s more work to be done,” Symmes said. “The governor’s ultimate goal is to have this open to the public every step of the way, before and after the ultimate decision is made to appropriate funds to a specific earmark.”
McMaster has proposed creating a competitive, merit-based grant process for earmarks administered by state agencies, but the General Assembly has not to date adopted such a plan.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include a comment from Christian Learning Centers of Greenville County
