State Superintendent of Education, and Fairfield County resident, Jim Rex offered his perspective on the beleaguered school board and the SACS investigation while speaking at a Rotary Club luncheon Tuesday.

“Understandably, there are people in Fairfield County who think I have the legal authority to come in and do something about the (Fairfield County School Board),” Rex said. “I do not. By law, the state superintendent cannot intervene directly into these kinds of issues. Maybe that should change. Right now, it is not within my purview.”

In a democracy, Rex said, accountability rests with the people, whose responsibility it is to elect quality leaders.

“I think school boards in South Carolina need to be held accountable, just like we hold students accountable, just like we hold teachers accountable,” Rex said. “Now, the theory is, in a democracy, we hold people accountable at the polls. What it takes is educated, involved, engaged citizenry in order to make that work.”

Rex, an Ohio native and former English teacher, said there were a number of changes he would like to see implemented to improve the effectiveness and oversight of school boards.

One such improvement would involve linking state accreditation, which, unlike SACS, is mandatory for all S.C. schools, to school governance.

Rex said he would also like to see training with the School Board Association made mandatory, with perhaps different levels of training for under-performing districts.

Meanwhile, he said, the onus is on the electorate.

“There’s no substitute for the citizens of a community to elect good people to office then holding them accountable for the outcomes related to their office,” he said.

Rex also weighed in on what the SACS Special Review Team called “A pattern of high turnover of superintendents” in the district, as the board narrows its search for another.

“I don’t need to tell you that this school district is known as ‘The Graveyard of Superintendents’,” Rex said. “Can you imagine having a winning team if you change coaches every year? It’s not going to happen. I would rather have a mediocre coach that stayed a while than a whole series of outstanding coaches who kept leaving and you had to keep starting all over again from scratch.”

Rex stressed that the performance of the public school system in Fairfield County effects the future of the entire community, whether one has a child in the public schools or the private schools.

“We have got to make this school district move in the right direction,” he said. “I don’t think any one group or individual is to blame. I think we’re all to blame, to some extent. Now is the time to step up.”