Taxes and Dillion County Schools

After our last class, I have been thinking about how South Carolina funds their schools. In the past, our state raised money for schools based off of property tax values. However, recently our state stopped raising money for schools based off of property taxes and have started raising money for schools based off of sales taxes. The only problem with this is that obviously our state did not see an impending recession coming. Because of the recession, people are buying much less and our schools are not raising the money that they need to operate properly. I think in retrospect, that maybe our state should have considered taking a hybrid approach in raising money for the schools, so that in times of recession the schools would still have money to operate. In the case of the Dillion County schools that we discussed in class, I really do not know what the answer is for that, and evidently no one else higher up in our state government does either. We watched a documentary about the conditions of the Dillion County schools in Dr. Ferguson's class. One school that was still operating was over one hundred years old and it had had it's auditorium, that is located within the building, condemned. The building did not have any heat or air conditioning and raw sewage could be seen flowing down the hall where student's had to walk through it to get to class. Another school building had recently had a roof collapse for no apparent reason other than the fact that it was old and in disrepair. Thankfully, the roof collapse happened after school hours, otherwise children could have been killed or injured. According to the documentary, Dillion County has no industry and the houses that were shown held little monetary value. So, regardless of how South Carolina raises money for its schools, those schools in that particular county, will never have enough money to even maintain what they do have. So, my question is, what happens when the fire marshall says that those buildings are not safe enough to even enter? Will those students, who live in that area, be bused to another nearby district? Also, maybe supporters could hold a telethon for those schools to help raise money like was done for Katrina relief and the tsunami victims. Anyway, I do not have the answer but I hope the state figures it out for the sake of those children.
Nora Stewart-Ricks