Schools Getting A Passing Grade?

Imagine dropping your kids off at an old schoolhouse built in 1896, where rain pours through the ceiling, and walls literally crumble. It's a school in America, and in some ways, it's not all that unusual.
Most public schools support themselves largely with local property taxes, and that creates huge disparities -- new buildings in one district, ancient facilities in the next.

That 1896 schoolhouse that Correspondent Scott Pelley visited is in Dillon, S.C., and the man struggling to keep it open is District Superintendent Ray Rogers.

"I'm not a finance director and I'm not a Philadelphia lawyer. But I can tell there's a whole lot of in between as far as these school districts in South Carolina," says Rogers. "And we know we are at the bottom. We don't have to ask anybody."

That's because in Dillon, the property is almost too poor to tax. The tobacco and cotton economy is dying on the vine. So that 19th century schoolhouse that opened just 30 years after the Civil War is today the school through which every child in the district must pass. 60 Minutes Wednesday talked to Rogers in the abandoned auditorium.

"When you're on the school bus and you look across those seats and you see the faces of those children, who do you see?" asks Pelley. "Who are these kids?"

"You see poor kids with a lot of hope that when they're younger you see all the bright eyes," says Rogers. "As they get older, more reality sets in, the older kids, a lot of them, you see the despair."

The reality of Rogers' six schools is that all are crowded and some have crumbling walls and saturated ceilings. When it rains outside, it rains inside, too.

Every day brings difficult choices among reading, writing, arithmetic and repairs. Rogers upgrades the old school house from time to time, usually after a crisis, like the day the ceiling fell in.

He's run new wiring so they can plug in computers now, but he had to sacrifice the auditorium (too expensive to fix) and he's cutting back on teaching. The music and art budgets are down 30 percent, and there'd be almost no money at all for sports if it wasn't for ticket sales. Football tickets cover 80 percent of his entire sports budget.

In middle school, there are no science labs or foreign language classes. And teacher salaries are among the lowest in the state.

Alyssa Richardson is an eighth grader in the old schoolhouse. "There is mold growing up on the sides on the walls and everything. Insects, roaches, ants, rats," says Richardson.

Freight trains also shake the old school and its students twice every hour. Here's where you see just how close Richardson is to a better opportunity. If she hopped this train, it would take only minutes to cross the divide. Forty miles southeast, and 100 years ahead, is a school in Horry County, built in 2003.

"We've built 19 new schools in the past seven or eight years," says Gerrita Postawalte, superintendent of Horry County schools. Her new classes have the latest, science labs with wireless Internet, foreign language in middle school and an orchestra program.

Don't be mistaken, we're not talking about rich kids here. Just as in Dillon, about 80 percent of these kids are on a free or reduced price lunch program. But they're in one of the best schools money can buy because of the beach. Horry County includes Myrtle Beach, golf courses and all the property taxes that come with them. That tax base also supported half a billion dollars in school construction bonds over the last 10 years.

"We have property wealth here and the taxpayers chose to raise their property taxes to support children," says Postawalte, who adds that houses down by the beach could sell for a million dollars.

This year marks the 51th anniversary of the end of racial segregation in the schools. But many school administrators will tell you there's still discrimination but now it's based on the color of money.

"The kids over in Dillon are going to school in a building that was built in 1896 because of an accident of birth," says Pelley. "If they'd been born a few miles over in this direction, they'd be in this school. … What does that tell you?"

"It tells me that there are unacceptable inequities in terms of opportunities and access that we provide to America's children," says Postawalte.

Is this segregation? "I don't know," says Postawalte.

"It's not equal," says Pelley.

"It isn't equal. I think of segregation as something that people intentionally impose on other people. And I don't think that the situation we have is intentional," says Postawalte. "I think, to some extent, it's always been part of our society. But we've now reached an age of sophistication and complexity where it's no longer acceptable if we're to survive."

How big is the gap between these two school districts? When you add up local, state and federal money, Horry County takes in nearly $1,800 more per student every year than Dillon does.

If that seems like a wide gap, consider this: plenty of other states are worse off than South Carolina. A research group called The Education Trust looked at funding gaps between rich and poor school districts, state by state. It found that the 10 worst are New York, Illinois, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, Louisiana, Arizona, Alabama and Michigan.

The problem touches nearly every state. In 45 states, including South Carolina, there have been lawsuits for better funding of schools.

There is, of course, a lot of debate about whether throwing money at schools actually improves learning. In Horry County, Postawalte says she can prove that it does: "Without money, it is hopeless, but with money and hope and a plan, it's possible."

Her students' SAT scores have been rising eight years running. What does she tell the Rotary Club about the scores? "I tell them that if Horry County were a state, our achievement scores would be higher than several states in the country," says Postawalte.

Which states? "Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, California, and some others," says Postawalte.

But in the next county, Dillon's SAT scores are well below the national average. And it may not surprise you to hear that of Rogers' nearly 4,000 students, almost half never graduate from high school.

"When you're losing 50 percent of your students to non-graduation, something is wrong," says Rogers, who says that of the half that do graduate, maybe 20 percent go on to college. "And those are the kind of situations that have gone on for too long," he says.

It's the kind of situation the Lane family finds itself in. Charlotte Lane is depending on school to make up for the trouble they've had. Once the Lanes had a home and two cars, but Bill Lane had a stroke and they lost it all. Lane took a job at a factory and rode a bicycle to work the overnight shift. She's counting on school to put her kids on a different road.

"If you don't have the money to go places," says Lane. "I have this philosophy. If you have the books, you can go anywhere you want to. So if we want to go to Disneyworld, we just get the book and we go there."

What does school mean for these children?

"To me, I feel school is, I think, a great haven for them to go and not have to worry about our bills, where the food's coming from, where the rent is, how Daddy is. They should be enjoying themselves," says Lane. "They're having too much at their age right now that they shouldn't have."

Chantee, 8, is in third grade, and still eager for more. She likes science and reading, and wants to be a dolphin trainer, "so I can see a real live dolphin."

"I hope they will get the chances I didn't have. I want them to go to college and to be what they want to be -- to be the photographer, the artist, or the scientist," says Lane. "Whatever they want to be, they can be it. And you don't want to lose, you know, their enthusiasm and energy at such a young age."

But like most kids in Dillon, Lane's 15-year-old son, Tommy, did lose his enthusiasm. He got into trouble starting a couple of small fires and was suspended from school. His graduation prospects are uncertain. Just as Rogers said, after a while, reality sets in.

Rogers started his job with enthusiasm 14 years ago. Back then, he had plans drawn up for new buildings. But Dillon hasn't built a new school in 35 years, and Rogers fears now the divide is too wide to bridge.

"We're probably talking $50-60 million in the county to bring us up to where we need to be right now," says Rogers.

"I have the sense that this is personally painful for you?" asks Pelley. "It's not just an administrative problem for you."

"No, we deal with the most important things in people's lives and that's their kids," says Rogers. "And when you, me, the state, the legislature or whatever, when we sell these kids short we can't be proud of ourselves. We can't be proud of our community, we can't be proud of ourselves as a state, we can't be proud of ourselves as a nation."