[EdTalks] Behind the $39 Billion: How the South Carolina State Budget Impacts Local Schools

Understanding where billions of dollars go is no easy task, especially when it comes to the South Carolina state budget. Host Catherine Schumacher sits down with GP McLeer of Together SC to demystify the complex timeline behind state spending. They explore how agency requests turn into law and why the timing of these legislative decisions matters for the future of public education.

This episode pulls back the curtain on the entire budget process, from the House Ways and Means Committee hearings to the late-night Senate floor debates. McLeer explains the role of "provisos" in public school funding and how legislative decisions in Columbia directly influence teacher salaries and classroom resources in local districts. You’ll also learn about the "Sine Die" deadline and why it often keeps lawmakers working until the final hour on June 30th.

If you’re an educator, parent, or taxpayer looking to understand how tax dollars reach the classroom in Greenville County and beyond, this episode is for you. Catherine and GP provide the essential context needed to navigate local school board meetings and advocate effectively for your community's needs.

Episode Resources

• Greenville County Schools - Budget & Financial Information

• Together SC

• SC Board of Economic Advisors (BEA)

• SC Department of Administration - State Budget Division

• SC State House Legislative Glossary

Introduction to the South Carolina State Budget

Catherine Schumacher: The South Carolina state budget is about $39 billion, and hundreds of millions of those dollars support our public schools, funding everything from school buses to teacher salaries to classroom supplies.

Over the next few months, the state legislature will debate how to invest tax dollars and other revenues, while at the same time, Greenville County Schools works to build its own budget for the 2026-27 school year.

This is Catherine Schumacher with Public Education Partners. On today's episode of Simple Civics: EdTalks, we will dig into the complex process behind our state budget and why it can complicate budget making for our local school districts. I'm joined by GP McLeer, Director of Public Policy and Community Engagement for Together SC, our statewide nonprofit alliance.

Catherine Schumacher: I'm excited to be here with my friend, GP McLeer, with Together SC and all of his other hats that he wears. We've been working together for a long time in this space. Thanks for making the time to have a conversation about budget.

We're both budget nerds and policy nerds together. We've done some work on Simple Civics: EdTalks around particularly budgeting and how schools are funded in South Carolina. This is an obvious follow up to that.

We wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about the process for our state budget, which is just getting underway. We're recording early in January, and the legislature comes to Columbia next week. They've already been there doing a lot of work.

I thought we could talk about that process and how the sausage gets made with the state budget and then put that in the context of what Greenville County schools is getting ready to dive into in terms of their budget.

The Early Stages: Agency Requests and the Governor's Budget

To start off, the budget process—the legislature doesn't convene until the second week of January, but the process already started in the fall. Talk us through what happens and what the homework is that our elected officials and agency heads have been doing since the fall.

GP McLeer: Agency heads really don't get any time off of budget mindset. Usually around the end of September, every agency in the state, of which there are many, must submit budget requests to the governor's office.

Those requests are also what go originally to the House and Senate committees that build the budget, but they are due to the Department of Administration. They're available online and you can see them.

Catherine Schumacher: If you really want to nerd out, you can nerd out as deeply as you want early and often about budgeting.

GP McLeer: You don't have to wait for the budget debate to nerd out. They're submitted to the governor's office so the governor can craft his executive budget. That executive budget comes out usually right when the legislature comes back in January.

The governor needs all that information up front so they can make their proposal on what they think the state's priority should be. Those agencies are working throughout the summer.

Immediately on July 1, when the new fiscal year hits, agency heads are already thinking about the next fiscal year because their homework is due by the end of September.

Catherine Schumacher: That's all the agencies and departments, including the Department of Education and the Education Oversight Committee. Both of those have their own.

The Role of the House Ways and Means Committee

Any organizations and agencies that get state funding all go in one great big pot for the governor. All of this information has come in to House Ways and Means. The logistics are that the budget starts in the House every year.

All of this conversation is happening in the House. The House Ways and Means Committee runs this process and they steer the ship. Representative Bruce Bannister, who is here in Greenville, is the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and it is his purview to run this process.

Talk a little bit about this from an education standpoint. I know there's different committees that look at all of this and then move things towards the full committee. What does that look like?

GP McLeer: Something that's unique about education is the state superintendent, Superintendent Weaver, has her bucket of money for her agency. But as you said, there is a bunch of others that are tied to education: Commission on Higher Education and the Education Oversight Committee.

You also have First Steps now that is a standalone. You have all of these different education-related agencies that do have to coordinate. There's some coordination on who's going to ask for what based on the revenue source that is most eligible to be used. School funding is a whole thing.

Catherine Schumacher: It's very complicated. There is school funding that is mandated by statute. You have different committees that work on how we are going to parse that out and what we are going to put it towards.

Subcommittee Hearings and Economic Forecasting

GP McLeer: There's a little bit of coordination, particularly between the Education Oversight Committee and the Department of Ed on who's going to ask for what and what source of funding is best suited to support that request. It goes to not only the governor, but as you said, Chairman Bannister.

This year, 2026, is the second year in a two-year cycle. Those budget hearings will happen fairly quickly in comparison to where they started in 25. The legislature is a two-year cycle. When you hit that first year of that cycle, there's new members because it's after an election and there's no bills in process yet.

There's also new committee members, and so they're a little bit slower to start on those years. This year, they'll have one year under their belt of experience and they'll be able to move a little bit faster.

Ways and Means Committee is separated into various subcommittees that consist of three members, and they will hear budget requests from agencies. They do presentations. They go to the statehouse to a subcommittee room, do a presentation on the highlights of their budget request, and field questions from those members.

They will go through all state agencies. Then they will have a big committee meeting where all the subcommittees say what they think is possible to do and what should be their priority.

Regarding available funding, we should mention the Board of Economic Advisors for the state, the BEA.

Catherine Schumacher: And they hear that in February?

GP McLeer: They hear it numerous times throughout the year. There's already an estimate out, but it is refined regularly, almost every other month. Ways and Means Committee will get a version.

There's always an estimate around when the Senate starts their debate and also an estimate right at the tail end. Over the last few years, it has been positive news that there is more available funding.

Some of those requests that maybe didn't get fully funded might get thrown in at the last minute or might get an extra boost.

Floor Debates and Budget Provisos

Catherine Schumacher: The House is going through this January, February, and March. Is it always called H-1?

GP McLeer: That's not the actual bill number, but everyone calls it H-1.

Catherine Schumacher: That's the little lingo for y'all. Then the House will have floor debate.

GP McLeer: A lot of floor debate.

Catherine Schumacher: There can be floor debate about provisos. Provisos are these special laws that get attached to the budget without going through the full legislative process of subcommittee and hearing, but they have to connect to money somehow. A lot of times there'll be provisos about school stuff because school stuff involves money.

GP McLeer: It's like if you and your family are sitting down and saying this week we're going to spend $50 to go out to eat one day. That may be the budget. But a proviso might be someone saying let's not spend that $50 on tacos; I want to spend it on anything but tacos.

Catherine Schumacher: So it's directive.

GP McLeer: Yes. It's like saying I still have $50, but I have to spend it on certain things. There's a lot of complexity to some of these provisos.

Catherine Schumacher: Some recent provisos have been about book content, which has been a hot topic. Book content, CRT—all of that has been handled in proviso because it got bogged down sometimes in the legislative process.

GP McLeer: In education and other areas too, it's often "you can't use our money to do X, Y, Z." That was another one during COVID regarding what you could use your money for.

That's where additional funding from the federal government is another dynamic that education has to wrestle with. Provisos take up a lot of floor debate on the House and Senate side. They get spicy.

They can because those can be drafted in the moment. They're not vetted by a subcommittee or a committee. There's no public testimony on those and sometimes there's not a lot of time to react.

In the House, if it's a very contentious year, you might have four days of budget debate. By the fourth day, the budget is approved. You really only have two days of going back and forth.

The Senate's Review Process

Catherine Schumacher: And they can go hours into the wee hours. So the House does their version, and then the Senate takes that and chews it up.

GP McLeer: They start all over again. They take the House version, but the Senate has the ability to say they are going to do their own thing. There is usually a lot of carryover and they talk to each other, but the Senate is able to make any adjustment they would like.

After the House Ways and Means Committee has their hearings for agency heads and the superintendent of education gives their presentation, a couple of weeks later, they're giving it to the Senate Finance Subcommittee.

They're doing that presentation two times. The Senate is making their own decisions. They might be informed by what the House does, but they are also arriving at their own conclusions.

Catherine Schumacher: From a practical standpoint, you'll see slight differences. For instance, if there's new money the state wants to put towards teacher salaries, the House might have one number and the Senate might have a different number. You go through these two processes and then at the end, they have to match.

Resolving Differences in Conference Committee

GP McLeer: They do. You can't have two budgets; you can only have one budget.

Catherine Schumacher: Then you get into a process of will the House go along with the Senate or will the Senate go along with the House? Rarely do they choose to go along with each other, so you have to go to conference committee.

GP McLeer: Once the Senate comes up with their budget, it goes back to the House one more time and the House does what they call H2. Direct appropriations are sometimes in the H2 version if they're doing them.

Catherine Schumacher: And direct appropriations—is that a happy term for earmarks?

GP McLeer: Community investments. H2 is a big deal because that's the House's last bite. The Senate only really gets that one bite. Then the House will send H2 back to the Senate, and the Senate will say no or yes.

At that point, they almost always say no because everyone wants to tweak something. If the number is different in the House and the Senate, it is eligible for conversation in this conference committee.

The conference committee is three senators and three House members appointed by leaders of each body. It almost always is the chair of Senate Finance and the chair of House Ways and Means, along with a couple other folks.

They will work out those differences. Where they agree, they stay agreeing. It's where the differences are that they will either take the House version or the Senate version. On the budget side, they have to take one of the two.

Catherine Schumacher: A lot of times you will hear that education is a sticking point. I remember there was talk about the new vet school at Clemson a couple of years ago. Education is often part of this process.

The Sine Die Deadline

Everything is supposed to be done by a certain time, but it's almost never done, particularly the budget. They do this thing called sine die.

GP McLeer: Sine die is the second Thursday in May. They're supposed to be done at 5 p.m. on the nose.

If they aren't, they will pass the sine die resolution. It's an agreement between the House and the Senate that if they are not done by 5 o'clock, they will keep working, but here's the list of things they can talk about. The budget is always on that list. They have until June 30th to figure it out.

The Local School District Budgeting Process

Catherine Schumacher: This process is going on basically between January and June. Meanwhile, here in Greenville and at school districts across the state, the district is also going through the process of creating the district budget for the coming academic year.

State funding is the majority of the school district budget. You have to balance that with federal money and local tax dollars. Generally speaking, state money is really important.

When the district starts its process in the fall, principals and department heads put in their requests. All of that funnels in to the leadership team and the finance department at Greenville County Schools.

There will be a long series of conversations between now and April, which is when the board of trustees for the district sees the first pass at the district budget.

Catherine Schumacher: There are over 20 internal meetings to crunch numbers. The district has to start somewhere in terms of revenues, so they start from that February Board of Economic Advisors estimate.

That gives the district a sense of what they're hearing in Columbia so they can make best estimates. If you have any huge changes between what they're hearing in February or March from the state, it makes it a lot harder to navigate that budget process.

Locally, the process is a little less complicated for the school district. They have a workshop with the board in April that is open to the public. All that information is shared publicly.

There's a first reading in May. They have a special meeting about the budget to approve that for the first reading. Then there's usually a second reading, and that is when the budget is approved. Down at the statehouse, they have to do three readings.

GP McLeer: Yes.

Catherine Schumacher: Typically the goal is to have the district budget approved at that June budget meeting, the second reading. But if there are any big changes or a proviso gets stuck on with something unfunded, that really complicates things locally.

That can have implications for the debate about millage increases on the local side. The resources the district can use for operations in particular are really complicated.

GP McLeer: There are a lot of decisions made in Columbia in those last minutes, particularly if the governor gets the budget and can line item veto. Then you've got a debate on those line items.

That hasn't necessarily happened in education in the last few years, but it's a possibility. A lot hinges on what happens in Columbia for school districts up until the day they adopt their final budget. Sometimes it's June 29th when they finally know their number for certain.

Teacher Salaries and the Impact of State Decisions

Catherine Schumacher: We try to emphasize for listeners, as we talk about the local school budget, that the state wants to increase the minimum salary for teachers on the salary scale to above $50,000.

In Greenville, we've been above that benchmark for a while. Greenville has tried to stay ahead of the curve on teacher salaries. Because the district is so big, they have "steps" where each year teachers get a little bit of a bump.

Mandatory increases are built into that regarding the increasing cost of insurance and those sorts of things. Sometimes you'll hear the state legislature is sending more money to districts, but that doesn't necessarily mean it is new money that isn't already spoken for.

In Greenville, there's also been talk about enrollment going down and losing teacher positions. That doesn't necessarily mean the budget will get smaller.

GP McLeer: Right.

Catherine Schumacher: I think people assume that just because a budget is getting bigger, it doesn't include cuts in positions. With these podcasts, we're encouraging folks to pay attention and be curious.

Don't assume because you hear something coming out of Columbia that the impact in Greenville is exactly the same, because it's such a large school district.

GP McLeer: Every district is different and handles things differently. Every district also gets different kinds of funding from the state.

Decisions are made at the district because the state has done something. Greenville has to figure out how to stay competitive if there's a competition gap in the marketplace for teacher salaries.

If there's a funding gap, they have to figure out how to meet those needs. Some of those decisions begin in Columbia. That's why it's important for folks to pay attention to Columbia and understand that the decisions being made there impact the school board meetings talking about budgets.

Closing Thoughts on Budgeting

Catherine Schumacher: Thank you for having the conversation with me. We've had a series of conversations about budgets at Public Education Partners. We're going to follow this process closely this year to help demystify it because it is complicated.

Budgets represent an investment; it's how a community shows investment. Particularly at Greenville County Schools, it shows how we are investing resources in our schools and our students. Thanks for nerding out with me about budgets today. Did I forget anything?

GP McLeer: Only the fun fact that the budget is the only piece of legislation required to be passed in the state every year. Same for almost any public entity. The only required law you have to pass is the budget, because otherwise you can't operate.

Catherine Schumacher: Well, I guess that's a good thing that we can get our budgets passed here in South Carolina. GP McLeer, thank you so much for joining me today.

GP McLeer: Thanks.

Catherine Schumacher: Simple Civics: EdTalks is a joint project of Greater Good Greenville, Greenville First Steps, and Public Education Partners Greenville County.