This episode of Simple Civics: Greenville County is brought to you by Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, providing free books to children zero to five throughout Greenville County. To sign up, visit greenvillefirststeps.org/freebooks.
Go beyond the headlines and discover the eye-popping numbers and surprising realities of the 43rd largest school district in the nation. In this episode of Simple Civics: Greenville County EdTalks, Catherine Schumacher of Public Education Partners and Derek Lewis of Greenville First Steps reveal the essential facts about Greenville County Schools that every resident should know. From a billion-dollar budget to bus routes that circle the equator daily, we explore what makes this district a uniquely powerful engine in our community and how it's shaping the future of Greenville, South Carolina.
With 78,000 students, 12,000 employees, and a billion-dollar budget, the district's operations and facilities are significant. Catherine and Derek discuss how a nonpartisan, 12-member school board governs this district, making crucial decisions that impact everything from school funding to dress codes. We delve into the pros and cons of such a large, unified district, highlighting how its scale allows for unparalleled opportunities that smaller districts simply can't offer, like extensive magnet programs that serve 14% of the student population. This conversation provides critical context for understanding the challenges and advantages that come with managing a large, unified district like GCS.
A core strength of the district lies in its robust student support services in Greenville Schools. More than half of the students live in households facing poverty, 23% are multilingual learners speaking over 79 home languages, and nearly 16% are students with disabilities. Catherine and Derek explore the district's commitment to meeting every child where they are, from providing more than 1,800 children with a head start in 4K programs to expanding special education support. These programs are vital for providing opportunity for all and helping all students overcome barriers to success.
One of the most exciting areas of growth is in Greenville County Schools career and technical education (CTE). The Graduation Plus initiative ensures students leave not just with a diploma, but with valuable college credits or workforce certifications. The number of certifications earned has skyrocketed from 600 to 12,000 in just a few years. We highlight state-of-the-art facilities like the CTE Innovation Center, which offers programs in aerospace technology, automation, and cybersecurity, and the renowned Fine Arts Center, a pipeline to top arts schools like Juilliard. These programs directly connect students to high-demand careers in our local economy. To support these incredible programs, the district has focused on Greenville County Schools teacher pay, becoming the first in the state to offer a starting salary over $50,000 to attract and retain the best educators. These investments are paying off, as GCS students consistently outperform national averages on the SAT and ACT, dispelling common myths about public education in South Carolina.
Links:
Introduction
Catherine Schumacher: Did you know that Greenville County Schools is the 43rd largest school district in the country? That it provides 85,000 healthy meals to students every single day? That students earned more than $168 million in scholarship offers in 2024? I'm Catherine Schumacher with Public Education Partners, and on today's Simple Civics: EdTalks, Derek Lewis of Greenville First Steps and I dig into some of our favorite facts and figures about Greenville County Schools to help you understand why our public school district is such a unique and powerful engine in our civic life.
Hi, Derek.
Derek Lewis: Hi, Catherine.
Catherine Schumacher: I'm excited. We are partners on Simple Civics: EdTalks, and this is the first time we've gotten to sit down and have a conversation together about setting the foundation for our conversations about Greenville County Schools and what public education looks like here in Greenville as part of this podcast. It's fun. I'm glad you're here.
Derek Lewis: I am thrilled that we can look at what's happening in the district and how it's affecting families and talk about that.
Catherine Schumacher: One of the goals that we both share is lifting up the positive that's happening because we know because we're in it every single day how much really good and interesting stuff is being done to support our students. And we just want everybody else to be as informed as we are. So this is a great opportunity to start that conversation.
What we wanted to do today was just share some of the facts and figures and numbers behind Greenville County Schools, because we both agree, and I think anyone who is a knowledgeable student of this district and the work that's done here, Greenville County Schools is a really unusual district in terms of its size and the scale of its operations and the scope of what it offers families and students. We wanted to have a minute to just level set that so folks can really know some of these numbers, which are kind of eye-popping. And I think explain why we have the pros and the cons of having a big unified school district. Both of us agree that the pros definitely outweigh the cons. And so happy to talk about that today.
Governing a Giant: The Role of the 12-Member School Board
Derek Lewis: I'll go first. I've got a number: 12. So 12 is the number of school board members for this district.
Catherine Schumacher: Which is appropriate for you to talk about since you are a recovering school board member yourself.
Derek Lewis: Yes, those days are definitely further behind me than they are ahead of me. I think that it is incredible to me that a district this size has 12 elected representatives that manage it. When you look at counties next to us where there might be six or seven school districts, each with 12, so they've got 50 or 60 people managing it. And it's just really incredible to me that 12 people with single-member districts, which I will say is the one thing that shocked me about public service the most, was people that didn't understand that I was not their school board member if they live in Traveler's Rest.
There are 12 carved-out pieces of property that are our areas, but that they're nonpartisan seats. These are not people who win primaries. They are people who sign up to be in the general election. They are able to just decide to run for the school board. They don't have to have a huge movement behind them. Some of our most successful school board members were people who just woke up in the middle of some issue and said, I care a lot about booster clubs and therefore I'm going to run for the school board and I'm going to do something about that issue. I just think it's a really remarkable thing.
We have six school board members that are elected every two years to a four-year term. So we had a new one come on in 2024 and in 2026, there'll be six seats that will be up. It's a really exciting time.
Catherine Schumacher: We will work to interview every single candidate for Greenville County School Board right here on Simple Civics. So pay attention next fall when that starts rolling out.
Derek Lewis: All right, Catherine, what's your number?
The Size and Complexity of Greenville County Schools
Catherine Schumacher: So mine are just the numbers and the size. So 78,000 students, 12,000 employees, 6,000 teachers. There are 105 facilities and buildings that the district is responsible for. One of the things that we think about is that the size of the district, and I think it's 800 square miles or something like that. But one of my very favorite facts is the bus routes, and Dr. W. Burke Royster talks about this every time, he says that if you take all of the bus routes that are driven around Greenville County schools every day, it would go around the equator every day, which is really extraordinary.
Derek Lewis: Just Greenville County, just school buses.
Catherine Schumacher: Thinking about that sort of size and scale, we're the 43rd largest district in the United States, which is kind of crazy when you think about South Carolina as a relatively small state. Obviously we're the largest district in South Carolina. We're about a tenth of the public schools, public school students in the state. So we're a microcosm in a lot of ways. I think that's another interesting thing about Greenville is that we have urban districts, rural districts, and suburban districts. We have all of the things, all of the challenges and opportunities. We see that right here in Greenville.
And then the other thing, speaking to the school board and the heavy responsibility that they bear in terms of oversight and governance, Greenville County Schools has basically a billion-dollar budget between operations and capital, the capital budget. Those are two separate budgets that are funded a little differently, and we'll be digging into that, too. That's something we're going to spend some time talking about is helping to explain how schools are funded.
It is a huge employer here in Greenville, second or third biggest employer behind, I think, the hospital systems and things like that. The impact of that is really something. And that's why we feel, you and I feel, and champions of public education feel that it's important for people to pay attention. It is a large engine in our community.
Derek Lewis: That 78,000 number is really shocking to me when you think about it is a tenth of the state, but it's also twice as big as the next largest school district. And then you start thinking about those teeny tiny districts that are all 2,000.
Catherine Schumacher: They have one school. They have one elementary school, one middle school, and one high school, and that's it.
Derek Lewis: We are essentially the size of 20 or 30 school districts. All is one big thing, which is really incredible.
Catherine Schumacher: Yeah, which is also why, from an advocacy standpoint, to understand that helps explain why a thing that you think is the right solution may not be the right solution. Because you really do. It's such a large and diverse place and serving such a large and diverse constituency of students.
Serving Every Student: A Look at Greenville's Diverse Student Body
So let's talk about our students and what they look like. You particularly are interested in early childhood education. We've had some conversations about that. What is early childhood? How many kiddos are we serving through early childhood here in Greenville County Schools?
Derek Lewis: We've got 1,800 kids in Greenville County School 4K, which if you combine that with the number of kids who are in First Steps 4K and in Head Start, is more four-year-olds than we have who will be eligible for free and reduced lunch next year. So when you think about are we serving the most at-risk families between the 1,800 the school district does, which is 1,760 more than the state requires them to do.
Catherine Schumacher: See, I didn't realize that, that not everybody has to serve 4K classrooms.
Derek Lewis: You just have to offer one 4K classroom per district. It's an incredible number of kids who are getting services that are preparing them for kindergarten. And then you've got preschool special ed, which are services that are now being expanded across the district for three-year-olds, so we can give them an extra year to catch up.
Catherine Schumacher: We at Public Education Partners, of course, are focused in particular on how can we support students, families, schools that are coming into the district and classrooms facing barriers. We talk a lot about students coming from households in poverty and more than half of the students in Greenville County schools live in poverty. The most current number I have is about 56 percent. That's something that I think is really interesting to think about. And in order to have a number like that, and this is important for listeners to realize as well, every single school in the district has students and families that are facing those kinds of challenges, housing insecurity, food insecurity.
23% of our students are multilingual learners. And that number has grown significantly, as has the number of home languages spoken, which I think is currently at 79. Which if you're thinking about how do you service students, how do you communicate with those students, how you communicate with their families, I'd be really curious to know, and I'll have to find out, how quickly that has grown because it's really changing who is coming here and how they're getting here and where they're coming from and the kinds of languages that are spoken in different communities all over the world and regional dialects and things, languages that aren't written and are just spoken.
The district having to figure out, because remember, the thing about public schools, public schools serve all children, which is the beauty of our public school system. It is built into our South Carolina constitution. It is built into our state constitutions across the country. I think that's one of the most beautiful things about public school is that it exists to serve all kiddos and meet them where they are. Thinking through how do we reach those students is a really important challenge that the district is continuously improving on and figuring out how can we invest more in it. Special education, another great example. Almost 16% of our students are students with disabilities. The district just this year in the budget approved more special ed support. We've had a lot of conversations about how can we do a better job with special ed students.
Derek Lewis: Which is really, again, just think about numbers: 78,000 kids and 16% of them are receiving some sort of special ed service. We're talking about thousands of kids.
Catherine Schumacher: Thousands of children.
Derek Lewis: Who are receiving extra services in addition to the services they're being provided in the classroom in order to ensure that we can catch them up and move them forward.
Beyond the Diploma: Greenville County's Career and Technical Education
Catherine Schumacher: We just had a conversation with folks talking about Graduation Plus, which is the district's initiative to have all students graduate, not just with a diploma, but also with either college credit or some sort of certification, workforce certification. Another growing area, 10 years ago, we started with about 600 certifications from the class of '17, and I think the class of '24, there were 12,000 certifications offered. So that's another example of a big district having big impact because of resources.
Derek Lewis: That's what to me is exciting is a district this size can offer the Fine Arts Center.
Catherine Schumacher: One of my very favorite places.
Derek Lewis: Yeah, and a district this size can offer a career center that specializes in mechatronics or one that specializes in culinary arts so that we're not thinking of career centers as just where we learn to fix cars and do woodworking. We're learning careers that you can literally walk across the stage and be an ambulance driver the next day.
Catherine Schumacher: Or be ready for a career that we haven't even, we don't even know what it is yet, and they're learning how to learn.
Derek Lewis: It's really just so exciting, and that would not be available in a district with 3,000 students.
Catherine Schumacher: Right.
Derek Lewis: Because you could not diversify what you're offering. The fact that 14% of our kids go to a school other than the one they're zoned for is really incredible to me. They're either magneting somewhere, which means the district is also transporting them. So you can be at Berea High School and say, you know what, I would rather be at Greenville High School. And the district will transport you from where you live to where you would like to go with their space.
Catherine Schumacher: No, I think that that sort of constant... other challenges there, right? We know we don't have enough bus drivers. Sometimes those routes take a really long time. I think as a community, one of the things that we can keep in mind as we're thinking about how are we investing in our public schools is viewing those kinds of expenses, a lot of which aren't provided by the state. The state provides some funding, but we do provide local funding for our schools. And a lot of times we're trying to focus on those difference makers, programs that are real difference makers for our students and our local economy to that point. Realizing that the school system is not just this far-off thing that only matters to people who have kids in the schools, it's something that we're really interested in talking about in this podcast and just generally in the community.
Derek Lewis: Yeah, it matters to me that we have HVAC technician programs in our schools so that Corley or some of the others can hire somebody.
Catherine Schumacher: Yep. I literally, our air conditioning went out a couple of weeks ago, and we had this amazing young man come in, and it turns out that he had gone to Hillcrest High School, and then he went to Greenville Technical College. And he had been working there for six years. Perfect example. That is work that AI can't replace. And I think we're doing a really good job here in Greenville of thinking about those not just the kind of career and technical careers that you can have now, but again, what is next?
The career and technical, the CTE Innovation Center. It's aerospace technology, clean energy technology, automation and robotics, networking and cybersecurity, and emerging automotive research, which particularly here, obviously, in the upstate, perfect example of how Greenville talked to industry and said, what do you all need and how can we test stuff and then roll it out? And again, that Innovation Center, another perfect example of a facility that is unlike any other facility in the state. And I think we should all as a community be really, really proud of it.
Derek Lewis: It is kind of cool to think about the Innovation Center. And then, just down the street from it is the Fine Arts Center. At one point, there were more kids accepted to Juilliard from our Fine Arts Center than from any high school in the state, which is just really incredible.
Investing in Excellence: Attracting and Retaining Top Teachers
Catherine Schumacher: Well, the Fine Arts Center, again, I'm biased. My son graduated from FAC a couple years ago. It's an extraordinary place. A lot of that has to do with the teachers who are in there. I want to talk about teachers a little bit. And obviously at the Fine Arts Center, we have a special waiver so that the teachers at the Fine Arts Center, they're working artists, too, which is extraordinary.
But I think Greenville's also made, we have 6,000 teachers in our classrooms and we have committed, again, local funds. We've had conversations about school funding, making sure that we are giving our teachers the wages they deserve. We've made a real investment in having, we were the first district in the state to have a starting salary above $50,000. And so we're continuing to try and make that local investment. That's something, again, we'll be talking about more as sort of the details of what that looks like and how we get there.
Derek Lewis: It's really amazing to me to think that 15 years ago, I think we were 25th in the state in what we were paying our teachers. We will always be in the top five now because there are other districts that have some access to resources that even we don't have. That intentionality among the administration to say, if we're going to attract and retain teachers, then we can't just rely on the quality of life of Greenville County to attract them. We need to pay them the livable wage.
Catherine Schumacher: Right. I think having an organization like Public Education Partners that is trying to champion and cheer on teachers all the time is really important. And that's another benefit of having a large district that's different from all the others. What is another one of your favorite things? Do you have something else in particular that you want people to make sure that they know about?
Dispelling Myths: How Greenville Students Outperform on Standardized Tests
Derek Lewis: I think the last one I would say is I am amazed at how well our students do on standardized tests. We hear a lot about South Carolina is the bottom of the country and South Carolina kids can't do as well as others. But we are outperforming, the average student in Greenville County is outperforming the national average on the ACT and on the SAT every year for the last 10 years. And to me, that says a lot about where we're getting them from and then how far we're moving them in 12 or 13 years is just really remarkable.
Catherine Schumacher: Yeah, and it matters for businesses that are looking to come here. Both of us are South Carolina natives, right? We grew up here, went to school here. And so I'm a proud graduate of South Carolina's public schools. One of the reasons I love talking about public education is because I love dispelling those myths about what does public education look like in South Carolina and how can we change that narrative? Because I agree. I think that is really extraordinary and that we're getting those students ready to compete at those higher levels, whether it's on stage from the Fine Arts Center or taking the ACT to look at college or getting ready to do an incredible certification program that's going to get them a high paying job when they get out of one of our career centers.
Well, I love talking, obviously. We love talking about public school. We're such nerds. It's great. I love it. And I'm excited to have more conversations over the coming months as we unpack some things that we know people don't quite get, dispelling those myths, helping make it easy for folks to understand, again, some complex issues. I've been in this seat for almost six years now, and I'm finally just feeling like I have a sense of how this works. But as we kick off the school year, I think it's a great way to set the stage for Simple Civics: EdTalks and the conversations that we're going to have.
Derek Lewis: Let's do it.
Catherine Schumacher: Simple Civics: EdTalks is a joint project of Greater Good Greenville, Greenville First Steps, and Public Education Partners Greenville County.
Catherine Puckett: Simple Civics: Greenville County is a project of Greater Good Greenville. Greater Good Greenville was catalyzed by the merger of the Nonprofit Alliance and the Greenville Partnership for Philanthropy. You can learn more on our website at greatergoodgreenville.org.
Credits
Simple Civics: Greenville County is Produced by Podcast Studio X.
A Greater Good Greenville project.
