From school choice to CRT, new SC House education chair lays out 2023 priorities

Lowcountry preschool operator Shannon Erickson was drawn into state politics by a potty problem.

The Beaufort Republican, who on Wednesday was elected chair of the House Education and Public Works Committee, said she owes her legislative start to a citation she received from the state Department of Social Services.

Many years ago, a DSS inspector dinged Erickson’s daycare center for failing to meet the required 20-to-1 person-to-toilet ratio. Her noncompliance, she quickly realized, was predicated on the state counting infants as people, even though they did not use toilets.

Erickson said she attempted to challenge the citation, but didn’t get anywhere until she reached out to then-Gov. Mark Sanford’s office.

Sanford, a personal friend, sympathized with her position and immediately tasked someone from Social Services with clarifying the regulation to define “person” as someone age 2 and older, she said.

“It solved the problem for 800 childcare centers and all of a sudden Gov. Sanford puts me on the governor’s child care advisory board,” Erickson said. “That’s how it all started.”

Erickson’s “potty problem,” as she calls it, has long since resolved, but her hatred of government regulation persists.

She’s already told state Superintendent-elect Ellen Weaver, a longtime friend, to bring her a list of regulations the education committee can look at eliminating.

“I said, look, I hate regulations that are unnecessary,” Erickson said. “So let’s cut some red tape.”

In addition to cutting burdensome regulations, Erickson’s other priorities as House Education Committee chairwoman include expanding school choice, improving teacher retention and scaling back standardized testing.

She’s committed to keeping the committee a collaborative body and said she hopes to build on the work of former chair Rita Allison, R-Spartanburg, who lost her primary to challenger Robert Harris, a registered nurse, earlier this year.

“Ms. Allison is probably one of the most important education leaders that we’ve had in this state,” said Erickson, who counts Allison as a mentor and the type of committee leader she aspires to be.

“She is one of those women who brought people together better than I’ve ever seen anybody do it, and that’s why I’m trying to carry the same mantle,” Erickson said. “We can work together, we just have to decide to.”

She hopes to avoid the discord that permeated the committee last session when it took up controversial legislation on so-called critical race theory and the rights of transgender athletes.

Erickson recognizes that education remains an increasingly polarizing political issue, but said she hopes committee members will treat each other with respect when they disagree and try to find commonalities with their counterparts on the other side of the aisle.

“This is a team,” she told the committee Tuesday in her inaugural statement. “And I would respectfully request that we always remember that we are, embrace that we are and show each other the courtesy and respect and decorum that goes from a team atmosphere.”

As chairwoman, Erickson said she would put quality above quantity, with respect to legislation, and wants to make sure the committee’s discussions are thoughtful and deliberate.

That said, she acknowledged she may not be quite as tolerant as her predecessor when discussions go off course.

“I see very clearly that time is money and time is precious,” Erickson said. “And while I will slow things down to get it right, I won’t allow time to be wasted.”

She plans to pick up where Allison left off and said she expects to move forward with bills the House passed last year, such as a critical race theory ban, that floundered in the Senate.

“A lot of the stuff that the House Education Committee passed and that passed through the body, we’re going to start with,” she said. “It was a good product. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel on some of those things that didn’t make it through the Senate.”

A passionate advocate for school choice, both public and private, Erickson said she’d also like to see South Carolina pass a school voucher bill this year, but isn’t sure whether it’ll run through her committee or the budget-writing House Ways and Means Committee, or both. That decision will be left up to the speaker, she said.

“The biggest thing I want folks to know is that there’s no agenda from any of us to have any set of our education system hurt by another,” said Erickson, addressing the critique that private school choice hurts public education. “They can all co-exist and do. A lot of states have a lot of other options, and we can do it and support everybody.”

How did Erickson get the job?

Erickson, a 15-year House veteran, hasn’t previously served on the education committee and said she didn’t seek out the chairmanship.

But after stints on the Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs Committee, or 3M, the Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee, she said she feels like everything in her life and political career has led her there.

“I bloom where I’m planted,” said Erickson, who has a background in both education and business. As a former early childhood teacher and longtime owner and operator of three Lowcountry daycare centers, she can relate to teachers — the group with whom she said she most closely identifies — while approaching education as a business.

It’s that sort of perspective she said Speaker Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, was seeking when he tapped her for her new leadership role.

“I need your voice in the room,” she said he told her. “I need for you to have that regulation, business background and education background, and I need for you to do this.”

While she’d never envisioned herself as education chair, primarily because she assumed Allison would continue to hold down the role, Erickson said she couldn’t decline Smith’s offer.

“What are you going to do?” she said. “Tell the speaker ‘no?’”