Columbia school district mismanaged childcare center construction, report finds

Richland School District One Superintendent Craig Witherspoon addresses a report by the South Carolina inspector general Thursday, July 25, 2024, at the district's Columbia headquarters, which found the district had not followed state and local laws when it started construction of a new childcare center. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)

COLUMBIA – The South Carolina inspector general found a Columbia-area school district violated state and local laws, exposing itself to liability and wasting taxpayer dollars, when it started construction of a childcare center without the necessary approvals.

State Inspector General Brian Lamkin, in his report , referred to “mismanagement” by Richland School District One, but his office’s investigation found no evidence rising to the level of criminal or fraudulent activity.

Now that the review is complete, district leaders said, the district will work with the state Department of Education in hopes of restarting work on the proposed Vince Ford Early Learning Center. The district was forced to pause construction on the project, located south of Columbia, earlier this year.

“The Richland One Board of Commissioners and my administrative team at all times did our best to advance this much-needed project for our youngest children’s school readiness and at no time did we knowingly evade or ignore the rules for such projects,” Richland One Superintendent Craig Witherspoon said in a statement .

“While we acknowledge that there may have been misunderstandings early in the procurement and construction process, we stand by our unwavering commitment to ensure that we continue to meet the educational and developmental needs of children throughout the district,” he added.

Yet, it may again find itself readjusting its plans.

‘Deeply concerned’

The state inspector general launched his investigation in January at the request of state Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver, who asked Lamkin to examine Richland One and everything related to the Vince Ford Early Childhood Learning Center, “including its financing, procurement, and construction,” according to a letter previously obtained by the SC Daily Gazette.

SC inspector general to investigate Columbia school district’s construction of childcare center

The 22,000-student district, which covers the center of the state’s capital city, broke ground on the $30 million center in February 2023, despite not having a building permit, according to the state education agency.

The groundbreaking came after months of infighting between school board members over whether the district actually had enough money to pay for the project. Richland One originally planned for the center to serve about 300 students between 6 weeks and 5 years old.

The district paused work on the center Jan. 19, 2024, after receiving a letter from Richland County Administrator Leonardo Brown issuing a stop work order. In the meantime, the district has racked up more than $352,000 in costs associated with security at the site and complying with state and federal environmental regulations regarding wastewater runoff.

The state Education Department, in a statement, said the inspector general’s report “validated the department’s original concerns over Richland One’s violation of state law and wasteful spending.”

Quoting from the report, the state agency added it “is deeply concerned that ‘the District exposed itself to wasteful expenditures, contractual liabilities, costs associated with project delays, reputation damage, and insurance issues.'”

Witherspoon and Richland One School Board Chairman Aaron Bishop said the district will follow all guidance in the inspector general’s report to get the project back into compliance.

“We do want to make sure that we are responsible to our stakeholders, responsible to our neighbors and our children and our parents to make sure that we are doing this properly,” Bishop told reporters in a news conference held just a half-hour after the report’s public release.

But State Rep. Heather Bauer, whose district covers parts of Richland County and who urged Weaver to call for the inspector general’s review, criticized the district’s response to the report as downplaying the situation.

“Those failures have real consequences in the form of wasted money that could be used to serve Columbia’s children,” the Columbia Democrat said in a statement. “The fact is the district broke the law and wasted money and the
lack of remorse over that fact is stunning.”

Building without a permit

Building permits for traditional schools are the purview of the state Department of Education.

But Richland One’s center did not qualify as a “public education building” because it’s not a K-12 school, according to a notice from the education agency’s Office of School Facilities dated Dec. 15, 2023.

With that determination, the construction project fell back into the jurisdiction of Richland County. Still, the district never applied to the county for a permit, even as construction continued.

In response, the district’s governing board in January voted to adjust plans for the center. Instead of a center for children starting at 6 weeks, it was changed to serve children from 3 years old to second grade to fit the description of “school-age” children, starting with preschool.

That still may not be enough, as the inspector general found. State law requires the Department of Social Service to license any childcare centers operated more than four hours a day by public school districts.

If the district ultimately is not able to address the county and state permitting issues, it will instead use the building for just kindergarten through second grade, Witherspoon said.

Even though there are already several elementary schools serving that area, the superintendent pointed to some 2,500 more homes being built in the area, which will increase the need for more classroom space for those grades.

Statewide implications

Beyond Richland One, the inspector general’s report went on to say there could be statewide implications for other school districts’ childcare centers serving pre-kindergarten-aged children.

That’s because former agency heads at the education and social services agencies in the early 2000s had operated under an unwritten agreement that 3K and 4K programs at public schools did not require a license. As laws shifted, the agencies agreed the programs would be the purview of the education superintendent, according to the inspector general’s report.

Under Weaver’s leadership, the education agency no longer plans to take on that responsibility, Lamkin wrote in his report.

In Richland One, that potentially puts more than 10 of the district’s 52 pre-kindergarten programs out of compliance, having not been licensed. It is unclear how many other districts in the state may face this issue.

Lamkin recommended that the state Department of Social Services and Department of Education issue temporary guidance to all public school districts for the upcoming school year until the issue of which agency is responsible for oversight can be addressed by the state Legislature.

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