Karen Smith is a native of Rising Sun, Maryland. Since 2004, she has lived on Daniel Island with her husband, Steve, and their daughter, Stephanie. Smith attended Rising Sun Public High School in Rising Sun Maryland. She went on to attend Indiana University of Pennsylvania and graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Business Administration with a major in Accounting.In the past, Smith has held senior financial leadership positions in small, emerging companies as well as those in the Fortune 100. She was recognized as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) while working for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, one of the four largest national public accounting firms (at the time) in Pittsburgh, PA. She then held the position of Manager of Accounting & Taxes for American Eagle Outfitters Stores. After a family move to the west coast, she was Director of Finance for a $1.2 billion division of FHP Healthcare, a HMO in Los Angeles, CA. Later finding her way back to Pittsburgh, Karen settled into East Liberty Family Healthcare Center, a non-profit healthcare provider, as the Administrator of Finance where she continues to work by telecommunication. In 2004, Smith and her husband moved to Charleston to escape the northern winters and to start their own business - Core One Mortgage on Daniel Island. In 2005, they opened a second business, Core One Properties. Karen serves as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for both companies.
Karen’s community involvement includes work at Hanahan Elementary where Stephanie attended until the 2005 school year. During construction of the Daniel Island School, Smith served as Chairperson of the Education Committee of the Daniel Island Neighborhood Association. Smith has twice been elected president of the school’s PTA chapter. During her administration, the PTA received the State Volunteer Award by the State Board of Education for exceptional public service in public schools. Additional community service includes: Daniel Island School Improvement Council’s Academic Improvement Committee, Adopt-A-Teacher Corporate Partner, Classroom Mom, Parent Volunteer, Daniel Island Rotary Club (past member), Big Brothers/Big Sisters, Church Finance Committee, Visits to the Aged Program, American Institute of CPAs, South Carolina Association of CPAs and Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs. Smith’s husband also serves as the President of the Daniel Island Business Association and was appointed by the SC Legislative Delegation to the Trident Region Education Council Advisory Board. RECAB is part of the State’s EEDA / Pathways to Success program to provide regional oversight, coordination and resources to schools and the communities in Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester Counties.
Recently, I had a chance to ask Karen where she stood on the issues:
Question: The District 2 seat represents a wide range of students and communities through Daniel Island, Hanahan, and Cainhoy. How will this array of students and schools affect your decisions as a board member?
During the last three years I have been working with parents, teachers, school administrators and community leaders through my volunteer work as President of the PTA, School Improvement Council and the education committee. While I live on Daniel Island, we are an island in name only and we are all part of the Berkeley County School District. Each school in the district is affected by the policies, programs, performance, growth and funding resources of the entire district as well as subject to the limitations and guidelines of Federal and State regulation and funding. Each community has unique social-economic and diversity factors that impact children’s education.
Most parents are deeply concerned about ensuring that their children receive a quality education to prepare them for their future. Yet the State of South Carolina, and Berkeley County schools, lag considerably and consistently behind the rest of the nation in achievement scores and drop out rates. As a result many parents choose private schools or other district schools to bridge the gap. Currently, 30% of the composition of the Daniel Island School is from students traveling from outside the attendance lines, coming from all over the county as a result of the opportunity provided by the Federal No Child Left Behind Act.
I have worked closely with other area leaders and educators, such as the late Ed Carson, a respected member of the Cainhoy community who was dedicated to educating children, and other educators to share best practices, to promote community involvement and to understand the challenges that impact our educators and our children. First and foremost, our schools alone cannot solve all of our problems and just injecting more dollars alone won’t make a big enough impact.
While we can provide facilities for children in which to learn in a disciplined and secure environment, dedicated and talented teachers to teach and mentor our children; learning starts at home, with parents and the community emphasizing the need and importance of education. My work on the board will continue to include reaching out to community leaders, PTA’s, elected officials and other organizations to help foster the desire to learn and to get communities, parents and businesses more involved in education.
At the same time, our school board and the administration must provide leadership, invest in our classrooms, provide better pay for better teachers, ensure secure buildings and promote programs for higher achievement levels and lower drop out rates.
For instance, not all students plan to go to college. We need to provide more technical and vocational training programs and resources for those who wish to be electricians, welders, carpenters, computer repair and other skilled occupations for which our area businesses sorely need trained and educated employees.
As your school board representative, I will be independent, a good listener, not afraid to challenge the status quo and will be available to all to hear everyone’s concerns as well as ideas.
Question: The Berkeley County School Board has been criticized for not releasing Superintendent Chester Floyd's job performance evaluation to the Post and Courier. The evaluations in question may not only assess Dr. Floyd's work, but also the work of other, less-public, district employees. Thus, the issue remains complex. Do you see a need for the school board to change the way it evaluates the Superintendent? To what extent, if any, do you believe Dr. Floyd's evaluation should be made public?
Dr. Floyd is a highly compensated public employee who serves at the discretion of the community and its elected representatives. A School Superintendent is ultimately responsible for the management of the school system and his or her performance with regard to the management of the administration, and the implementation and effectiveness of district policies and programs are directly reflective of the performance of our schools, and the achievement levels of our children.
I believe that parts of his evaluation, if not all, should be public information and that a higher level of openness is beneficial to the community. I would trust that the evaluation process could be performed in a constructive, ethical and professional manner by all members of the School Board.
I do not believe that evaluations of teachers, principals and other administrative employees should be made public.
Question: In the years since you were a student, how do you believe our schools and students have changed? What steps forward have we taken? And where, perhaps, should we look to the past for inspiration?
While I didn’t walk to school uphill, both ways in the snow, or without shoes; so much has changed in our daily lives that impact families and children that create conflict with education and personal values. There are more single parents and dual income parents working longer hours to make a living, computer games and television that compete for children’s time versus study, more diversity with cultural and language challenges, concern about safety for our children and bureaucracy in our government that seems to stagnate our progress.
We live in an environment today where we see events, good and bad, happening around the world almost instantly. We compete in a global economy in which our future generations must be prepared and educated to maintain prosperity. No longer is it just remembering my father telling me to “eat all of your dinner because people are starving in China”, now the rest of the world is competing for our jobs.
Schools in the past were the focal point of the community, used for many community functions. Businesses, parents and community leaders naturally saw the school as a gathering place. Schools generated community spirit, promoted a “feel at home” sense in the facility, emphasized education and our teachers and principals were held out as pillars of our community.
I think that businesses, parents, community leaders and elected officials need to be more involved in education, to see it as everyone’s responsibility to educate our children and adults in the community. We need to call upon our seniors and retiring baby boomers to get involved, share their experience and to reinforce that educating our children provides a return on their investment and not a drain on their incomes.
Question: Property taxes and school funding have been polarizing issues that tend to divide the board into two factions. At times, the tone of the debate has been more uncivil than it has been constructive. How should the school district see to both the needs of students and the expenditures mandated by the State Department of Education - while balancing the call for fiscal conservatism? Is there a ground where both sides can meet and move forward?
First, our taxpayers must feel assured that their tax dollars are being spent responsibly and wisely. We should approach the budget each year starting with zero (zero-based budgeting), the same way that businesses do their budgets and that many other school districts across the country do. Each program should be reviewed, each year, to determine its need, purpose and effectiveness. While this won’t dramatically change funding needs and spending, we should find some wasteful spending that can be redirected in the process.
We need to ensure that more dollars are directed to the classrooms and less toward administration and overhead. More transparency and communication with residents is required to make sure that they know what the costs are to meet costly Federal and State requirements, such as education of the physically and mentally handicapped. Only after we have scrutinized existing spending and educated our taxpayers should we ask for more through higher taxes or bond issues. And we need to be upfront about the need, not hiding behind sources of funding like “alternative financing” that bypassed the voters and has now been prohibited in South Carolina by our legislature.
Over burdening property owners with school taxes has always been a divisive and contentious issue in funding schools. At the same time unless we fund the education of our children, we will not maintain our prosperity, will not have an educated workforce for our businesses and poverty and crime will increase. Numerous studies have suggested that those who drop out of school end up costing taxpayers more in welfare, crime, imprisonment and other societal costs than the cost of educating each student to be a contributing member of our community.
Property taxes alone cannot solve funding needs, nor is it a fair tax to retirees, lower income families or homeowners in general. Other revenue funding streams must be tapped to support education costs. Our state and federal elected officials must redirect dollars from other areas of government spending programs. Just a portion of the pet spending projects and so called “pork barrel spending” would go a long way in meeting the needs of education. While it is nice to think that this can happen or would happen soon, citizens are going to have to rally and let their elected officials know what is important and to change their direction.
In the meantime, alternative sources of funding should be investigated - such as using a portion of the proceeds from the state lottery, auto sales tax, and impact fees. It is legal for local governments to assess impact fees for municipal services and infrastructure cost, but not for school boards or government to impose an impact fee for the costs to build new schools to support new developments.
Last but not least, volunteerism through community organizations, businesses and PTA’s can be an important contributor of funding to supporting local schools needs to supplement State and Federal funding. Our local PTA for example, raised over $650,000 during the last two years which has been used to fund special projects and community requests such as playground equipment, a computer lab, musical instruments, foreign language lab equipment, murals, leveled readers, etc.
Question: With the tremendous growth in Berkeley County, the schools are sure to face new challenges in the coming years. What do you believe will be the greatest challenge for the Berkeley County School District during your term - and how will you be ready to address these new obstacles and opportunities?
Population Growth and the re-allocation of students will be one of the greatest challenges for the Berkeley County School District. Many studies have projected a near doubling in the number of students in the district and the projected need of at least 11 new schools.
These studies must be examined closely for accuracy. Also, with state report cards and the Federal No Child Left Behind Act, some schools are over capacity with trailers and others have excess capacity. The greatest challenge will be to determine the REAL growth and true facility needs.
In addition to future funding needs, many economists are forecasting a recessionary environment and housing values continue to decline.
I believe that my experience as a manager in large and small companies, my financial and analytical skills as a CPA, as a current small business owner, a parent, classroom mom and my nearly three years of volunteering as President of the PTA and Education Committee will provide valuable insight and knowledge to help me address the current and future needs in Berkeley County. I will be work to build broad based coalitions of parents, educators, businesses, community organizations and elected officials across the district to address the needs of educating the future of our county - our children.
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Karen Smith for School Board
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