Emails a legislator received through a public records request reveal little about the partnership
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
COLUMBIA — The South Carolina Board of Education should review whether a state endorsement of PragerU videos for public school classrooms is appropriate, one board member said after complaints from teachers, parents and students.
Emails between PragerU representatives and state Department of Education officials, dated from July through October, offer little insight into the partnership with the conservative media nonprofit. The emails, provided to reporters Wednesday, are the state agency’s response to a state House Democrat’s public records request.
The partnership was not announced by the education agency for public K-12 schools. Instead, it became public when state Superintendent Ellen Weaver appeared in a video that PragerU released in September encouraging classroom use of the videos, drawing the ire of parents, teachers and advocates.
South Carolina was the eighth state to approve the videos for use in public K-12 classrooms, joining Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Montana, Louisiana, New Hampshire and Arizona, according to the organization’s website.
The videos, which are optional for teachers to use in their classrooms, did not go through the normal vetting process for classroom materials, such as textbooks. Typically, a 15-member committee composed primarily of teachers and administrators reviews materials, with input from the public. The State Board of Education then has the final say on what to approve or not approve.
The state board did not have any say over the PragerU partnership. A spokesman has previously said the department regularly offers teachers materials and training that don’t need board approval.
But the oversight board should make a decision about this one, board member Beverly Frierson of Columbia said during a Tuesday meeting.
“I, too, am extremely concerned and disturbed by the indoctrination, and I’m not even going to use some of the other adjectives to describe it,” said Frierson, a former high school English teacher. “Check it out for yourself.”
Frierson, who also previously led the South Carolina Education Association, gave her fellow board members a homework assignment for the next meeting in January. She asked them to watch some of the videos on the nonprofit’s website and review the law tasking the state board with deciding what material is allowed in classrooms.
A department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. Neither did representatives for PragerU.
Partnership begins
Still unclear is how, exactly, the partnership began, said Rep. Jermaine Johnson, the Columbia Democrat who requested the records in October.
Johnson wanted details on how the relationship came about and what the partnership entails, he told the S.C. Daily Gazette.
But he came away with “no clear answers, no anything,” he said.
Johnson questions whether details might exist on personal email accounts, which would skirt the state’s public records law.
At least one email, dated Aug. 28, did go to department officials’ personal emails before being forwarded to official accounts.
“Who knows what was going on and how many emails were going back and forth on their personal emails?” Johnson told the Gazette.
The first email in the batch Johnson received that references PragerU was written by department attorney Robert Cathcart.
In the July email, he notes that a PragerU representative had called “regarding some free curriculum that PragerU can make freely available to the Department that is aligned to our Financial Literacy Standards.”
Cathcart forwarded the PragerU representative’s information to the department employee in charge of instructional materials, suggesting they talk about the platform the state uses to host online resources.
That initial email from Cathcart notes that PragerU’s list of videos includes nearly two dozen “crash course” lessons on debt, credit, stocks and other finances.
But the videos that PragerU promotes as aligning with South Carolina’s education standards go far beyond finances. The 67-page list includes lessons in history, geography, civics and other subjects.
How the conversations went from financial literacy to a broad array of subjects can’t be discerned from the emails.
The emails show that at least one department employee raised questions on how to handle reviewing the videos, including which division of the agency should do it. The emails did not include answers to her questions.
While an agency spokesman previously told the Gazette that PragerU is providing the videos for free, Johnson believes state funding is somehow involved. However, the emails make no mention of money.
Johnson is still deciding on what to do with the information he received, he said.
Official list
At least one video remains on PragerU’s list despite assurances from Weaver that it would be removed, according to the emails.
In an exchange that started Sept. 19, a teacher representing the Palmetto State Teachers Association raised concerns about a 5-minute video arguing why Columbus Day should keep its name.
The video doesn’t even seem to meet the state standards PragerU tied it to. Beyond that, it features a speaker wearing a shirt that reads, “Try the Walther,” referring to the firearms company, with a picture of two handguns, Patrick Kelly wrote in his initial email to Weaver about it.
“In light of this, it would be beyond inappropriate for this video to be played in a South Carolina classroom,” Kelly wrote, referencing recent upticks in school shootings across the country.
Weaver responded the next day, saying department staff had also flagged that video for removal from the agency’s endorsed list.
“The final list that will be posted in the iHub and online for the public is still being curated, and that video will definitely be removed,” Weaver wrote Sept. 20.
In his response back, Kelly said removing a single objectionable video did not solve the problem.
“Upon reflection, I have increasing skepticism about any organization that would ever produce that video in the first place,” he wrote. “The design of the video makes it crystal clear that it is intended for an elementary school age audience, which gives me deep alarm about the lack of discernment demonstrated by not finding the t-shirt concerning when producing the video.”
Teachers do not have to use the videos if they find objectionable content in them, Weaver wrote in her second response.
“Reasonable people can certainly differ in their overall opinions of various sources — I have found many of the videos I have watched to be well-done,” Weaver wrote, pointing to one 5-minute video about the writing of the Constitution as an example.
“But to the main point,” Weaver continued, “with this being an optional resource, it seems to me that this provides a wonderful opportunity for teachers to exercise their professional discretion about what to platform or not in their classroom.”
As of Wednesday, 2½ months later, the video with guns on the speaker’s t-shirt was still available on PragerU’s provided list. And the department has yet to publicly post a state-endorsed alternative list, despite multiple assurances that the video would not be included, Kelly told the Gazette.
Until the department provides its own list, teachers should not consider the videos officially approved, Kelly said.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau. S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
