By John Temple LigonTemple@TheColumbiaStar.com
Karen Floyd was born in Hermann Hospital in the world’s largest medical complex, the Texas Medical Center in Houston, where her father was a geologist for Esso, now Exxon-Mobil. At age five, her father and Esso moved the family to Libya. Finally in 1971, they moved to South Carolina, and her father located at USC as a geology professor. Her mother taught elementary school.
Floyd ran cross-country at Irmo High School and also competed in the mile and the two-mile. She still charges her batteries by running up to eight miles every morning at five unless she has a longer run required to get up for an occasional marathon.
Floyd was an academic standout at Irmo, enough to gain acceptance at Goucher College, the female wing of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Her college interests spread across three disciplines: political science, computer science, and French. She is still fluent in French.
Floyd graduated from law school at the University of South Carolina in 1986. She was soon prosecuting cases of child abuse and neglect. And there she began her observations of continuing cycles of generational poverty. She became a Chief Magistrate in Spartanburg County, where she restructured courthouse operations to drop costs and gain efficiencies. She also served as the county council’s first female chair, learning early to build consensus to get things done.
In the private sector, Floyd rose to vice president at Spartanburg’s Advantica Restaurant Group, altogether eight different national chains, to include Denny’s and Hardee’s, and 160,000 employees.
Floyd and her mortician husband have twin 10-year-old boys who are enrolled in Pine Street Elementary School. They live in Andrews Farm Acres, near Pacolet, where General Westmoreland grew up.
Floyd introduces herself as the candidate offering real reform in South Carolina public education. Her plans for improvement fall on two sides, the innovative and the traditional. She itemizes five points on the innovative side, while she offers some symmetry from the traditional side.
Her five points for innovation: (1) Shift ways we hold ourselves accountable, even overhauling PACT (Palmetto Achievement Challenge Tests). (2) Redirect funding to where the money funds the child, not the entity and remove the blame game. (3) Build up a statewide infrastructure and brick-and-mortar bank on the Arizona model, where they built 158 schools and renovated 6,600, all in a 4-year period and all under court order, which should resolve underfunded challenges such as the I-95 “Corridor of Shame.” (4) Embrace cutting-edge technology and upgrade existing outmoded systems. (5) Keep research and development continuous, solving old problems and discovering new ones to be tackled.
In the traditional areas, Floyd is adamant about school security and safety. She espouses zero tolerance when it comes to violence or the threat of violence. Each school has to understand clear responsibilities and protocol and policy. Movement for improvement needs to be legislated, politically mandated, and child- centered.
The S.C. Department of Education oversees 672,000 K-12 kids and 55,000 teachers, including teaching staffs and administrators. The State of South Carolina contributes $2.7 billion to the budget, local taxes kick in $2.4 billion, and the federal government passes along $550 million, all for one big organization that should be run by an experienced executive, says Floyd.
Karen Floyd
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