Where I Stand
Chuck Saylors for Greenville County School Board, District 20
With every election cycle, candidates are asked to provide answers to various community-based surveys. Some brief, some more detailed. Below, please find a compilation of those surveys, to date.
Administrative cost
Less than one cent of every dollar goes to administration.
I have spent my career as a construction executive, and I read our District budget the way I read those. Greenville County's per pupil administrative cost is the lowest of any district in South Carolina. Only ten districts have a lower tax rate than ours. Not one of them performs better. Our books carry the highest credit ratings a South Carolina school district can hold.
Taxes and spending
I have voted for money the state required and would not send, and I stand behind it.
Over nine years, tax abatements granted by others to attract investment have withheld about $330 million from our schools, worth 167 mills. Over those same years the district raised millage by 26.9. Most of those deals were approved without any input or vote by a school board. I am not against recruiting business here, but their size and their length deserve a harder look, because the schools absorb the difference. Tough choices are not always popular. At times they are needed.
State mandates
Columbia writes requirements it does not fund.
Public education has the most complicated funding model in government: three levels, multiple streams of revenue, no common system. The General Assembly votes a required teacher raise and pays a fraction of it, and a local board finds the rest inside a budget that has already been set. We take pressure from two directions, and I will keep naming both.
Teacher pay
Three consecutive years of teacher raises.
We have addressed $2,700 on every salary step in FY25, $1,300 in FY26 passed unanimously, and $2,700 again this year alongside a minimum 3.75% for every other employee. Entry level pay for teachers in Greenville County is now $54,606. A good teacher in the classroom and a good principal in the school are the two best investments a district can make, and I have voted for them every time.
Class size and recruiting
Fix the teacher shortage here, not in Columbia.
I will back any affordable step that lowers class size, and this district has lowered it at every grade level over ten years. Our GATE program moves working professionals into the classroom. It has grown 500% in a decade, from two content areas to eleven and from four certifications to twenty-one.
School safety
A School Resource Officer in every middle school and every high school.
We screen for weapons at entry, our teachers carry silent alarm badges, and the board approved a three year contract for advanced weapons detection. Security belongs in the base budget, not in the pile of requests competing for what is left each spring. It would be unwise for me to discuss the operational details of any school's security plan in public, and no parent should want me to.
Special education
I am a special education parent.
I know what it takes to get a child the services the law already promises, and I know how thin the pool of qualified professionals is. Counselors are as hard to find as top teachers, and the red tape in that profession is why those jobs sit open. This is not an expansion of what schools do. It is the part of the job we are already required to do.
Results
Seventh in the state. In 2012 we were nineteenth.
Our graduation rate reached an all time high of 90.6% in 2025, up 18.2 points since 2012, and it has climbed faster still for students with disabilities. Eighty-five percent of our graduates leave college or career ready, ten points better than the state. I would rather be judged on that climb than on anything I could write in a questionnaire.
Why I serve
I do this for our community.
This is not glamorous work. I am here for our students, families, teachers, taxpayers, and the businesses. Businesses and families are deciding whether to buy, build or locate here. I have lived in Greenville my entire life and have called Taylors home for over 30 years. After over 20 years of service, my passion is still for improvement, and I am asking for your consideration one more time.