
          Beaufort Academy--"None Ever Applied"
          By Mcmillan, GeorgeGeorge Mcmillan
          Vol. 4, No. 6, 1982, pp. 3-4
          
          If Congress wants to know how a typical tax exempt segregated
school works in a typical Southern town it should look at Beaufort
Academy in this South_Carolina Low Country community.
          Beaufort Academy is a flourishing place. It's not in the least like
one of those barren campuses plopped down on the rim of some Southern
rural community, and presided over by a sweaty, panting,
fundamentalist zealot.
          Instead it is an attractive place with a country club air about
it. It has 125 acres in the midst of pleasant suburbs, six buildings,
including a library, gym, a music room, and twenty-four class
rooms. It has an annual budget of $750,000, and 475 students in grades
one through twelve.
          These students would rather been seen dead than without their Izod
shirts and Bass Weejuns. And the chairman of its Board of Trustees has
been Henry Chambers, the mayor of Beaufort, one of the town's
best-dressed businessmen.
          Beaufort Academy has been in the education business continuously
since 1966, and it has never had a black student. Or, as its officials
insist, "no black student has ever applied to us." And yet it has
complied with present IRS regulations and has tax exempt status. It
does not pay any property tax, either. For one period it refused to
pay social security taxes for its teachers.
          It would seem that Beaufort Academy, having the best of both
worlds, being both lily-white in fact and paying no taxes (except
sales tax), would be content with its status of relative immunity and
that its history as an institution in this town, in its relationships
with other institutions, and especially the public_schools, would be
that of a benign one.
          The opposite is true, and Beaufort Academy, and the private school
forces which support it, have worked aggressively against public
schools, and at one time came close to destroying the public school
system here.
          The lesson for Congress in Beaufort Academy's story is that schools
like Beaufort Academy enmesh themselves deeply in the social,
economic, political and educational life of the town. They claim the
allegiance of community leaders just when they are badly needed to
help the public_schools through the worst crisis in Southern public
school history.
          The affluent, influential, parents of Beaufort Academy students
found themselves under pressure in the past decade to commit
themselves to private education as a cause and not simply as an
educational option.
          In fact, the wounds have not healed yet from the bitter,
destructive, fight that took place here between public school and
private school forces in the years from 1974 until 1980. The battle
eventually involved the Governor of South_Carolina, and required a
legislative act to bring the fight to a temporary compromise.
          "You would almost be driven to the conclusion that a private school
just can't peacefully coexist with public_schools," is the moral one
public school official drew from the battle.
          In 1974, public school officials, "having weathered the worse of
our integration troubles," began to feel the pinch of a "dilapidated
and unsafe," school plant, and had some studies made of the needed
improvements, one of which was done by a blue ribbon and apparently
non-partisan committee of local people, some of whom had children in
Beaufort Academy. A bond issue of $24.5 million was decided upon.
          "Everything changed when better public_education had a price tag on
it," says Nancy Thomas, one of those who got into the fight. She was
one of a group of women who had worked together in the League of Women
Voters in Beaufort and who became the nucleus of the side which fought
for the public_schools. The group included a former nun, a black_woman
who created and runs an organization of child care centers in the Low
Country, a former high_school teacher--most of these women were in
their thirties and had small children in the public_schools. They were
guided by Robert Salisbury, the county superintendent of schools, a
tough, aggressive and politically astute administrator.
          The most determined and the most forthrightly belligerent
opposition seemed to come from just one man. He is Charles Stockell, a
retired Army colonel, executive director of the Beaufort Chamber of
Commerce, and an 

instructor in international relations in the
University of South_Carolina (Beaufort). Stockell had previously been
a spokesman for conservative causes locally. In the school issue, he
announced that he was spokesman for the Committee for Accountable
Schools. He spoke and he appeared on TV, radio, at civic groups.
          No officers of his committee were ever announced, and no membership
list was ever published. No public accounting of the monies spent in
Stockell's fight was ever made.
          The Board of Education announced that it was going to advertise for
bids on its bond issue on December 19, 1979. On December 14, two men
and Stockell's committee sued to prevent the bond sale.
          This effectively stopped the bond sale, a local state senator
settled the dispute by offering a compromise which was incorporated in
a bill he introduced in the state legislature which gave the schools
the right to sell bonds for $14.5 million.
          The bonds were finally sold in 1980. New school buildings are being
built but the cost in inflation and from increased interest rates
caused by the delay is high if difficult to figure. When the bonds
were first being talked about the interest rate was fi.5 percent; when
they were sold it was 10.6 percent.
          Stockell, even today, will not reveal the names of the Committee
for Accountable Schools, except to reply to a questioner: "None of
your damned business." The lawyer who filed the suit says he "attended
a couple of meetings where there were about fifteen men." Charles
Fraser, the original developer of Hilton Head Island and Chairman of
the Board, Sea Pines Plantation Company, says that he was not a member
but "I did attend a couple of meetings."
          One of the ironies of Beaufort Academy is that there is at least
some part of the parental group who probably would not put racial
segregation as the paramount reason for sending their children
there. They would insist they want their children to have "a better
education." Another reason about which they would not be explicit is
that they are part of a new class in the South, well-heeled young
doctors and dentists and lawyers, mostly from less well-to-do rural or
small town farm families in the South, who are ardently determined to
fix a social class for themselves and their children--to put behind
them all the allegations of being red-necked and bigots. In Beaufort
it is, as they call it, "the Academy" which is the institution that
performs that social function.
          It may be that Beaufort Academy is not better than the public
Beaufort High School or Battery Creek. There is really no way to know
because Beaufort Academy is not certified by any of the
usually-recognized certifying agencies--not by the state department of
education, nor by the Southern Association of Schools and
Colleges. "Just remember" said one state official, "they don't have to
meet any standards of any kind if they don't want to or cants."
          The black_community in Beaufort county has members on most of the
public governing agencies in the county, and feels "relief," and not
frustration at being either able or unable to attend Beaufort
Academy. "The worst thing to me," said one of them, "is that it is
training another generation of white Southern leaders in the myths,
the stereotypes and the taboos of a segregated society."
          To the coalition of conservatives who apparently are seeking
broader ideological objectives Beaufort Academy is a symbol of
achievement and the embodiment of their ideology.
          One of these is Charles Aimar, a local pharmacist, who founded
Beaufort Academy. He is still an active and influential member of the
board, and he served for some years as president of the South_Carolina
Independent Schools Association.
          "I don't believe in government-operated schools at all, not for
anybody, not in any grade, high or low," Aimar said the other day. "I
think the free enterprise system can run education in this country and
do a good job if it's given a chance."
          Mr. Aimar says that he was "a contributor to" a "Freedom Library,"
in Beaufort which was being run by the local John Birch Society at the
time he organized Beaufort Academy. He says he would "rather not
answer" on whether he was a John Birch member.
          
            George McMillan its a freelance writer who lives in
Frogmore, South_Carolina.
          
        
