Seven hundred and forty students graduate from Wando High School on Wednesday at the North Charleston Colisseum. My son Jackson will be one of them.

These graduates are the products of what is East Cooper's premier civic asset, the product of two generations of determination to lift Mount Pleasant's once second rate public school system to dominate regional status.

This effort, which can be traced to the early 1970s, enabled the rising property values, economic development and tax base which allowed our area to obtain and largely preserve prosperity.

Building this system took every available resource. There have been decades of bake sales, raffles and large scale fundraisers. Hundreds of businesses have donated millions of dollars. Entire lifetimes have gone into this effort. Politically thrown weight and triangulation compelled the rest of the county to build a new set of schools East of the Cooper. Just this spring, the support of people connected with the school system brought CARTA bus service to Wando, Moultrie, Laing, James B. Edwards and several other public schools enabling hundreds of additional students to benefit from after school activities such as tutoring, sports and clubs.

Our Governor and her friends, supported by out of state money provided by wealthy neolibertarians like Howard Rich, are determined to take this system, and all the public school systems in our state, apart. They've spent lavish amounts of money on elections, down to the local level seeking a voucher system They have paid political operatives to make promises no one will ever keep. They treat schools like they're fast food restaurants.

Last week, the effort to destroy our public school system in South Carolina failed by a single vote in the legislature. Republicans from areas with solid public schools, uncertain of how the voucher / tax credit plan would be paid for, delivered the margin of victory. These elected officials can be certain they will be attacked in the next round of elections by challengers propelled by tens of thousands of dollars in out of state contributions, or by contributions from in state PACs funded by out of state money.

What Howard Rich and his friends want is a public educational system for our communities which is less. Their promise of "choice" will work only for the wealthy. Ordinary people, whose children will grow up to be most of our workers, soldiers and citizens will be left with a shabby set of options.

Those options could be a vestigial public school system filled with the disabled (which private schools do not welcome).

Those remaining public schools will also enroll the poor who won't be able to pay the hefty balances over the value of the vouchers required to enroll their children in private schools.

Charter Schools will struggle with declining funding since public funding will track declining public school support. There will also be expensive private schools and some shaky cheap ones.

The creation of such a system will be founded on the error always made by South Carolina's politicians. Tip O'Neal said all politics is local. They are.

However all markets are now global. That includes the markets for investment, talent and competent citizens. Without solid public schools which are universally available to everyone, South Carolina will be left with a society of people who accept less. After a generation of such a system, it will be a society of people who are less.

Our Governor has been working hard to meet the expectations of the out of state political manipulators who have selected South Carolina and a handful of vulnerable states to be their experiments. In this legislative session, there have been attempts to abandon monitoring the state's natural environment. Debilitating cuts are planned for healthcare for our poor and elderly. At every opportunity, they attack our public schools.

They cannot realize their fantasy world. The free market they worship has never conceded bargaining power to the vulnerable. It gives people the least it can.

Jobs recently recruited into the state have come at a fantastic cost. Boeing is believed to have cost in excess of a billion dollars, every penny of which will have to be cut out of somewhere else. Amazon received huge tax breaks last week. Desperate state governments across the nation are bidding down the amount clever corporations have to pay to locate in their communities.

To compensate, many areas have been under investing in infrastructure, education and public works for years. The taxpayer gets voice mail, excuses and waiting lists for things their parents could expect on the first call.

However, for East Cooper, even now, we have what every community in the United States and the world wants, a first rate public education system.

It was what brought my family across the river eleven years ago from Charleston. Every penny we have spent at Royall Hardware, Page's Okra Grill, The Black Tie, Magwood's Seafood, BI-LO and Ye Old Fashioned Ice Cream moved into a cash register because at the top of that system, Wando High School offered the best education available at any school in area.

I am aware there are other schools with higher test scores. Wando exposed my son to the variety of ideas and people necessary to inform a character while delivering quality education. A class filled with the children of material wealth cannot do that. A class full of only the smartest and most clever fails that task as well. The robust way that Wando dealt with diversity was as important as how it taught Algebra.

Wando was not perfect. Neither is life. It is a great school.

This week my son joins me as a graduate. To every teacher, counselor, custodian, volunteer, and administrator from the first grade at Orange Grove, at James B. Edwards, at Moultrie and at Wando who has patiently helped Jackson along the way I give my thanks and pledge my continued support.

(William Hamilton, Wando Class of 1978, (www.wjhamilton.com) is an attorney who lives in I'On Village.)

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