In recent days, Fairfield County School District has been subjected to an unfair and disproportionate negative spotlight following the deeply troubling actions of a single individual.
While the facts surrounding that case must be addressed in the court of law and justice must prevail, let’s be clear: the failings of one person do not – and will not – define an entire community of dedicated educators, talented students, and resilient families.
Sadly, we have seen this pattern before: in today’s climate, where public education is already under siege, those who have long sought to tear down our schools seize upon any opportunity to smear, distort, and attack. Their outrage is selective. Their concern is insincere. They show up to condemn, but never to celebrate the towering achievements made through hard work, sacrifice, and vision.
The Fairfield County School District is not — and will never be — the sum of one individual’s actions. It is the crown jewel of Fairfield’s future. Even after economic giants like Walmart and our largest employers pulled out of the county, leaving behind financial devastation, FCSD stood tall. When other institutions crumbled under the weight of despair, Fairfield’s classrooms became bastions of hope. This district produces doctors, lawyers, policymakers, veterinarians, scholars, artists, managers, business leaders — the people who carry the state of South Carolina and our nation forward.
Fairfield’s tradition of excellence runs deep. Kelly Miller, born in Fairfield, broke barriers as a scholar, activist, and educator at a time when simply daring to dream was an act of defiance. His legacy lives on today in every Fairfield graduate who shatters ceilings and redefines possibility. What more must FCSD do to prove that our schools are an example of persevering excellence? Are we to believe that having the 2025 National Principal of the Year, the 2021 South Carolina Superintendent of the Year, the 2020 South Carolina Teacher of the Year, and a graduation rate surpassing its peers still isn’t enough?
While politics has turned to gutting the entire framework of our public education system, Fairfield has refused to become a casualty by defying the odds. And that is precisely what makes Fairfield dangerous to those who seek to dismantle public education: it is living proof that public schools work when we fund them, trust them, and fight for them.
No malicious whisper campaign, no headline-hungry pundit, and no armchair critic can erase the generations of excellence produced in these classrooms. Fairfield has endured the collapse of economic titans; it will not be shaken by cheap political opportunism. Those attacking Fairfield today are not driven by concern for students. They are driven by an agenda: to privatize, to defund, and to destroy. Fairfield’s success is a threat to their narrative, so they seek to tarnish it with lies, innuendo, and manufactured outrage.
They will fail.
Fairfield County Schools — and communities like it — are our last, best hope against the cynical, corrosive forces dismantling public education. If we allow these attacks to stand, we betray not just Fairfield’s students and educators — we betray the very idea that education should be a public good available to all.
We will not stand idly by. We will fight for Fairfield, for every student walking through its halls, for every teacher who stays late grading papers, for every family who dares to dream bigger because of what these schools make possible.
Fairfield is not the exception. Fairfield is the example.
Lamar Richards is a Fairfield County native, currently Senior Director at a policy think-tank in Washington, D.C. focused on economic and community development. Richards earned his BA from UNC Chapel Hill, and graduate degree from Johns Hopkins University.
