Charleston County Gives OK to Sea Islands Charter School
By Diette Courrege, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
Feb. 13–At-risk students in Charleston County will have a new school to consider attending next year.
The county school board gave unanimous but conditional approval Monday for organizers to open Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter School this fall to 75 low-income students who have dropped out of school or are at risk of dropping out.
The Sea Islands school will be the district’s seventh charter school, which are public schools that don’t have to follow the district’s policies or mandates. Charter schools are run by elected boards of parents, community members and faculty. South Carolina started the school year with 30 such schools.
Some of the conditions of the board’s approval include hiring a staff and obtaining the proper certificates for building occupancy — items Renee Chewning, program director of Sea Islands YouthBuild, said shouldn’t be a problem.
Sea Islands YouthBuild Charter School will serve high-school-aged students from across the county, but it will target those on Edisto, James, Johns, Wadmalaw and Yonge’s islands. The school plans to expand to 225 students by 2011.
A charter committee has been working on the proposal for the past five years. Chewning said organizers want to open a charter school because the community needs it. The YouthBuild program could serve only 10 students per year, and Chewning said she’s had to turn many more students away.
“It’s been a long road, but certainly one that’s worth traveling,” she said.
LeRoy Seabrook, board chairman for the Sea Islands YouthBuild program and a member of the District 23 constituent board, said the school will benefit students and the community. The school will help students not to fall by the wayside and instead to become useful citizens, he said.
YouthBuild gives students a chance to earn GEDs, but the charter school will enable students to earn a high school diploma through year-round classes.
The charter school will work in tandem with Sea Islands YouthBuild, part of a national program in which students spend time in classrooms and on construction sites. The school will be housed at First Baptist Church of Johns Island next year, and its charter calls for a new facility to be ready by June 2008.
Some school board members had concerns about the district’s financial oversight of the school. Board Vice Chairman Hillery Douglas specifically cited problems at the YouthBuild charter school in North Charleston. The board revoked that school’s charter in April after the school couldn’t pay its bills.
District Chief Financial Officer Don Kennedy said the district will monitor this school to ensure that doesn’t happen.
In other business, the board unanimously approved an academic calendar for 2007-08 without any discussion. School will start Aug. 21 and end June 5.
Andrew HaLevi, founder of the Charleston County Teacher Alliance, said he was pleased with the calendar but not with the way the district gathered feedback about it. Teachers’ suggestions were incorporated into the final version, but that didn’t happen until later in the process, he said.
He said he’d like to see the district create a standing committee of teachers, parents and administrators whose sole responsibility would be working on the calendar.
CCSD CALENDAR: The Charleston County School Board approved a calendar for the 2007-08 school year. Important dates include:
–First day: Aug. 21
–Thanksgiving break: Nov. 21-23
–Winter break: Dec. 19-Jan. 2
–Spring break: March 21-28
–Last day: June 5
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Copyright (c) 2007, The Post and Courier, Charleston, S.C.
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