Dear Charleston County School District families, educators, and community members:
The 2022-2023 school year was one to be proud of. It was a year in which stakeholders from the community, faith groups, and civic groups came together like never before with the common goal of supporting our students and their families. Their work will lay the foundation for the creation of a strong pre-K-12 ecosystem across our county.
At the start of the new school year, the district launched a new office, the Office of Multilingual Services and Outreach, to support our multilingual families. Additionally, we celebrated the opening of this new office’s Newcomer Center at R.B. Stall High School, an intensive English acquisition school-within-a-school designed to help students new to the country acclimate to Charleston County School District (CCSD) and receive the instruction and resources necessary to support their academic and social/emotional needs. The district also marked the new year by earning its first-ever Partnership District Award from the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) at Johns Hopkins University. This award recognized the district for making excellent progress in strengthening its leadership on partnerships and for guiding schools to develop goal-linked programs of family and community engagement.
In the spirit of collaboration and partnership, five principals from schools located in downtown Charleston (Constituent District 20), formed the District 20 Principal Collaboration Program, better known as the D20PCP. The program focuses on strengthening and directing the academic progress of students served in its feeder system of elementary, middle, and high schools. This effort resulted in numerous community and civic organizational partnerships. Examples include the City of Charleston Recreation Center’s supporting 18 students in their successful completion of a swimming summer camp; Burke High School Foundation, Inc.’s purchase of school uniforms for students; and the Preservation Society of Charleston’s initiative to share historical projects on African American contributions to the Charleston area through the D20PCP Heritage School of Knowledge.
CCSD’s Title 1 students received the gift of improved sight thanks to new state legislation, House Bill 4837, allowing national non-profit Vision To Learn to deploy its mobile vision clinics to provide free eye exams and free eyeglasses to students in the district and across the state. In sports, the Military Magnet girls’ basketball team and the Wando Warriors girls’ soccer team celebrated “three-peat” accomplishments by winning their respective state championship for the third consecutive year. Also being recognized by the state were Cooper River Center for Advanced Studies’ Shirley Godfrey-Jackson as Career Technical Education (CTE) School Counselor of the Year, and Jennie Moore Elementary School as one of the state’s finalists for the South Carolina School Improvement Council Riley Award for Excellence.
Implementation of a new reading curriculum, EL, in Charleston County School District’s Acceleration Schools, as well as increased investments in professional development of staff, led to gains on SC READY test scores. English Language Arts results improved by 7.5 points from 13.8% met and exceeded in 2021 to 21.3% in 2022. As a result, four Acceleration Schools were removed from the state’s School Improvement List for underperforming schools.
This past fall, the district created student-outcomes-focused goals and guardrails. Developed with the help of the community, these goals and guardrails are serving as a pathway toward achieving Vision 2027, of all students reading on grade level by grade five. As a part of that work, the district held its inaugural Early Learning Kindergarten Readiness Symposium, an opportunity to engage and collaborate with state and local childcare providers and agencies to collectively identify and define the academic and social-emotional skills of a Kindergarten-ready child. To further engage its youngest learners, their families, and the community, the district implemented the Kindergarten Dreamers initiative. This initiative encourages students to share their dreams for first grade, high school, and beyond and solicits support from community members and organizations (called the Dream Makers) in the pre-K-12 ecosystem to help make student’s dreams come true.
These initiatives and celebratory milestones only scratch the surface of what the district accomplished this year. It is only with the hard work and dedication of our teachers, staff, principals, and administrators, and the partnership with our business leaders, elected officials, and families that we are able to make strides and increase positive student outcomes for all students. The future of CCSD is bright as our collective pre-K-12 ecosystem in Charleston continues to grow and we as a community take ownership for the success of all our children. Thank you for your continued commitment to this work and to bettering the lives of our students.
Donald R. Kennedy, Sr., Superintendent of Schools
