Dear Charleston County School District Families, Educators, and Community Members:
Throughout a second school year during a global pandemic, our students, teachers, staff, and families demonstrated great strength, courage, and perseverance as we once again navigated the unknowns of COVID-19 and its impacts on our lives and community. We are immensely grateful to our parents, staff, community leaders, and medical partners for the guidance and input they provided leading up to the 2020-2021 school year in developing the district’s Safe Restart plan to allow as many students as possible to safely learn in-person, five days a week from Day 1. We are extremely proud of our teachers, building leaders, and district staff who showed great flexibility in the requests to abruptly pivot and shift as conditions changed in order to continue providing instruction to our students across multiple models of learning throughout the year. Last, but most certainly not least, we are incredibly thankful for our dedicated nursing staff who worked tirelessly around the clock for the health of students and staff by contact tracing to support the safest learning environment possible in our schools.
As the district prepared to welcome students back for instruction in-person, temporarily remote, and full-time virtual, it planned a LEAP Week the week before the official start of school to give students and staff the opportunity to connect prior to the start of school and receive materials, supplies, and resources to support their success for the semester ahead. When the school year officially began after Labor Day, CCSD was able to welcome back approximately 35 percent of its students learning in-person through the implementation of COVID-19 mitigation measures such as social distancing, the installation of plexiglass, symptomatic screening and on-site testing in schools, and the universal wearing of masks by students and staff. Additionally, a COVID-19 dashboard was developed for the district’s website where the number of positive cases by school location was updated daily. As the year progressed, teachers and administrators were able to welcome more students back to the classroom from temporary remote, moving the district closer to serving nearly 70 percent of students in-person by the end of the second semester. During this shift to serve more students in-person, the district also expanded its communication with families to notify them when a positive case was reported in their child’s classroom, even if their child was not deemed a close contact. This snapshot only outlines a small portion of the tremendous efforts that were put forth to serve students and continue the essential provision of education to all our children despite the many obstacles the pandemic presented.
Despite the challenges of COVID, our district experienced many moments of celebration beginning with the opening of five new facilities for the 2020-2021 school year- Lucy Beckham High School, Cooper River Center for Advanced Studies, C.E. Williams Middle School South, Camp Road Middle School, and North Charleston’s District 4 Regional Stadium. Additionally, it learned that the Class of 2020’s SAT results improved from fifth to third in the state and remained above the national average despite last year’s learning disruptions. The Class of 2020 also boasted a record high of 24 National Merit Scholarship recipients and one of the state’s two U.S. Presidential Scholars. For the second year in a row, Academic Magnet High School was ranked the second-best high school in the nation according to U.S. News and World Report, keeping the school in the nation’s top two high schools over the last three years. Jerry Zucker Middle School and Laing Middle School also received national distinction for their commitment to creating social-emotional wellbeing and relationship-driven culture on school campuses as Flip Flippen Capturing Kids Hearts National Showcase Schools for the fourth and second year in a row, respectively. The district was also the recipient of a five-year grant worth $12 million for cultural competency training from the U.S. Department of Education with the goal of creating a culturally competent learning environment that adapts to and values diversity and institutionalized cultural knowledge. Six schools including Charleston Charter School for Math and Science, James Island Charter High, Morningside Middle, Moultrie Middle, Thomas C. Cario Middle, and Wando High were named Distinguished Schools by Project Lead the Way (PLTW) for their commitment to increasing student access, engagement, and achievement in their PLTW programs, and the district’s Early College High School (ECHS) hosted its inaugural graduation ceremony with its first class of graduates earning 29 associate’s degrees, 3,149 transferable college credits, and a 100% on-time graduation rate. The school also earned a national Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) Schoolwide Site of Distinction award given to a select few schools in the nation for their extensive commitment to providing students with ample college preparation and supportive resources. With a commitment to grow its own, CCSD hosted its inaugural signing day for students in its Teach Local program at ECHS designed to provide high school students with training to become a teacher, support to attend a college and earn a degree in education, and ultimately return to CCSD as an educator. The district embarked on an additional unique higher-education partnership with the College of Charleston to launch a Scholars Academy program where students can accumulate up to two years of college credits with successful completion of Advanced Placement exams and dual enrollment at two high schools. A CCSD principal was also the recipient of the Order of the Palmetto, the state’s highest civilian honor, for his extraordinary efforts to support his students and their families.
As we reflect on a year filled with a myriad of successes, challenges, highs, and lows, through it all, we will always find triumph and celebration so long as we continue to keep students as the heart of our work. The collective efforts of our community and stakeholders enabled CCSD to serve as a nationwide K-12 public school leader and model for physically and virtually opening its doors for instruction and safely serving students in-person throughout the entire school year. Thank you to every teacher, parent, leader, partner, and child who made this a possibility in a year of what felt like endless impossibilities.
Gerrita Postlewait, Superintendent of Schools