If ACE is open next year, it won’t be thanks to Beaufort County

School officials in Jasper County might not want to hear it, but their Beaufort County counterparts are saying it again — they are done with the Academy for Career Excellence.

The joint Beaufort-Jasper technical school will not serve Beaufort County students after June 2017, the Beaufort County school board agreed Tuesday night at its regular meeting. The group voted 7-4 to reaffirm its earlier position that it will dissolve its contract with the Jasper County School District at the end of this school year.

Opposing the vote were Evva Anderson, whose husband works at ACE, Geri Kinton, and Earl Campbell and Michael Rivers, who have both advocated for the continuation of popular programs like barbering and cosmetology, which are not offered in Beaufort County schools.

The school has about 475 students and a budget of $3.2 million. Two-thirds of the students — and the money — come from Beaufort County, and Jasper County foots the rest of the bill. But with Beaufort County quickly expanding its in-house offerings, including building two Advanced Technical Centers, it has sought to extricate itself from the lopsided arrangement and outdated facility.

“There’s been a lot of delays and a lot of meetings and a lot of false starts on it,” said board member David Striebinger, who raised the motion after the body’s closed-door, executive session. “My position was basically we need to move ahead. We can’t keep delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying.”

Last fall, a transition team for the technical school’s future recommended the districts close ACE and sell the property, likely to the Technical College of the Lowcountry. Despite support from Beaufort County, the Jasper district rejected the plan in December 2015, and there has been little progress since then on reaching a resolution.

At the time, Jasper County board member Debora Butler said her district did not even know when it could begin to offer in-house technical education or what that would look like — and the sudden resignation of superintendent Vashti Washington threw the district into flux.

On Tuesday afternoon, the Beaufort County school board’s vote also called on superintendent Jeff Moss to present the board with alternatives for supporting students who were taking technical courses at ACE.

Striebinger said the board does not need to vote again to end its contract. It will simply leave the school out of its next annual budget.

This story was originally published November 3, 2016 at 4:36 PM with the headline "If ACE is open next year, it won’t be thanks to Beaufort County."