Beaufort County School District makes final decision to close Islands Academy

After a week’s worth of back and forth, administrators made a final decision Friday to close the Beaufort County School District’s alternative choice school, Islands Academy.

The decision comes three days after the Beaufort County Board of Education voted 5-4 to ask interim superintendent Herb Berg to reconsider his initial decision to close the school.

Board members JoAnn Orischak, John Dowling, Christina Gwozdz and Cynthia Gregory-Smalls voted against it.

Islands Academy, which opened as Right Choice School under former superintendent Jeff Moss and is the only free-standing alternative school in the state, was identified Dec. 7 as a failing school by the S.C. Department of Education due to its 29 percent graduation rate, according to a letter sent to the district.

Less than a day later, Superintendent Berg filed to close the school.

Parents and members of the school board, however, were not officially notified of the closure until late Dec. 14 when students were sent home with a letter.

Islands Academy serves about 70 sixth through 12th-grade students who applied to attend the school after struggling academically or socially at their original school and who administrators felt would benefit from a smaller setting, according to Bonnie Almond, the district’s chief instructional officer.

But despite the smaller class sizes, students were not only not improving on their standardized tests and other academic measures, some were falling further behind.

Former Superintendent Jeff Moss and school board chairman Earl Campbell were first alerted to problems at the school in Dec. 2017, when it was identified by the S.C. Department of Education as a “potentially underperforming school,” but an organized, concerted effort to improve student success did not take place, according to district documents.

When the S.C. Department of Education released school report cards last month for first time in four years, Islands Academy ranked as the worst middle school in the state and among the ten worst high schools in the state.

“Our goal is for every student to make academic progress and move forward, but that simply wasn’t happening at Islands Academy,” Berg said in a news release Friday. “I’m convinced that we can ensure better outcomes through other means, and I certainly didn’t want to wait on those improved outcomes for an additional semester under the current structure.”

At Tuesday night’s meeting, Berg informed the board that he consulted with the S.C. Department of Education and was told that he was authorized to close the school as superintendent.

But some board members questioned that advice.

South Carolina law states that the school board of trustees should “manage and control local educational interests of its district, with exclusive authority to operate or not operate public schools.”

The law also states that a county board of education “may consolidate schools and school districts, in whole or in part, whenever, in its judgment, such consolidation will promote the best interests of the cause of education in the county.”

The S.C. Department of Education, however, only requires a letter from the superintendent to officially close a school and ensure it stops receiving federal and state funding, according to Ryan Brown, the department’s chief communications officer.

“Whether that letter comes from (a superintendent) with the approval of the board or not, that’s a local decision,“ Brown said Friday.

Although the school board discussed the opening of Islands Academy with Moss in 2014, no official vote was taken to authorize the opening of the school either.

Islands Academy is separate from the district’s alternative program, Right Choices.

Right Choices, which is a temporary assignment as an alternative to expulsion for students who have typically violated the district’s student code of conduct, will remain open.

Islands Academy students will be sent back to their zoned schools for the start of the second semester, with the biggest group of 16 students going back to Beaufort High School.

School counselors and administrators have worked to come up with an individual plan for each student to ensure a seamless transition, according to administrators. Orientations will be held for Islands Academy students at each of their zoned school on Jan. 7 and Jan. 8.

This story was originally published December 21, 2018 at 12:46 PM.