Fresh Education Options for Local Families
November 1, 2021 – The Jubilee Community Partnership has filed a Letter of Intent with the South Carolina Department of Education requesting the chartering of a pair of innovative new schools in Jasper County. These two schools would be overseen by the South Carolina Public Charter School District, bringing accessible, high-performing educational opportunities to local children. Jubilee is working closely with parents, leaders, and the state to make these new school options a welcome addition in a region that has historically been underserved with educational excellence.
The first facility is an imaginative reinvention of preschool education. Only 14 percent of Jasper County children start Kindergarten prepared for success, and area parents face crushing shortages of early-education opportunities. The Jubilee Preschool is being designed from the ground up to delight and instruct children ages 2½ to 4. It will feature many innovations in family involvement, immersive learning rooms, competitive teacher salaries, home visitation, outdoor education, social support services, and more. It will offer sliding-scale tuition and accept government vouchers that subsidize child-care costs.
The second facility, the Jubilee Charter School, will start by enrolling 4-year-old pre-K students and 5-year-old Kindergarten students. It will then add an additional grade each year as it gradually grows into a full pre-K-to-12th-grade learning facility. This will create new capacity at a time when area schools are bursting at the seams amidst rapid population growth. The Jubilee Charter School will be a public school accessible to all and 100-percent tuition-free. It will be accountable to the South Carolina Public Charter School District for academic results, equity and fairness, and financial integrity.
The Charter School and Preschool will share a physical campus in Jasper County. These two schools will work in collaboration to create a smooth pathway of teaching excellence, family involvement, broad support services, and quality instruction from toddlerhood to high-school graduation—offering success and opportunity to any local families who are interested.
The Preschool will be philanthropically funded and operated by the Jubilee Community Partnership. The Charter School will also have its start-up costs provided by the Jubilee Community Partnership. Jubilee has invited Meeting Street Schools to operate the Charter School. Meeting Street currently serves over 2,000 students at four acclaimed schools in South Carolina: a flagship academy in Charleston, a Public School of Innovation in partnership with Spartanburg School District 7, and two pre-K to 8th-grade campuses in North Charleston in partnership with the Charleston County School District. Jubilee is honored to sponsor the time-proven Meeting Street model in South Carolina’s deep Lowcountry as a fresh public-school option for children.
A related service to area families and taxpayers will be a new transportation hub directly adjoining the two schools. In surveys conducted by Jubilee, local parents cite difficult transportation as a serious obstacle to the education of their children, as well as a problem for commuting to work. A new donor-funded Jubilee Journey bus service will offer free transportation to children attending the Jubilee Preschool and the Jubilee Charter School. Families who lack transport options for reaching other schools in the region, jobs, and social services will also be welcome to use the service.