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Tag: Fairfield County Schools

  • Stem school to expand to White Oak Conference Center in 2018

    WINNSBORO – The Midlands S.T.E.M. Institute (MSI) board of trustees announced Wednesday that the school will begin its 2018-19 academic year in a new location.

    The Winnsboro-based public charter school’s board voted to purchase the White Oak Conference Center in Fairfield County and will move its entire operation from Rockton Baptist Church to the new facility next summer.

    Now in its fourth year of operation, MSI will expand to grade nine for 2018-19, a move made possible by the board’s decision to relocate, board chair Kevin Thomas said.

    “We are enormously grateful for the congregation of Rockton Baptist Church and all of its support during our first few years of operation,” Thomas said. “We would not be in the position we are in without them.  But we also have grown to the point where moving is necessary. This will be an exciting new chapter for MSI as we continue to fulfill our mission to provide a quality educational choice for students and parents.”

    The 200-acre site will give MSI 23 classrooms, a 400-seat dining hall, an 850-seat auditorium, and a 230-seat lecture hall. The facility also has an outdoor pool and a gymnasium.  MSI plans to offer busing services from multiple Fairfield County pickup locations as well as sports for their students.

    In addition to giving MSI more room for enrollment growth, the new facility’s amenities will give the school greater capacity for extracurricular offerings and scientific discovery, executive director Marie Milam said.

    “The new school facility offers a great deal of potential for growth not only in our student body, but also what courses of study we might offer in the life and earth sciences just by having more outdoor space,” she said. “The large auditorium also gives our students more room to explore their creative, performance potential and a larger campus with a gymnasium will also give our students opportunities to compete in sports.”

    MSI is currently accepting students in grades K5- 8th grade and ninth grade students for the 2018-2019 school year.  MSI anticipates maxing out enrollment when the facility opens next fall.

    MSI will add a grade each year until they offer grades K5-12 in the fall of 2021.

  • Three file for District 7 school board seat

    WINNSBORO – Three candidates have filed for the special school board election to fill the District 7 seat previously held by Beth Reid, who died last month following a long battle with cancer.

    The candidates are Lisa Brandenburg, Darreyl Davis and Herb Rentz.

    Brandenburg, who is employed as Coordinator of Intervention in special services for the Fairfield County School District, has been employed by the district for more than 30 years, serving as a teacher, assistant principal and principal.

    “I feel I’m the candidate most qualified to fill the vacancy,” Brandenburg said.

    Darreyl Davis, who works in environmental health and safety at Isola, is president of Believers and Achievers, is a past chair of the Fairfield Elementary School Improvement Council and is the current president of the Fairfield Elementary PTO. The father of six children, two of whom are enrolled in Fairfield County School District schools, Davis said he has a passion to help kids as well as the community.

    Herb Rentz, manager of Mid-County Water Company, said he is hoping to continue the work of Reid, his late wife.

    “I feel a calling to take on her work,” Rentz said.

    The election will be held Jan. 23, 2018.

    The Voice will have more information about the candidates in a later issue.

  • District Works Toward Safer Schools

    FAIRFIELD – The shocking and horrifying events in Newtown, Conn., last month, when Adam Lanza mercilessly and senselessly gunned down 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, left an empty void in the heart of the nation. It also left parents everywhere wondering if it could “happen here,” wherever “here” may be.

    Fairfield County is no exception to those fears; and while no amount of preparation can prevent every tragedy, administrators and the school board have actually been at work for some time – long before the Newtown tragedy – to ensure the safety of Fairfield County schools.

    “We didn’t wait for a tragedy to happen before we started acting,” said Board member Bobby Cunningham. “We started acting in 2010.”

    Cunningham has made school safety a priority since his first day on the Board, back in November 2010. He chaired the now-defunct Safety Committee, which spearheaded vast improvements in school security, including an upgrade of the security camera system, a new key system and an agreement with the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office for Student Resource Officers (SROs).

    “The cameras that were broken have been fixed,” Cunningham said. “Some have been relocated to more strategic places and we’ve added cameras to some sensitive areas.”

    The District’s key system, installed last year, can track who comes and goes in and out of every building in the District, and anyone attempting to enter a school must be admitted by a monitor from the inside.

    “Even I have to ring the bell to get in,” said J.R. Green, Superintendent of Fairfield County Schools. “The system we have is very good at keeping the normal intruder out of the building.”

    But, as Green points out, Adam Lanza was no “normal intruder.” Instead, Lanza reportedly blasted his way into an elementary school that had a similar system in place. Installing bullet-proof glass at every school is probably not feasible, Green said, but additional SROs and advanced training for teachers and administrators is.

    Right now, the District has two SROs at Fairfield Central High School and one at Fairfield Middle School full-time. When the agreement with the Sheriff’s Office was put in place a year and a half ago, these were considered to be the areas of most concern, Green said. Newtown has changed all that.

    Green said that the District is looking at placing an SRO at every elementary school in the district, over the long-term. In the immediate future, he said, the District will consider staffing schools with off-duty deputies or retired officers. Green also said that the Sheriff’s Office plans to include teachers and staff in next month’s scheduled “Active Shooter Training.”

    Beth Reid, Chairwoman of the Fairfield County School Board, said the subject of security will be on the agenda at the Board’s upcoming retreat, which will be held at the District Office Saturday starting at 9:30 a.m.

    “We want to be proactive,” Reid said. “We’re going to talk about what we can do to make people feel confident that schools are the safest place they can send their children.”

    The District has accomplished a lot since 2010, Cunningham said – new and improved cameras, an upgraded key system, better lighting and landscaping, and schools that can be placed on lockdown at a moment’s notice. The results have been tangible, he said. Since 2010, Cunningham estimated that drug, alcohol and weapons violations are down more than 90 percent. But more can be done and should be done, he added.

    While the District works to enhance security measures, Green said he feels no hesitation in sending his children off to school each day.

    “As sad as the Newtown tragedy is, schools are, statistically speaking, very safe,” Green said. “I don’t want people to lose sight of that. As a parent, I feel very confident that my children are safer at school than they are at the mall.”