CCSD's Stono Park: "Educating Children Where They Live"

Thanks to concerted efforts by parents and the District 10 School Board--and a CCSD Board that finally listened, a new building for Stono Park Elementary is under way. Although next year its student body will occupy the old St. Andrew's High building on Wappoo Road, by the 2019-20 school year the district hopes to have the new building ready.

Meanwhile, Stono Park suffers from the same integration problems plaguing many of Charleston County's middle- and lower-middle-class neighborhoods: white flight. How else to explain its  present statistics? "Located in a racially balanced middle income attendance zone, Stono Park has a student population which is 83% black and 5% Latino, with 91% of students living in poverty."

The unpalatable truth is that school's culture reflects these statistics. White middle-class parents, while sympathetic to others, won't make their children's educations into an experiment in the dominant black culture. Fixing that perception will take more than a new $25 million building.

"The school has significantly better student performance than other CCSD schools with similar demographics. When the school re-opens in its new building, it hopes to attract more students from the surrounding neighborhoods. [Charleston Mayor] Tecklenburg spoke about the importance of quality neighborhood schools and remarked that 'the new building will bring about a new spirit of excellence.'”

If we could wave a magic wand, the school's present 300 students would be joined by 200 neighborhood white students when the 500-student building opens in August 2019. 

What a blessing that would be to all concerned--but how would it ever be achieved?