Staff Writer

JONESVILLE - If all goes well, the proposed Jonesville-Lockhart Charter School will open its doors in July 2008.

The committee organizing the school held a public meeting Saturday in the Jonesville Baptist Church's Christian Life Center to present its vision of the school, answer questions and get input from parents and other members of the community.

Committee vice chairman Mark Sanders said that while actual enrollment cannot begin until the school receives final approval, more than 700 families in Union, Chester, York, Cherokee and Spartanburg counties have signed “letters of intent” that they will enroll their children in the school. Sanders said the letters of intent were important in determining that there was sufficient interest in a charter school to get it approved.

The committee submitted an application for the charter school for approval by the state public charter school district. In October, the application was certified by the S.C. Charter School Advisory Committee of the State Department of Education clearing the way for approval by the state public charter school district. The district is scheduled to take up the matter at its Nov. 15 meeting. If approved, the Jonesville-Lockhart School will be the first to receive a charter granted by the statewide district.

A public charter school is a public school financed through the S.C. Public Charter School District. It is tuition-free and governed by a board elected by the parents and staff.

Sanders said that as part of the state public charter school district, the Jonesville-Lockhart School's boundaries are those of the state. This enables the school to serve students from both inside and outside Union County.

“This school has no attendance areas and has no tuition fees for any child,” he said. “The school district sets fees for Chester kids to come to Lockhart. They don't have to pay a fee to come to this school.”

Once it receives final approval, the school hopes to open in July 2008.

The school's developer and financial backer was introduced Saturday. Rick Walker of the Oak Capital Group previously helped set up the Lake Norman Charter School in Huntersville, N.C., and Voyager Academy in Durham, N.C.

Walker said that while the operations of the school will be financed with state and federal funds based on the number of students, construction of the campus will likely be financed through a combination of loans and bonds. He said the construction and eventual expansion of the campus will take place in phases and will depend on the number of students and the ability of the school to grow its financial resources.

“A lot of it depends on understanding exactly the funding that the State of South Carolina is going to provide in the statewide charter district,” he said. “They're getting more money every month or week as that becomes more clear. Since they're one of the first schools in the statewide charter school district there's a lot of issues that are being decided, determined and finalized on funding for the very first time.”

Unlike the Union County School District, however, the Jonesville-Lockhart School will not receive local property tax revenue.

“We don't have taxing authority,” Sanders said. “We will never be accused of raising taxes in this county because we cannot raise anybody's taxes. We have no local taxing authority, we get no local tax money.”

Hank Holseberg of Morris Construction said that “time is of the essence” if the school is to open in July 2008.

“The community's going to have to pull together to get the decisions made, to set their curriculum, to do all the prerequisite by the state and the final phase of that is breaking ground and starting on construction,” he said. “With construction we just have a tight time frame to break ground, to get structures in and get occupancy for the charter itself.”

Holseberg said that initially temporary structures would be erected to house core facilities such as classrooms. The campus would be designed to leave room for expansion and replace the temporary structures with permanent ones.

“Because the time-frame's so tight you tend to have to put out some temporary buildings in order to accommodate because it's all about educating the kids,” he said. “If you don't have a facility to educate the kids there's no sense in building a charter school.”

Sanders said that the school will be located in the Kelton area, midway between Jonesville and Lockhart. He said the site under consideration has plenty of room for expansion but declined to identify it further as negotiations are still underway.