Heartwood Community Preschool

ders, and the state to make these fresh 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. Yet area parents face crushing shortages of early-education opportunities. The Jubilee Nursery 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 Academy, 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 school. The Jubilee Academy will be a public charter school accessible to all and 100-percent tuition-free. It will be accountable to the state for academic results, equity and fairness, and financial integrity. The Nursery and the Academy will be state-chartered and 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 Nursery will be philanthropically funded and operated by the Jubilee Community Partnership. The Academy will also have its start-up costs provided by the Jubilee Community Partnership. Jubilee has invited Meeting Street Schools to operate the Academy. Meeting Street currently serves over 2,000 students at four acclaimed schools operated in the Charleston and Spartanburg school districts. A related service to area families 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 Nursery and the Jubilee Academy. Families who lack transportation options for reaching other schools in the region, jobs, and social services will also be welcome to use the service.