New charter school in Myrtle Beach area wins appeal to join SC High School League
Atlantic Collegiate Academy will be a member of the South Carolina High School League after all.
On Wednesday, the SCHSL appellate panel voted 3-1 in favor of admitting the new public charter school located in the Myrtle Beach area to be a member of the league starting in the 2023-24 season. Atlantic will be an at-large member for this school year, meaning it won’t be eligible for the playoffs, before being placed in a region starting in 2024-25.
Their vote overturned last week’s SCHSL executive committee decision to deny Atlantic membership (by a 10-4 vote). The executive committee, however, approved American Leadership Academy’s request to join. ALA is a charter school opening in Lexington for 2023-24.
There were 219 schools in the S.C. High School League as of the 2022-24 league realignment. Of those 15 are charter schools and four are private schools. Three other new charter schools had already been approved for membership.
“I see no difference in this charter school than the ones that are already admitted,” said Bob Davis, an appellate panel member from the state’s Fourth Congressional District. “A precedent has been set.”
Davis on Wednesday questioned the executive committee’s decision last week to deny Atlantic, saying that move was inconsistent with previous decisions to allow such schools as Gray Collegiate and Oceanside Collegiate into the league.
”Why are we doing this to Atlantic Collegiate Academy?” Davis said. “We have to be consistent.”
Last week’s denial wasn’t unprecedented, as Rock Hill’s Legion Collegiate Academy was denied membership in the SCHSL by the executive committee but was approved by the appellate panel. Charter schools have generally been granted the right to participate in the SCHSL without appeal.
Atlantic is affiliated with the Pinnacle Group, which oversees Legion Collegiate in Rock Hill and Oceanside Collegiate in Mount Pleasant. Pinnacle also manages Gray Collegiate in West Columbia, but Gray officials said earlier this year they’re ending their partnership with Pinnacle after the 2022-23 school year.
Legion is no longer affiliated with the SCHSL and is with the North Carolina Independent Schools Association. This February, the school announced it’s dropping football for fall 2023.
Both Gray Collegiate and Oceanside Collegiate have have a lot of athletic success in the last few years, winning multiple state championships as recently as this school year. That success plus the continued talk of competitive balance concerns with charters vs. traditional public schools are believed to be the reasons why Atlantic was originally denied by the SCHSL executive committee.
“I would beg this appellate panel to not punish Atlantic based on the success of other (charter) member schools,” Pinnacle chief operating officer Andy Patrick said Wednesday. “There is an opportunity to discuss a path forward for charter schools, private schools and traditional public schools that have been extremely successful in certain sports.”
Atlantic is set to open at a temporary campus in the fall and move into a permanent one in Conway the following year. The school will draw from the Carolina Forest High School attendance zone. Carolina Forest is in Class 5A, the state’s largest classification. The school has already hired an athletic director, boys basketball and football coach.
Atlantic principal Mike Lorenz said the school will never go over 700 students in high school, which likely would keep it in Class 2A, the state’s second smallest classification. Of the 700 students, about 60% are expected to play sports.
This story was originally published April 26, 2023 at 11:15 AM.
