The School Improvement Council at Port Royal Elementary School has been named to the South Carolina School Improvement Council’s 2012 Honor Roll for its efforts to foster civic engagement in public education.

Port Royal is one of 15 Honor Roll SICs in the running for the annual Dick and Tunky Riley Award for School Improvement Council Excellence. Named for the former U.S. Secretary of Education and South Carolina governor and his late wife, the Riley Award was created in 2002 to recognize the vital contributions made by the 14,000-plus local School Improvement Council members who volunteer in every public school in the state.

“We are very pleased to recognize these School Improvement Councils for the important work they’ve done to build parent and community commitment in their schools,” said SC-SIC Board of Trustees Chair Sylleste Davis. “The contributions of time and talent made by our state’s SICs are even more vital in the current economic climate of limited revenue and tightened budgets. We must continue to honor and support our SICs for the value they bring to our schools, our children and the future of South Carolina.”

In the last year, local School Improvement Council members across South Carolina turned in more than 230,000 volunteer hours in their schools at an estimated value of nearly $4 million.

Five finalists from this year’s list of Honor Roll schools will be selected late next month, with one to be named as the winner of the annual Riley Award. The award will be announced at the SC-SIC Annual Conference on March 24 in Columbia.

Located in the University of South Carolina’s College of Education, the South Carolina School Improvement Council was established in state law more than three decades ago to provide the member training, technical assistance, statutory accountability, and other operational resources necessary for the continued success of the community-based SICs in each of South Carolina’s 1,100-plus K-12 public schools.

More information on SC-SIC, the Riley Award for School Improvement Council Excellence and award winners from previous years can be found online at http://sic.sc.gov.
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