By Delayna Earley
The Island News
State funding for Sea Island Heritage Academy, a St. Helena Island charter school, ended in June, less than a year after the school opened in hopes of providing an alternative schooling opportunity to students in the Gullah-Geechee community.
The funding was pulled after the South Carolina Public Charter School Board of Trustees voted 8-0 in June to revoke its charter contract with the school.
The South Carolina Public Charter School District is the state agency that funds and authorizes K-12 schools that are tuition free and operating independently of the local school districts.
Poor attendance at school board meetings and low enrollment numbers were two contributing reasons that were listed as reasons to close the school effective the end of June.
The closure of the school, which was operating in temporary modular facilities on Lady’s Island, has left the roughly 80 students who were enrolled for the 2025-2026 school year to find alternative arrangements for schooling.
Sea Island Heritage Academy opened last year and was to be the first charter school on St. Helena Island. It was approved by the state in April 2023 and was expected to provide access to a quality education that also celebrated the Gullah-Geechee heritage.
When the school opened in August 2024 for Grades 6 through 8, instead of the 150 students that school founders that had hoped for, only 40 students enrolled.
That said, the school was set to double enrollment to 80 students for the upcoming school year and with that in mind, Alana Jenkins Marchel, the executive director of Sea Island Heritage Academy, is lobbying for the charter school to be put on probation instead of a revocation as low enrollment is not uncommon for new charter schools.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
