July 1, 2008 - Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) announced today that several South Carolina high schools will receive $2,680,761 in competitive grant monies from the Department of Education’s Smaller Learning Communities (OESE) Program.
Five school districts will use grant funds to implement smaller learning communities and improve academic achievement at seven schools: Dutch Fork and Irmo High Schools (Lexington-Richland School District 5), Greenwood High School (Greenwood County School District), Orangeburg Wilkinson High School (Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5), Richland Northeast and Spring Valley High Schools (Richland County School District 2) and Union County High School (Union County School District).
The Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) program awards competitive grants to improve student academic achievement in large public high schools with enrollments of 1,000 or more students. SLCs include structures such as freshman academies, multi-grade academies organized around career interests or other themes, “houses” in which small groups of students remain together throughout high school, and autonomous schools-within-a-school, as well as personalization strategies, such as student advisories, family advocate systems, and mentoring programs.
These funds were awarded by the U.S. Department of Education according to its competitive or merit-based selection process. These funds were not awarded at the direction of Senator DeMint who works to prevent the allocation of taxpayer funds through congressional earmarks.
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