SDOC accepting School Choice Requests

The School District of Oconee County (SDOC) is now accepting School Choice applications. Parents are also being made aware of some recent changes to the policy, explains Assistant Superintendent of Operations Steve Hanvey. “Right now we have 1,018 who have filed out the application for School Choice, so the vast majority of the ones who have done it in the past have filled that out. We typically end up with 1,200 to 1,300 applications, not all of those will be approved. Some won’t be approved because they don’t met the criteria. One thing parents should know is the students has to be in good academic standing, attendance cannot be an issue and discipline cannot be an issue, so they have to meet that criteria. Those are the three criteria set by the policy. Also, parents need to know that we now have the deadline of June 30. That is a hard deadline, we will not be taking School Choice applications after that date unless someone new moves to the area and then they want to try to do that but we won’t be taking School Choice from any of our current students then. If you have questions you can call the District Office or the school can typically answer those. The form is online on our website and we encourage parents to apply early if they want to do so because it could be that we cut off certain grade levels at certain elementary schools because of numbers. We have made it our procedure to not add a teacher because of School Choice. So, we keep an eye on the numbers and so the earlier parents can get those applications in, the better.” To learn more about School Choice in the SDOC, visit www.oconee.k12.sc.us.