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FLORENCE, S.C. (WPDE) — Florence School District 3’s Board of Trustees approved recommendations made by Superintendent Dr. Laura Hickson for principals at four schools and three district administrative appointments for the 2022-2023 school year.

The following administrators will serve as principals next school Year:

Mr. Terrell Fleming Fleming was named principal of Lake City High School, former principal of Ronald E McNair Junior High. Fleming served as principal of Dr. Ronald E. McNair Junior High for the past two years and before that was the assistant principal at Main Street Elementary School.

Ms. Charm EaddyEaddy was named principal at Dr. Ronald E. McNair Junior High. Eaddy has been an educator for over 20 years and has served in various roles in FSD3, including Teacher, administrative assistant, athletic coach, and assistant principal. Eaddy was named the 2019-2020 Teacher of Year for Florence District 3 and the school-level teacher-or-the-Year twice. She has served as an assistant principal at Lake City High School for the past two years.

Mrs. Melanie Dukes McKnight McKnight was named principal at Olanta Creative Arts & Science Magnet School. She taught fifth grade at Olanta Elementary School before being named the school’s assistant principal. She served one year as an assistant principal at J Paul Truluck Creative Arts and Science Magnet School. She also taught second through fifth grades in Orangeburg District 5 and served as a Curriculum Specialist in Williamsburg County.

Jami KirbyKirby was named principal at Scranton Elementary STEAM Academy. Kirby has served as Scranton Elementary’s assistant principal since 2018 and was FSD3’s Assistant Principal of the Year for 2020-2021. She has taught second and third grades at Main Street Elementary and Olanta Elementary, where she was the school’s Teacher of the Year in 2015-2016. She also was a math instructional coach at Olanta before becoming STEM coordinator at Scranton Elementary.

Shanda Poston and Tonyelle Thomas will transition from roles as school principals to a position at the district level as Academic Support Services Administrators.

Hope Gibson was named the Director of Finance and Brian Huckabee will take over the role of director of maintenance and facilities, while Mitch Driggers was named assistant director of facilities and maintenance.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WSPA) — The South Carolina Department of Education released the 2021-22 School Report Cards on Monday, providing a glimpse into the educational environment of the state’s public schools.

Statewide, 20.6% of schools received an overall rating of “Excellent,” according to a news release from the school district.

Not to be confused with student report cards, these report cards provide information about each school and district, including test performance and teacher qualifications, according to the department of education.

The report cards are required for all public elementary, middle and high schools in the state. The Report Cards, available at www.screportcards.com, show student performance in the state from the 2021-22 school year.

Below you can find the percentage of students in the state who ranked in each category of the report card.

Note: Totals do not include every public school in the state.

For the first time this year, schools received a rating for school climate. The measure uses results from teacher and student surveys to measure perceptions of safety, working conditions and the social-physical environment, according to the press release.

“This is the first time that student and teacher perceptions of school climate are captured in the accountability system,” said Ferguson in the news release. “We know that a positive school climate is highly correlated with increased student outcomes. Surfacing these data in the accountability system will provide schools with the opportunity to take necessary action to make sure that climate is not a barrier to student success or teacher satisfaction.”

For a look at each district’s school report card data, click here.

FLORENCE COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — Four people, including three from Horry County, were sentenced to prison Thursday following a multi-state child sex trafficking and child exploitation case last year.

The case involved activity spanning from Arizona to South Carolina, and victims from the Pee Dee and Midlands regions of South Carolina.

Theodore Woolings Bye, III, 36, of Myrtle Beach, was charged with conspiracy to sexually traffic a minor, sexual trafficking of minor, conspiracy to produce child pornography and to coerce and entice a minor, two counts of production of child pornography, two counts of coercion and enticement of a minor, and possession of child pornography.

He was sentenced to 293 months in prison.

Sanadin Mohamed Elrayes, 28, of Surfside Beach, and Charles Joseph Spillane, 44, of Myrtle Beach, was charged with conspiracy to produce child pornography and to coerce and entice a minor.

They were each sentenced to five years in prison.

Hart William Grow, 25, of Surprise, Arizona, was charged with conspiracy to sexually traffic a minor, sexual trafficking of minor, conspiracy to produce child pornography and to coerce and entice a minor, four counts of production of child pornography involving two victims, four counts of coercion and enticement of a minor involving two victims, and possession of child pornography.

He was sentenced to 327 months in prison.

An indictment alleges that, since at least April 2020, Grow and Bye conspired to recruit, entice, harbor, transport, provide, obtain, maintain, patronize and solicit a minor victim in South Carolina to engage in a commercial sex act.

The record in the case alleges that Grow, from his home in Arizona and through the internet, misrepresented to various minors across the country that he was also a minor and was interested in a relationship. In this case, Grow allegedly claimed to a minor victim that he was a 17-year-old female named “Hannah” living in Columbia, South Carolina.

Using this false persona and promising love and affection, Grow groomed the minor victim to fall in love with “Hannah.” It was then, the indictment alleges, that Grow abused his position of trust with the minor victim to enter into a “sexual dominant/submissive relationship, to hold absolute power and control over the victim, and to employ bondage/discipline, domination/submission, and sadism/masochism (‘BDSM’) techniques.”

Threatening the minor victim if the victim did not obey his BDSM rules, Grow required the victim to engage in often-violent sexual acts with adult men that the victim did not otherwise wish to engage with.

According to Court records, Grow used message boards and social media to make his minor victim available to adult males for sexual encounters in exchange for the men sending visual depictions of the sexual encounters to him. Specifically, Grow required the adult males to produce, or assist in the production of, a visual depiction of the often-violent sexual acts. One such male, according to the indictment, was Bye.

The indictment alleged that Bye, with the assistance of Grow, not only participated in the sexual acts with the victim but also made the victim available for sex on numerous occasions to other men.

According to the indictment, Bye would transport the victim to various locations in and around Myrtle Beach for commercial sex acts and would use internet message boards, social media and text messages to make the victim available to other adult males for sexual encounters.

This is not the first time Bye has been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. In September 2020, Bye was arrested on 26 charges related to the sexual assault of minors.

The indictment further alleges that Elrayes and Spillane responded to Bye’s internet postings and, after communicating with Bye via social media and text messages, engaged in sexually explicit conduct with the minor.

According to the indictment, the visual depictions with Elrayes were created at a hotel in Surfside Beach, and the visual depictions with Spillane were created at his Myrtle Beach home.

The indictment also alleges that in early 2021, after Grow had trafficked the first minor victim, he began communicating with a second minor victim in South Carolina. According to Court records, Grow coerced the second minor into producing visual depictions of sexually explicit conduct until shortly before his arrest in Arizona.

According to Court records, the defendants used social media applications, including Snapchat, Wattpad and Kik to communicate with the victims and with each other. Grow used screen names, including “hgliese” and “hanners,” and aliases, including “Terry” and “Hannah,” when communicating with his victims.

A collaboration between the Florence County Council and Spectrum will result in a nearly $14 million expansion of Spectrum’s fiber-optic network that will bring gigabit broadband and other Spectrum services to more than 6,000 homes and businesses throughout the county.

Florence County and Spectrum announced the expansion agreement Thursday evening at Lake City Park in Lake City.

“Broadband is an important resource for all our citizens to participate fully in the many fundamental activities of life today,” Florence County Council Chairman Willard Dorriety Jr. said. “Counties all over the country are beginning to study what they might do to solve this problem for rural citizens.”

The Florence County Council recognized the need for high-speed internet access throughout Florence County about two years ago. The county and Spectrum started talks about eight months ago when the County Council realized Spectrum had received $1.2 billion in the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund auction. Spectrum has committed approximately $5 billion to bring high-speed internet access to rural areas of the United States.

Florence County decided to move quickly to bring broadband internet service to rural areas because of the lead time necessary to engineer and install the fiber-optics network and connect it to Florence County homes and businesses, Dorriety said.

Spectrum has committed $9.3 million to expand its fiber-optics network to more than 3,200 homes and small businesses in unserved rural areas of Florence County. The Florence County Council committed $4.5 million of its American Rescue Plan funding to the project.

The company will align its existing Rural Digital Opportunity Fund buildout to bring high-speed internet to an additional 2,800 homes and small business in Florence County, which will bring high-speed internet to more than 6,000 homes and small businesses.

The RDOF portion of the Florence County expansion is one of the first projects where Spectrum will use its new in-house underground construction capabilities. Spectrum’s multimillion investment allows it to complete underground trenching and drilling for its fiber-optic network more efficiently and bring broadband to unserved areas more quickly.

Spectrum spent the past seven months design the network and getting permits to install fiber optics on utility poles, Spectrum Senior Director Ben Breazeale said. Now, the company will take more than 600 miles of fiber-optics cables connecting it to utility poles and connecting it to customers over the next two years.

“We are here today due to a critical need. All of citizens need to connect to fiber-optic networks,” Breazeale said. “The Florence County Council had the foresight and leadership to move fast. … I’ve never worked with a better council. You guys know how to get things done. You were diligent, but effective. You all worked so well together. It’s been a pleasure to work with you.”

The internet was considered a luxury before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Today, it’s a necessity, County Council member Jason Springs said. Adults needed a fast internet connection to work from home. Children needed it for school when the pandemic forced schools to move to virtual instruction.

“We realized very quickly we had to find a way we can help precipitate broadband throughout Florence County,” he said.

Expanding broadband also will help Florence County grow its economy, he said.

District 61 State Rep. Roger Kirby also played a part in negotiating the agreement between Florence County and Spectrum, Dorriety said.

District 61 serves portions of Florence and Marion counties.

Florence County officials took the initiative to open talks with Spectrum to combine the county’s American Rescue Plan money with Spectrum’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund money to bring broadband internet to all of Florence County, Kirby said.

“When you all come together and coalesce, you can do big things. This, ladies and gentlemen is a big thing,” Kirby said. “It’s important the county recognized the opportunity to put all of these dollars to good use. I was honored to assist in pulling the varied interests together to move this generational opportunity forward for our area.”

Students in rural Florence County school districts are the big winners in this collaboration, Florence County School District 3 Superintendent Laura Hickson said.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the importance of broadband networks for schools and students, Hickson said. Broadband service is critical educating today’s students, who carry their lessons, educational materials and more on laptops or Chromebooks instead of lugging around textbooks like their parents did.

“We recognized the need for broadband during the shutdowns during COVID,” Hickson said. “The internet is our history, library, homework and training. … Most learning platforms and educational systems expect that every child will be able to access learning digitally and to do research and homework utilizing the internet through a high-speed connection capability and streaming videos.”

Many students in rural South Carolina don’t have access to high-speed internet at home, Hickson said.

“Today, the announcement that most of our students will have a fiber-connection available in the next 19 months cannot come soon enough. It will help address the inequities among communities. Every year without broadband connection is a year of educational opportunities lost for kids.”

The rollout of broadband to rural Florence County changes education, she said.

Hurricane Ian grew stronger as it passed the western tip of Cuba and enters the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It could intensify into a Category 4 hurricane with top winds of 140 mph. It is expected to make landfall along the west coast of Florida as early as Wednesday.

On Monday, Tampa and St. Petersburg appeared to be two of the most likely targets for Ian. If it strikes the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, it will be the first direct hit by a hurricane since 1921.

Chances are increasing that northeast South Carolina and southeast North Carolina will be impacted by Hurricane Ian by the end of the week, National Weather Service Warning Coordination Meteorologist Steven Pfaff said in a press statement.

Moisture from Ian will spread north and interact with a coastal front, which will create a potential for heavy rainfall and flooding. There also is a potential for isolated tornadoes this weekend, Pfaff said.

Much of the Pee Dee region is expected to receive 4-6 inches of rain as Ian passes. Rainfall is expected to increase across the area during Friday. The heaviest rain is expected late Friday and early Saturday, according to the National Weather Service hurricane forecast.

The rainfall likely will lead to flooding along vulnerable and low-lying areas.

The amount of rainfall predicted along the South Carolina coast will be 6-8 inches as the hurricane storms through South Carolina.

Francis Marion University is entering preparation mode for Hurricane Ian, Vice President of University Communications John Sweeney said.

The university is securing the campus against the elements. Those procedures could intensify as the week progresses.

The only public event scheduled on campus this weekend is the women’s volleyball game at 2 p.m. Saturday against Southern Wesleyan University. A decision on whether to play that game or postpone it will be made later this week, he said.

Francis Marion University is a state university. Any decision to close state universities would be made by the governor’s office, Sweeney said.

Area high schools have decided to move football games to Wednesday, Thursday and Monday because of Hurricane Ian.

Hartsville’s game at home against South Florence has been moved to 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

“There is a chance it could get moved to Wednesday night. We will not make that decision until late Monday or early Tuesday,” Hartsville athletic director Brad Boob stated in an email.

UPDATED FOOTBAL SCHEDULE

TONIGHT

Porter-Gaud at Trinity Collegiate, 6:30 p.m.

Pinewood Academy at Pee Dee Academy, 6:30 p.m.

Carvers Bay at Johnsonville, 7 p.m.

West Florence at Myrtle Beach, 7 p.m.

North Myrtle Beach at Wilson, 7:30 p.m.

Hemingway at East Clarendon, 7:30 p.m.

Dillon at Loris, 7:30 p.m.

Lake City at Crestwood, 7:30 p.m.

THURSDAY

Spartanburg Christian at Carolina Academy, 6 p.m.

Laurence Manning at Heathwood Hall, 7 p.m.

Aynor at Manning, 7:30 p.m.

South Florence at Hartsville, 7:30 p.m.

Lamar at Latta, 7:30 p.m.

Mullins at Lee Central, 7:30 p.m.

Chesterfield at North Central, 7:30 p.m.

Cheraw at Andrew Jackson, 7:30 p.m.

Marlboro County at Darlington, 7:30 p.m.

MONDAY

Lake View at Green Sea Floyds, 7 p.m.

Marion at Andrews, 7:30 p.m.