District to pilot Boys & Girls Club 'Be Great Academy' after-school program at two schools as PERC afternoons end

At the April 7 Sumter School District board meeting, district staff proposed replacing the afternoon PERC (pre-K and early-childhood) after-school offering with the Boys & Girls Club-run Be Great Academy (BGA) at Millwood and Alice Drive Elementary schools for the 2025–26 school year. Administrators said the change is proposed because the district cannot sustain PERC’s longstanding operating deficits.

Veron Davis, executive director of student support services, introduced the proposal and said the district is not able to “financially sustain the program” for full-day 3/4-year-old classes at Alice Drive and Millwood. Cheryl Creel Ray, director of early childhood, presented financial and enrollment details: the PERC program has shown deficits dating to February 2015 with the largest single-year deficit noted as $231,798.85 in 2021 and a district-wide deficit of $80,241.94 as of June 30, 2024. Staffing reductions and increased tuition were used to reduce shortfalls, but enrollment dropped and revenue remained insufficient.

Creel Ray gave site-level enrollment and staffing numbers: Alice Drive and Millwood each had roughly 51 total students across sessions and had been reduced in staff (two full-time positions cut at each site earlier in the year). She described state licensing requirements (South Carolina Department of Social Services ratios) that constrain classroom sizes and staffing.

Under the proposal, the district would discontinue the combined 3-and-4-year-old full-day class at Alice Drive and Millwood (07:30–02:30) for 2025–26, and instead pilot the Be Great Academy, operated by the Boys & Girls Club, to run afternoons from 02:30 to 06:30 at the two sites. Cheryl Creel Ray and Veron Davis said the Boys & Girls Club would operate, align programs to school culture, provide homework-help time, and offer scholarships and sliding-scale fees so no child is turned away. Carter Clark, president and CEO of the Boys & Girls Club, and Robin Solvallia, the program’s local executive director, were introduced as partners.

District trustees asked whether the pilot would serve only students who attend the host schools (the answer: yes for year one due to transportation), whether staff children could attend if they provided transport (yes), and whether the program would expand to rural parts of the county (administrators said expansion would be considered only after pilot-year data and that a plan for expansion would be returned after collecting outcomes).

Administrators said the Boys & Girls Club would pay the school based on program size, with payments to schools estimated to range from about $5,000 to $150,000 depending on program size. Officials said the BGA is designed to be self-sustaining and would not require the board to provide additional funds; trustees asked for a written plan and enrollment projections before any final approval.

Why it matters: The change affects families who rely on district-run childcare and after-school care; staff reductions and program shifts could affect access to early-childhood full-day offerings and district budgets.

What’s next: Administration said it will collect pilot-year data at Millwood and Alice Drive and return with a plan and expansion timeline the following year. The board asked for a timeline and projections before the end of the school year.