Hyperbaric Chamber Therapy in Fort Mill, SC

School leaders say new students enrolling in the district will be assigned to different schools in an effort to maintain favorable student-teacher ratios.

FORT MILL, S.C. — New students enrolling in the Fort Mill School District will be placed at different campuses as school leaders enact an enrollment freeze.

In a statement Wednesday, the district said the freeze affects families in the attendance zones for Gold Hill Elementary School, Gold Hill Middle School, and Pleasant Knoll Middle School.

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The purpose, according to district leaders, is to maintain favorable teacher-student ratios and limit overcrowding at current buildings amidst a growing student population.

"What we certainly don't want to end up happening is to continue to pack kids into a school where we end up with, you know, 30 kids in a kindergarten class," Joe Burke, Fort Mill Schools chief communication officer, said. "Or you know, over too many kids to serve for lunch or breakfast time at the school."

Fort Mill is growing at a record pace, according to experts.

"Fort Mill overall has experienced 5% growth year over year, but the population growth has actually grown by over 16% since 2020," Laurie Plyler, a real estate agent and CEO of Keller Williams Connected in Fort Mill, said.

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The area is not only seeing transplants from inside South Carolina, but its proximity to Charlotte is attractive for some families.

"Fort Mill is a really unique area because you get a mix of small town and big town amenities, you have new business, new growth, and education system is really attractive," Plyler said.

The district stressed that students currently attending the impacted schools will not be affected, and only affects students who enroll after the freeze is enacted.

"They're going to have those same opportunities at their newest school," Burke said. "So we've worked really hard to make sure that that experience is uniform across the board for all of our kids."

School leaders say the number of students impacted won’t be too large.

"It can be anywhere from five to 20 kids at each school, depending on the number of people who move into that particular area," Burke said.

Here's how the campus reassignments will work:

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Students who take the bus to school will remain on their assigned bus and travel to their assigned school each day. The district will shuttle students to and from their homes to their assigned schools.

Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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A Colorado school group has applied to bring a new charter school to Fort Mill.

Ascent Classical Academies is a tuition-free, K-12 charter school model. Ascent has submitted applications for four new South Carolina campuses. The first could open next year.

The four sites are in Fort Mill, Charleston, Greenville and Chapin. Ascent submitted applications to the South Carolina Department of Education naming the Charter Institute at Erskine as sponsor. The institute is in Columbia, S.C.

Derec Shuler, executive director of Ascent, said in an announcement that as a South Carolina native it’s exciting to work with area parents and communities on a new education option. The goal is education beyond just college and career readiness. One that prepares students to be happy and flourish.

Shuler said the school began as parents searching for a traditional academic experience focused on reason and virtue development.

“Seeing our own children thrive in classical schools has led us to continue working to provide these opportunities to more families,” Shuler said.

Public charter schools are non-religious, nonprofit schools that form and operate in South Carolina with the sponsorship of a public school district, the state charter school district or an institution of higher learning. They can vary considerably in grades and programs offered.

This school year there are 87 charter schools operating in South Carolina. Only 16 of those schools include kindergarten through high school senior level courses. Almost all of the area charter schools are in Rock Hill.

York Preparatory Academy and Riverwalk Academy in Rock Hill are full K-12 schools. Sponsored by the Rock Hill School District, the Palmetto School is a high school program. Legion Collegiate Academy in Rock Hill offers high school grades.

Discovery Charter of Lancaster offers K-5.

Some charter schools have well established histories. Yet not all succeed.

There have been 46 schools chartered in South Carolina since 1996 that have closed. Many of them just two or three years after receiving the charter. Children’s School at Sylvia Circle is the only one on that list based in the Rock Hill region.

What if twice as many homes and apartments as are in Fort Mill today were squeezed in among what’s already built in York and Lancaster counties?

Now, think of those new homes and apartments as if they’re already on the way.

There’s no clear trend in the number of new homes and apartments approved in the region since the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is one consensus. A whole lot more homes and apartments are coming.

The Herald reached out to public officials in hotbed growth areas just south of the state line to see what’s coming. We combined that data with recent reports of projects now in the works.

Conclusion: Some areas are approving more new homes than ever. Some aren’t.

A picture emerges in York and Lancaster counties where decisions already made will further alter the local landscape. Even by a conservative estimate, those areas have well more than 20,000 homes, townhomes or apartments that are approved, but aren’t yet built.

Here’s a roundup of what we found:

Fort Mill residential growth has been among the highest in the region for more than a decade. The more than 24,000 residents in 2020 is well more than double the 2010 count, at fewer than 11,000 residents. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Fort Mill, as of mid-2021, had almost 28,000 residents.

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Yet new home approvals aren’t coming as rapidly.

In 2020, Fort Mill Town Council didn’t approve any new residential developments. The same is true for last year, when council reviewed but denied an annexation request for 80 new homes.

The town did approve annexation, rezoning and a development agreement in 2021 for the Crossroads project. That proposal will add up to 460 age-restricted residences and new commercial development in the Fort Mill Parkway and Williams Road area. Close to half of those residences, at 220 units, are part of an independent or assisted living facility with memory care.

Council initially denied a plan for Crossroads before agreeing to modifications. Council denied two more residential plans in 2021 that could’ve added 318 homes.

Town leaders have spoken for some time about the pressure new homes put on area roads, schools and other public infrastructure. Mayor Guynn Savage told area elected and road officials last month she still recalls the message from her first meeting with the Rock Hill-Fort Mill Area Transportation Study policy committee.

“I was told, Fort Mill’s got to stop growing,” Savage said. “You just have to stop permitting houses. Quit growing.”

Recently, Savage said, there’s been a shift.

“We’ve turned down quite a few,” Savage said. “It doesn’t make the paper, the ones we turn down. It certainly does the ones we accept. In the last two years, we’ve turned down more than we’ve accepted.”

Related to roads, Savage told the group, the hope is that fewer approved new homes will ease pressure points.

“We heard you,” Savage said, “and we understood that we were contributing to the problem that we all have.”

It may be a long while still before the recent shift away from new housing approvals becomes apparent. The town has about 7,000 new residences already entitled, or allowed for construction by past decisions or existing zoning. Town leaders say the final residence count could be significantly smaller due to land use or property constraints, like wetlands. Many of the entitled homes come from agreements set to span decades, so the impact won’t hit all at once.

The big driver in new homes is the Lennar project along Fort Mill Parkway, Elizabeth. Land formerly owned by U.S. Rep. John Spratt came up for development almost a decade ago. The initial request involved 3,400 residences. The town worked that number down to a 2016 approval for about 2,600 residences. The plan further evolved to fewer than 2,000 homes.

Unincorporated York County saw a peak for new home plans in 2020. There were nine projects with 895 lots whose plats came to the county planning commission. That lot count was almost four times what it was in 2019, at 239 lots.

There were more projects — 15 — in 2021 but there were about half as many lots requested. There were 449 residences approved in 2021, a number that dropped by almost half again last year to 241 residences.

County planners didn’t provide an exact number of how many approved homes can still be built in unincorporated parts of the county, but the figure is significant. Just among projects that came to the planning commission from 2019 to 2022, there were 1,824 lots approved. As of the new year, the county only listed one of those projects — a 50-lot subdivision — as under construction.

The past three years brought a steady increase for Rock Hill residences. There were 899 units approved in 2020. The amount increased to 1,270 units in 2021 and 1,627 units last year.

City planner Alex Boyce said the city doesn’t track the number of homes and apartments approved but not yet built. Sometimes projects are approved but never built. Some approvals expire in two years, leaving some units unbuilt. Then, there are projects approved many years back that still have work ongoing.

For units approved from 2020 to 2022, however, there were 375 units with certificates of occupancy as of year’s end. Which leaves 3,421 units approved in that span without one -- or yet to be fully built.

Lancaster County keeps tabs on its panhandle (the Indian Land area), its main residential growth area for more than a decade.

The county has a list of approved, active and recently completed subdivisions there. At year’s end, there were 17,759 homes and apartments on that list.

More than two-thirds of those residences, nearly 12,500 of them, are homes. About 5,200 are apartments.

Last year saw 411 new home approvals in the panhandle, less than half what the prior year brought. Apartment unit approvals dropped 38% in a year.

The past five years brought a shift in housing type. In 2018 and 2019, only a sliver of the more than 3,000 approved residences were apartments. From 2020 forward, there have been more apartment units than homes approved. Last year there were more than twice as many apartments as homes.

There’s likely plenty more of both to come.

Only 56% of homes and 48% of apartments on the approved list in the panhandle have been built. At year’s end there were 8,211 approved residences that hadn’t yet started construction. Of them, there are almost 5,500 homes and more than 2,700 apartments.

Tega Cay residential approvals bounced back in 2022.

“There were no new developments in 2020 and 2021,” said Susan Britt, city planning and development services director. “Permits issued in those years were for the continued development of existing subdivisions.”

The city approved 432 residences last year. There were 160 homes and 225 apartments at the former Game On site now informally known as the city “Main Street” project, and 138 homes at Windell Woods. Windell Woods should be complete by 2025, the former Game On site by 2027.

Like other area communities, recent approvals are just part of what comes next. As of the start of 2023, Tega Cay had 859 homes and apartments approved but not yet built. Apart from the former Game On site, all those homes and apartments come in projects slated for completion by 2025.

Expected new homes aren’t confined to the state line area.

As of October, the town of York had 14 active or recently approved projects under development. Another was pending. The western York County city had 2,412 homes and townhomes included.

Lancaster is another non-traditional hot spot for residential growth. The Roselyn development south of Andrew Jackson State Park on U.S. 521 was approved for more than 1,800 homes in 2019. Several others south of the panhandle followed.

Last fall, Lancaster County development services director Rox Burhans said the county has five years worth of residential growth approved but not yet built. There are more than 8,000 homes and townhomes that can be built without further approval. More projects have come in since.

In late January, Lancaster City Council moved forward with plans for almost 500 new residences. Combined with the Red Rose Village project from December, the city looks at more than 700 new residences in total.

A large, prime piece of Fort Mill property once slated for new homes is one of several large property sales in February. All at $1 million or more across York, Lancaster and Chester counties.

Combined, eight such sales total more than $30 million.

Here, according to land records from each county, are the largest property sales for February:

▪ A Rock Hill hotel is listed as a $15.8 million sale on Feb. 7, but it’s a re-recorded transaction with the same owner. Waxhaw-based Raaj Kumar Hotel Investments owns the four-story, more than 66,000-square-foot Home2 Suites hotel at Old Springdale Road and Bilwyn Drive, near the Galleria mall.

▪ Kestrell Timber bought four parcels from Charlotte-based BMWM Timber in Chester County on Feb. 8 for a combined $5.8 million. Together, the properties total more than 1,700 acres. The smallest property is 181 acres. The largest is more than 1,100 acres. The connected properties are off Mt. Pleasant Church and Mt. Prospect roads, between Center and Pinckney roads.

▪ Wellington Square Acquisitions out of Columbia bought 33 properties off Black Highway near U.S. 321 Bypass in York County Feb. 17 for $4 million. The York duplex sites on Wellington Square Drive range from 2,100 to more than 3,000 square feet.

▪ Two large properties between South Dobys Bridge Road and the Catawba River in Fort Mill sold Feb. 2 for a combined $4.2 million. One is an 86-acre farm property at $2.2 million. The other, beside it, is 75 acres that sold for almost $2 million at 1598 Rivers Edge Drive.

Almost a decade ago the properties were part of plans that would’ve brought hundreds of new homes to Fort Mill. Town staff and council decided against those plans and the sales do a developer didn’t happen. Now, Indian Land-based Saviria LLC is the new owner.

The properties touch both South Dobys and the Catawba, and are bordered by Preserve at Riverchase on the west and larger residential lots to the east.

▪ A more than 7,000-square-foot home on Creole Road in Lake Wylie sold Feb. 22 for more than $1.8 million.

▪ More than 134 acres of farm land at 1723 Sharon Road in York sold Feb. 14 for almost $1.3 million. Lotsales, Inc., which bought the site in late 2021 for $1.75 million, sold it to 4Farm Holdings out of Charlotte. The site has more than half a dozen utility garages but is listed mainly as timber property.

▪ A 4,400-square-foot Carnoustie Court home in Indian Land sold Feb. 20 for almost $1.2 million.

▪ A 3,800-square-foot Kirkbride Court home in the Springfield subdivision of Fort Mill sold Feb. 23 for a little more than $1 million.

This story was originally published March 2, 2023, 8:31 AM.

FORT MILL, S.C. — Talk about out of this world: a group of sixth graders in Fort Mill won a national NASA contest.

What You Need To Know

Students at Forest Creek Middle School were among 60 other winning teams of students from across the country to win the NASA TechRise Student Challenge.

This is a STEM competition for grades 6-12.

This year’s challenge was to design a science or technology experiment that will be tested on a NASA-sponsored high-altitude balloon.

The design had to be something that can help with space exploration and the study of Earth.

The students at Forest Creek designed a phone case that could protect a phone in different atmospheres.

Joanna Barney, a science teacher at Forest Creek Middle School, is leading the students through this challenge.

“They’re gonna create phone cases made of different materials and see which one is best if you were to take it to another atmosphere so that would help our pilots, that could help astronauts,” Barney said.

“Maybe in the future, like, we could use phones in like, in space, like in the future maybe if we could get to Mars,” said student Aahil Raza.

Students are excited.

“What I’m most excited about is building it and then coding it,” said student Katelyn Stokes.

The students meet once a week with a NASA engineer to discuss their design.

Once completed, the phone case will be placed in a box that will be attached to the balloon.

The balloon will ascend 70,000 feet and float for four hours.

Students will also be responsible for building the sensors that will be put on the box so they can measure data as the balloon is floating.

“So we’ll get data from the machines that we're building and we’ll be able to monitor the data when it goes up,” Barney explained.

NASA awarded the students $1,500 to buy the materials needed to make this idea come to life.

There are also two schools in North Carolina that won this challenge, including Cross Creek Early College High School in Fayetteville and Nesbitt Discovery Academy in Asheville.