3 storylines to know from Sumter School District this month

1. Board votes to transfer $1.7M for new Crestwood stadium

Crestwood High School's football team will imminently have an on-campus place to play in for the first time ever. The school opened in 1996.

The school board voted to transfer $1.7 million in capital funds to complete the stadium at a special-called meeting in late June, bringing the total project cost to $5.1 million. The stadium will serve the Knights' football and soccer teams, and the contractor will also do some work on the softball field.

The lone dissenting vote, Daniel Palumbo, finance committee chairman, questioned the project going over budget, its timeline and designer's choice to install turf.

Administration said inflation affected the budget and that the team's coaching staff preferred turf. The timeline for completion is mid-season, but specifics are subject to change according to weather and other general construction delays.

The football team has always played its home games at Hillcrest Middle School in Dalzell.

2. Sumter High salutatorian named National Merit Scholarship Finalist winner

It's one thing to be named among the top of your high school class. Taeyoung "Aiden" Kim achieved something only a few thousand did this year nationwide and that no Sumter School District student has done in at least a decade.

Kim, Sumter High School's Class of 2024 salutatorian, was named a National Merit Scholarship Program Finalist winner, which is only bestowed on about 7,140 U.S. high school seniors each year.

In doing so, he earned a $1,500 scholarship per semester to attend Clemson University, where he intends to major in biological sciences and eventually become a scientific researcher and help create new medicines to treat disease. It will supplement a full-ride scholarship he received from a local private donor in the Harmon Scholarship.

Kim finished No. 2 out of about 446 seniors at Sumter with a weighted GPA of 5.429, which is a 4.0 unweighted. He graduated from the school's International Baccalaureate program.

3. Board passes budget without millage increase request, 7-1

For the first time in recent memory, Sumter's school board passed its upcoming year's budget without requesting a millage increase from Sumter County Council.

The vote was 7-1, with Shawn Ragin as the only trustee in opposition.

As calculated, the district's spending will exceed revenues by about $3 million, and the fund balance, or the district's reserves, will be used to offset the difference, a move the state legislature has been pushing.

The district's fund balance, as of June 30, 2023, was $51.4 million. It has grown in recent years, largely because of teacher and staff vacancies, from $14.4 million. The current total is about 4.5 months of expenditures on hand. State law requires school districts to have at least one month of expenditures in reserves.

Information for this article was taken from reporting by Item education reporter Bruce Mills.