Story by Courtney Williams / July 27, 2021
The Post and Courier, JUL 16, 2021
Meeting Street Schools, the Charleston-based nonprofit organization that runs public-private elementary schools throughout the state, awarded over 100 teachers bonuses for the 2020-21 school year.
The bonuses, which were given based on student performance, averaged around $5,000 per teacher with some receiving as much as $10,000.
They included teachers at all four of the nonprofit’s schools: Meeting Street Academy in Charleston, Meeting Street Academy in Spartanburg, Meeting Street Elementary School @ Brentwood and Meeting Street Elementary School @ Burns, both in North Charleston.
In the past two years, Meeting Street Schools has developed a system to assess student performance, said CEO Christopher Ruszkowski. The 2020-21 school year marked the first in the nonprofit’s initiative to provide annual bonuses based on student performance.
The nonprofit’s schools have a unique funding model. Meeting Street Academy in Charleston is completely privately funded while the public-private elementary schools in North Charleston and Spartanburg are funded through a mix of federal per-pupil dollars and private donations.
Meeting Street isn’t the first school system in the area to provide bonuses — Charleston County School District, Berkeley County School District and Dorchester District 2 all distributed one-time $1,000 bonuses over the school year.
Meeting Street is the first to create an incentive program based on student performance.
In the first year of bonuses, the money came from philanthropic dollars raised by the school system, Ruszkowski said. Going forward, Meeting Street plans to include the bonuses into its base budget, which could mean public dollars will go toward the bonuses at the public-private schools.
Although Meeting Street has the help of private donors, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible for public school districts to implement a bonus system like the one created by Meeting Street.
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