Meeting Street Schools (MSS) is a groundbreaking initiative dedicated to the creation of a new mandate for education in South Carolina and beyond. MSS was founded upon the belief that all children deserve an excellent education regardless of their geographic or socioeconomic circumstances, and all children have the ability to excel in the classroom. Where access to quality public education or affordable private alternatives is often severely limited, MSS is providing children with transformational educational opportunities.
We work hard, push-through via tough love & optimism.
We set goals, respond to data, care about winning.
We innovate, create, disrupt, evolve, try again.
We work proximately, think uber-globally.
We study, read, think, reflect, improve.
Founded in 2008 by philanthropists Ben and Kelly Navarro, Meeting Street Academy-Charleston first opened its doors in a downtown Charleston church to 33 three and four year-olds with the mission of serving and creating opportunities for children that would have otherwise attended unsatisfactory schools. Fourteen years later, Meeting Street Schools serves approximately 2,000 students and employs nearly 400 team members across four campuses in Charleston and Spartanburg. A non-profit organization, its network of schools is comprised of the independent flagship school, Meeting Street Academy – Charleston, a new rural public charter school scheduled to open in Jasper County in Fall 2023, and three Public Schools of Innovation operated in partnership with Charleston County School District and Spartanburg School District 7. As South Carolina public schools of innovation, these campuses have the freedom to innovate and operate with greater autonomy while being held accountable in their communities.
Our founders are two action-oriented entrepreneurs and philanthropists who call Charleston home and felt a responsibility to act 15 years ago. Ben and Kelly Navarro were prompted by the fundamental unfairness of a system that fails to teach 4 out of every 5 underserved students to read at grade level, a failure that often is perpetuated by civic and governmental systems’ inaction.
Starting a school is possibly the hardest thing the Navarros could have done in response to these truths. So it was a labor of love when they put their own resources and toil into the formation of an independent, community-based school serving students from underresourced communities in order to provide the same level of quality that their own children experienced.
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Join a community of incredible, passionate people working to change the lives of our students. Our compensation and benefits are a cut above the rest: the most competitive total compensation in the region.
Start Your Career!“MSA is a family. Once you’re in, you’re in. They said they would follow our kids from K-3 to college and they actually lived up to what they said they would do. Not only did MSA challenge my daughter academically but it also exposed her to new things that she probably wouldn’t have been exposed to at our previous neighborhood school. Our journey at MSA was exciting and rewarding. They actually walk the walk.”
“We come into work everyday truly believing that our students are capable of achieving anything that is put in front of them. Here at MSS, students are provided the opportunity to achieve success through the facilitation of well-educated teachers, resources, and a responsive classroom school environment.”
Meeting Street Schools does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, or national or ethnic in the administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarships or loan programs, and athletic or other school-administered programs.
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