WOODRUFF — Six months ago, a group representing a proposed new charter school came to Lee Bailey, the city manager of Woodruff, with a proposal.
The city had over four years cobbled together 120 acres of wooded land along Highway 418 just outside of town to create a park for their quickly growing population. Sell some of the as-yet-undeveloped acreage, Bailey’s visitors said, and they could build a charter school that would guarantee 1,000 kids on site every day.
“You always have to listen and explore what’s out there,” Bailey said this week, standing a few feet away from a massive concrete pad that is the future school’s foundation.
Bailey’s listening session soon kicked into motion a three-way partnership that by 2027 will have Spartanburg County’s parks department running the 102-acre Riverbend Park on land that Woodruff owns.
The $30 million park will have four artificial turf fields for baseball, softball and soccer as well as pickle ball, a kayak launch at a bend in the Enoree River, walking trails and a dog park.
All of it will be adjacent to a 17-acre charter school — Spartanburg County’s second Libertas Academy campus — that is expected to open for K4 through 8th grade students in fall 2026.
Bailey said the charter school and park are separate projects.
The school’s future director, Celina Patton, said any use of the park will be worked out through agreements.
However, all present at an Oct. 8 groundbreaking ceremony acknowledged the school had no chance of laying a foundation so quickly without a close public-private partnership. The school’s $1.25 million land purchase hasn’t closed yet.
“The school rising up out of the ground behind me is a testament to the partnership,” Woodruff Mayor Kenneth Gist said.
The whole park and school complex on Highway 418 is a mile from BMW’s two-year-old, $700 million battery assembly plant in Woodruff while also 15 to 20 minutes from the bedroom communities of Simpsonville and Fountain Inn, just across the county line in Greenville.
Gist envisioned workers in the Woodruff-area, as well as Greenville County or Laurens County, dropping off their children at Libertas on their way to jobs at BMW, Airsys or the new Woodruff campus of Spartanburg Regional hospital without hitting a single traffic light.
“Everything is on this side of the town,” Gist said.
A charter school working so closely with a city and county government is rare in South Carolina but could become more common in corners of the state where local officials want to use a charter school to recruit employers, said Cameron Runyan, CEO and superintendent of the Charter Institute at Erskine. Erskine is the authorizer for Libertas.
Libertas, a new school modeled after the one in Boiling Springs that opened two years ago, will offer a classical curriculum, daily physical education and music or art classes every day.
At Wednesday’s groundbreaking, no officials from Woodruff-based Spartanburg School District 4, home to Woodruff High School, were present. The event drew all 25 Woodruff city employees, the county’s top economic development official and South Carolina Superintendent Ellen Weaver, a vocal supporter of charter schools.
Critics of the charter school sector have charged that recruiting students can impact traditional public schools that depend on a per-student state funding model.
Asked if she thought the new 1,000-student charter school might cause District 4 problems, Weaver said her prepared remarks that day “spoke for themselves.”
Gist — a Woodruff High graduate — said that with 7,000 houses permitted or under construction now across Spartanburg County, no one should worry that local public schools will lack for students.