Upstate charter school admitted into SC High School League

SPARTANBURG, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - In a 9-7 vote on Wednesday afternoon, Mountain View Prep in Spartanburg was admitted into the South Carolina High School League.

The charter school describes itself as a sports and entertainment center and will offer a dual enrollment program to Juniors and Seniors. The school is set to open in August 2024 and intially have 500 students in grades 7-12. Mountain View Prep requested to be in AAA for sports. Which, depending on the region, includes schools like Woodruff, Union, and Daniel.

“We understand the climate right now that charter schools are facing, and so because of the perceived advantage we have, we’ll say look, we’ll go ahead and go a classification up based on what our numbers actually are,” said Mountain View Prep Principal Matt Talley.

In South Carolina, charter school students don’t have to live in a specific area, just in the state, and have a reliable way to get to school. Talley says they have recieved interest from families in Spartanburg, Greenville, and Cherokee counties and beyond. He says Mountain View Prep is about giving parents and families a choice in their children’s future, but will not explicit students to the school just to be on sports teams.

“If your definition of recruiting is sharing information with parents and allowing them to make informed decisions that they deem to be the best for their son, daughter, student, then in that case, yeah we do recruit. We share information, we answer questions that they ask, and then that parent is ultimately responsible for deciding what they think is the best opportunity for their student,” said Talley.

On Wednesday, the SCHSL also passed a new proposal Wednesday afternoon in an attempt to balance competition in high school sports. The committee approved the plan 12-4. Under the new proposal, every student who lives outside of a school’s assigned attendance zone will count as three for its enrollment numbers.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to put our students in a position to get opportunities, and ideally, that would be local because we understand how good sports are in this area, whether it be at the AA, AAA, AAAA level. At the end of the day, we just want our student-athletes to have a chance to compete and participate, and that’s what today’s ruling really did for us is allow us to continue that momentum,” said Talley.

For more information on Mountain View Prep and the school lottery that ends on Nov. 30, click here.

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