FAQ

In compliance with South Carolina law, students must be 5 years of age on or before September 1, to be considered for Kindergarten. More information is available on our Kindergarten Registration and Pre-K Screenings page. School attendance is mandatory between the ages of 5 and 16 years of age

Yes, BCSD offers a pre-kindergarten program. This program is available for children who are 4-years-old on or before September 1, and meet specific developmental criteria. You must fill out a Child Find/Pre-K Screening Referral. Currently, BCSD does not offer a program for 3-year-olds.

Immunization requirements vary from country to country and state to state. Your child must meet South Carolina State immunization requirements. According to the South Carolina State law, your child must present adequate immunization records within 30 calendar days of attendance or he/she will be suspended from school until that proof is presented. To learn more, visit the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SD DHEC) Children & School Vaccine Requirements.

By law, the age of your child determines grade placement in elementary and middle school age. In high school, prior educational background determines grade placement. The Welcome Center will take all the information available into account and make a recommendation to the school principal regarding grade placement.

Minimum age requirement for Kinder: Children will be admitted into a Kindergarten program at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, or whenever they move into the district, if they have their fifth birthday on or before September 1, 2020.

Your child is guaranteed a seat in a school that is in your home attendance zone. At the time of registration, you must provide us with proof of your current address. Read below for a complete list of the required documents.

Visit the Proof of Residency webpage for information and documentation required for registration.

Beaufort County School District offers an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. ESOL is an instructional program that assists students in learning English as soon as possible in reading, writing, listening, and speaking areas.

Maybe. If your child speaks a language at home other than English, then, yes, he or she will need to be assessed with the English proficiency test given by the staff at the Welcome Center. If your child only speaks English, then, no, your child will not need to come to the Welcome Center.

If your child has a language at home other than English, he or she will be screened with the WIDA Access Placement Test (KW-APT or WIDA Screener). This is a language proficiency test which indicates whether your child requires ESOL services or not. It is not graded it and will not prohibit attendance to a school. This assessment will let your child’s ESOL teacher(s) know how to better assist them in becoming English proficient.

Additionally, ESOL students are assessed using state and locally required exams to determine academic progress. Each spring your student will be given the Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State (ACCESS) Test to measure annual progress in English language acquisition. It is important that your learner takes this assessment very seriously because it measures the student’s academic achievement in English as a Second Language. The results are used by the teachers to customize the ESOL content for the student with the purpose of ensuring the student’s success in the mainstream classes.

ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) services are provided to assist students with limited English skills to function in the regular English-speaking classroom, to develop proficiency in reading, writing, speaking, and listening in English, and to develop knowledge about the customs and culture of the nation, community and the school. Program leaders, coaches, teachers, and bilingual liaisons are helpful in facilitating resource information to the ESOL families to help them easily absorb the culture of their new place they chose to call home.

ESOL services are provided district wide.  A home language survey must be administered to determine if a student is a potential English Learner (EL) student. 

The three required questions are:

1. What language did the student first learn to speak?

2.  What language is spoken most often by the student?

3. What language is primarily used in the student’s home regardless of the language spoken by the student?

If the responses indicate that the student speaks a language other than English, then a language proficiency assessment must be administered to determine if the student qualifies as an ELL student.

For more information regarding this assessment, please contact the Welcome Center.

Yes, please contact us.

Before moving, you need to request and fill out a withdrawal form at your child’s current school. Turn the form in as quickly as possible so that the form can be processed, and your child’s records can be released to the new school in the Beaufort County School District. Please request a student file copy for your own records. If your child has received ESOL services in the last school, please ask for copies of the results of any assessments.

The Welcome Center will identify if the previous school is in one of the 40 U.S. states part of the WIDA Consortium. Depending on this and the Home Language Survey answers, the Welcome Center staff will request the student to come or not to have the WIDA screener done.

Yes. The federal McKinney-Vento Act, as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and state regulations mandate immediate enrollment of students who lack a fixed, regular, or adequate housing and are considered homeless.

The McKinney-Vento Act defines the term "homeless children and youth" as including, in part, "children and youths who are sharing the housing of other persons due to loss of housing, economic hardship, or a similar reason; are living in motels, hotels, trailer parks, or camping grounds due to the lack of alternative adequate accommodations; are living in emergency or transitional shelters; are abandoned in hospitals; or are awaiting foster care placement," as well as children of migratory agricultural workers. Visit  McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act for more information.

This is a special circumstance that requires special conditions. Every child above 5 and under the age 16 living in the Beaufort county boundaries must attend school no matter what the situation. In these circumstances, you need to have a written custody or guardianship arrangement that involves the student, the Beaufort County School District will need a copy of the agreement which must be notarized.

Additional information may be required in determining which regulations will guide the enrollment of the students. Your niece’s/nephew’s/cousin’s/sibling’s circumstance may be considered homeless under the McKinney-Vento Act. Please contact the Welcome Center for more information.

If your child has a high school diploma from another country, he/she may not enroll in one of our high schools. However, he/she may enroll in adult education classes with our school district.

Yes. Under federal law, all children in the United States are entitled to a public elementary and secondary education regardless of their race, color, national origin, citizenship, or immigration status of their parents/guardian. For more information, read the Dear Colleague letter from The United States Department of Justice.

Yes, neither federal nor state regulations prohibit a student who is receiving ESOL services from being evaluated for special education services. Conversely, a student who is determined eligible for special education services can continue to receive bilingual/ESOL services.