{"id":8622,"date":"2026-06-17T15:37:46","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/17\/green-charter-school-closes\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:37:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:37:46","slug":"green-charter-school-closes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/17\/green-charter-school-closes\/","title":{"rendered":"Green Charter School closes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Parents of students enrolled in the Green Charter School Midlands Campus in Irmo will be scrambling to find a new school as administrators announced the immediate suspension of operations and their intent to not enroll students in the fall for the 2026-27 school year.<\/p>\n<p>The school cites financial and enrollment problems as the cause for discounting operations.&nbsp;The school originally had more than 300 students but fell to half that this year. The arrest of two school employees in 2025 was a main factor in the enrollment exodus when Sulaymaan Benoit, after school director, was arrested for eight counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct with three students aged 7 to 12 in February of 2025. The school&rsquo;s principal, Tina Shaw, failed to report the incidents to law enforcement even after the school&rsquo;s internal investigation turned up another student victim. Shaw waited a week before contacting law enforcement which violated a requirement for mandatory reporters such as hospital staff and educators to report immediately of any abuse.<\/p>\n<p>Irmo Police Chief Bobby Dale said that her failure to report in a timely matter led to her arrest.<\/p>\n<p>Shaw was charged with failure to report child abuse and two counts of assault and battery.<br \/>Benoit was arrested again in October of 2025 on four additional counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor under age 11.<\/p>\n<p>The families of the victims have filed a law suit against the school.<br \/>The board at Green Charter Schools in Greenville voted on Thursday, June 11 to suspend operations immediately.<\/p>\n<p>Green Charter School Board Chair Justin Varnes said in a statement that the closing is &lsquo;unique&rsquo; and &lsquo;should not be interpreted as a reflection of the performance, stability or future of our other campuses.&rsquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Green Charter School in Irmo opened in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Parents of students enrolled in the Green Charter School Midlands Campus in Irmo will be scrambling to find a new school as administrators announced the immediate suspension of operations and their intent to not enroll students in the fall for the 2026-27 school year. The school cites financial and enrollment<span class=\"more-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/17\/green-charter-school-closes\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34],"tags":[1336],"class_list":["entry","author-john-griggs","post-8622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-education","tag-green-charter-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gpstrianglenews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Green-Charter-School_630x350.jpg?fit=630%2C350&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpstrianglenews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}