McCORMICKÂ â This story could have ended many ways.
Four years ago, the remote John de la Howe campus in rural McCormick County, at the time serving as a state boarding school for kids kicked out of their local districts, lost its academic accreditation from the South Carolina Department of Education. A series of investigations since 2010 had turned up financial irregularities, including a document-shredding episode in the summer of 2010. The school s enrollment was dropping, loyal faculty were leaving and John de la Howe was on its third superintendent in six years.
The school, on 1,310 acres deeded to the state in 1797 for the education of poor boys and girls, faced permanent closure. Operating on and off as a rural school since the 1830s, John de la Howe has since 1918 been an independent state agency, with students boarding there since at least the 1920s.