Horry County Schools talk school safety and national search for new superintendent

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — The Horry County School Board met Monday night to talk about plans to find a new superintendent and school security.

The school district said it received another bomb threat towards Carolina Forest High School Monday.

Monday’s threat made the sixth threat the school has received since last Wednesday.  Each time officers searched the school and gave the campus the “all clear”. Horry County Police said the first five threats were found to be a hoax.

Lisa Bourcier, the Horry County Schools spokesperson, said it’s important as the school year ends, to try and maintain the everyday school routine for students.

“They are wrapping end of the course testing, they are doing student celebrations, and we’re getting ready for graduation ceremonies as well so it’s critical that we have seat time for our students over the next several weeks,” Bourcier said.

Bourcier said Carolina Forest High is one of the district’s largest schools with 3,000 students. After the first threat, Bourcier said attendance went down.

Horry County Police said two students were charged from Thursday’s threat, but the other threats are still being investigated.

“It kind of gives other people ideas to do something similar so they research certain areas, and they see where a certain school is targeted and other people tend to repeat those,” Bourcier said.

Bourcier said she knows this is a stressful time for both students and parents, but school safety will always be a topic of priority for the school board.

She added the district plans to hold a budget hearing in June to look into putting more money towards school safety and security.

“It’s a shame that people want to insight fear in a school community, and you know we deal with it the best we can, and the priority is always the students to make sure they’re safe and secure,” Bourcier said.

The board announced after executive session the approval of Dr. Rick Maxey’s last day as superintendent on June 30th. Maxey has led the district since 2015, but recently announced plans to retire, ending his contract early.

The district plans to launch a national search for an interim and permanent superintendent. It said the plans are still “very preliminary” and no action was taken at Monday’s meeting for the search.

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Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook , and X, formerly Twitter . You can also read more of her work, here .

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