Hair Salon inSummerville, SC

BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C. (WCSC) - Friends and family continue to search for a missing 15-year-old girl.

The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office says Alexis Damitz ran away from her home in Summerville Tuesday night. That is the last time any family say or heard from her.

Alexis’ mother shared a plea to her daughter, asking her to take care of herself.

“Go to a church, go to a hospital, if you don’t want to come home, I get it,” Ashlie Damitz says. “There’s places you can go there’s resources. We’re here to help you.”

Ashlie says she wants more than anything to know her daughter is safe, and eventually have her come home.

Those who know Alexis are working together to put together search parties. People are showing up on bikes and four-wheelers to go through nearby neighborhoods and friends are driving across the county to put up posters.

Alexis is 5 foot 4 inches, 110 pounds, with brown or red hair and brown eyes.

Her mother says that family from across the country have flown and driven into town to help support each other and hopefully welcome Alexis home at some point soon. Alexis’ mother says she left lots of important items like her cell phone behind.

“We think you can monitor them and keep them as close as we can and in reality, you never know I guess and we just want her home and safe and sound and to get her the help she needs, whatever that may be, and to know that she does have a community here that loves her and we, of course, love her and we want her to come home,” Ashlie says.

In the wake of the news, the Damitz family says they feel incredibly supportive and hope Alexis knows she is supported as well.

“Any help that we can leading to Alexis coming home safe whether it be anonymous – she’s not in trouble – we just need her home safe,” Ashlie says. “Nobody is in trouble, any information we can get to bring her home is what we’re looking for.”

Ashlie says her teenage daughter is in the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and is very smart, with a successful career ahead of her.

“If you’re a friend, if you’re a true friend, get her the help she needs, take her to where she needs to go,” Ashlie says. “Let us know where she is, let us know she’s safe and alive.”

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SUMMERVILLE — When eighth grade history teacher Charity Carpenter first walked into her classroom in the new East Edisto Middle School on Aug. 8, she had to leave again and walk around the building to work off her excitement.

It was the Monday before school was set to start, and the hallways still smelled of new paint. Other teachers wheeled carts and trolleys full of equipment and school supplies into classrooms. Friends greeted each other, asking about each other’s summers or commenting on the new school.

Around the corner from her classroom, Carpenter bumped into fellow teacher Amy Baldwin, who was directing students from her Gateway to Technology class how to unload her computers and robotics equipment. The students had been in Baldwin’s class in previous years at Oakbrook Middle School and had volunteered to help her unpack her new classroom.

“How’s your room looking?” Baldwin asked Carpenter.

“I just walked in and I just had to leave my stuff there and take a walk,” Carpenter said. “I was just overwhelmed.”

East Edisto is the biggest school she’s ever been in, Carpenter told The Post and Courier. And the numbers back her up. The 120,000-square-foot school cost $31 million and took 16 months to complete. It’s located off S.C. Highway 61 behind Beech Hill Elementary. At full capacity, it can hold 1,000 students.

When school officially begins on Aug. 15, it will welcome 850.

“We’re pretty close to what we can hold,” Principal Brion Rutherford said, adding that it’s located in the Oakbrook area, one of the fastest-growing parts of Dorchester County.

“There are a number of new neighborhoods going in,” he said. “We’ll be at our capacity pretty quickly.”

He and Shane Robbins, the new superintendent of Dorchester School District 2, said the new school is a factor of growth not only throughout the district but also in the Oakbrook area near the Ashley River.

A superintendent for 15 years at various districts, Robbins is no stranger to new school construction.

“There is so much excitement for students, families, teachers and staff members to move into a brand-new structure and make it their own and their home,” Robbins said.

‘Exploding’ with growth

Nestled in the Oakbrook area, the school is surrounded by large and growing housing developments like Legend Oaks Plantations and Summers Corner, which are adding thousands of homes in the coming years.

Cheyenne and Brennan Ledyard live in Drayton Oaks, a small subdivision about a three-minute drive from East Edisto Middle. Like many residents in the area, they’re still fairly new, having moved in when the neighborhood went up about two years ago.

They say the Oakbrook area, particularly the neighborhoods on either side of Highway 61, is “exploding.”

“We’re having tremendous growth on this side,” Cheyenne said.

Last year, their son Hudson attended Gregg Middle School, on the other side of Dorchester Road and the Ashley River. Now he’s starting seventh grade at East Edisto.

“He is very excited because this bus arrives about 20 minutes later than what he had to ride last year,” Brennan said with a laugh.

She and Cheyenne said they feel the middle school is warranted, especially since there are already two elementary schools in the area, Beech Hill and Sand Hill. Their only concern is that traffic on Highway 61 might be worse in the mornings now.

Down Highway 61 in Summers Corner, Michelle Cheslek was riding her bike with her 6-year-old daughter Olivia on a recent afternoon. And even though Olivia still has several years before she goes to middle school, Cheslek said she’s already relieved there’s one that close.

“Otherwise I think she would have been going to Gregg, which is a little farther away,” Cheslek said.

Like the Ledyards, Cheslek said the area is growing. Her family just closed on their house in May, and behind them, construction is underway on more houses.

Growth in the school district isn’t anything new. DD2′s student population has grown from around 16,000 students in the 2000-01 school year to more than 25,000 last year.

Managing growth

Despite population growth in Summerville, the district’s student population saw a slight dip during the pandemic, according to DD2. During the 2019-20 school year, there were 26,194 students at the school. This past year, there were 25,404.

“If you look at our numbers from the end of last school year, they replicate our numbers from the 2014-15 school year,” Robbins said, referencing a year with 25,175 students.

Robbins said that’s a factor of the pandemic.

“That’s a symptom of students that stayed in a virtual environment not associated with the school or possibly went the home-school route, and ... that wasn’t a Dorchester 2 issue or trend,” he said. “That’s something we saw across the state and honestly across the country.”

While those numbers have started to come back, Robbins said the bigger change is where the students are.

“What I think you’re seeing is a shift where geographically people are living in the county and where the population shifts have occurred,” he said. “For us, there is going to be growth that we’re going to rebound from post-COVID, so we need to have a long-term facilities study completed or updated.”

Robbins said East Edisto is about the average size of a middle school, and he doesn’t want it to get much larger than 1,000 students. He does believe the district will see more growth in the coming years and should have a plan to deal with that.

But he would rather utilize space in schools throughout the district before building any more schools.

“When you see numbers shift like that ... you look at the occupancy of each facility and, in lieu of building a new structure because one structure is at capacity, you look at, ‘OK, how can I adjust the attendance lines to make sure all my structures are at capacity before I have to go to the taxpayers and ask for money to build for more structures?’ ”

In other words, the district will look at occupancy levels at each school and send students to schools with more room.

That can be “emotional” for the community, he said, which is why the district should have a formalized plan in place. That would be an involved process that looks at everything from county population projections to roads, bridges and “potential obstacles” along bus routes.

“There’s a lot that goes into play when you look at making a decision on what’s going to work best, but the overall goal is to try to fully maximize all of our facilities so that we don’t have to consistently add on and build new structures because there’s growth in one particular geographical area,” Robbins said.

Earlier this year, district officials reported East Edisto was on track to be over-capacity within a few years of its opening. Robbins said that should only be a problem if the district doesn’t put those plans in place.

“There is a lot of growth in that area,” he said. “If we stayed status quo and we didn’t look at those things, absolutely it would end up being overcrowded.”

New opportunities for students

Baldwin is well aware of the growth. Not only will this be her 23rd year teaching in the district, but she attended DD2 schools from kindergarten to high school. That growth brings more opportunities for students, she said.

Take her subject, Gateway to Technology, which covers STEM subjects like robotics, design and engineering.

“That was such a small class back (when I first started teaching), and now it’s bloomed and blossomed and we have all these engineering avenues,” she said. “I have a sixth grader entering school, and the number of choices of classes, things like piano, that didn’t exist when I was a student ... So just the opportunities our district has brought as it’s grown has been really wonderful.”

Rutherford said he had some input on the classrooms and other features while construction was underway, such as what kind of designs and furniture would best promote collaboration in STEM classrooms and where best to put electives so that they’re located close to the sixth grade hallway.

One important aspect of the design was safety features, he said. Those include cameras, alarm systems that will alert people when exterior doors are left open and a crosswalk across Highway 61 that will be manned during school drop-off and dismissal. There will also be a dedicated office for the school’s social worker to help address students’ mental health needs.

Rutherford echoed Baldwin’s excitement for the array of opportunities — and praised Gateway to Technology in particular. He said Baldwin and the program she set up at Oakbrook have won multiple awards throughout the state. The same goes for chorus teacher Maurice Burgess, he said, who will run East Edisto’s fine arts programs.

“I might be partial to this, but I think we have the best teachers in the school district, if not the Lowcountry,” Rutherford said.

A local preacher’s bouts with anxiety in recent years set him on the search for an outlet that would allow the tortured soul to communicate his thoughts, life lessons and apprehensions without boundaries — all through poetry.

The year was 2018 when Will Davis, a Brooklyn, New York transplant, was grappling with personal trials in terms of holding down multiple jobs. Thanks to his his wife, Amanda, the Summerville resident was jolted by a reawakening of sorts, as he soon began recording all his inner feelings and angst on paper.

“From there, I just started singing the psalms. And the poetry just illuminated the Scriptures for me that much more. I then realized ‘Wow, this is what I am. I’m not just writing sermons and manuscripts — I’m a poet.’ So, that’s where that turned and it was just like poetry is the form I want to embrace. Poetry can encapsulate the weight of emotion in such a small format,” noted Davis, who in addition to serving as a cleric, has also worked at various schools in the Charleston area.

Currently, the 35-year-old father of one has narrowed his volume of duties to performing his spiritual work in partnership with multiple area churches and he’s also refocused his energies on writing poetry. But presently, Davis is venturing beyond utilizing poetry as a means of self-therapy; he’s now recruiting and counseling a growing faction of master poets-in-training through a series of upcoming workshops and open mics.

The idea behind hosting instructive poetry sessions was the result of an encounter Davis had with Public Works Art Center Executive Director Jana Riley, who connected Summerville’s poet laureate of Puerto Rican heritage with Ivan Segura of Palmetto Luna.

Segura, a Columbia-based advocate of Latino arts and culture, ended up sponsoring Davis’ first workshop at Public Works in early August.

While the intent is to reach the Lowcountry’s Latino community and highlight the rich and unique history it has to offer, Davis’ workshops are open to people of all ages, genders and ethnic backgrounds who are seeking to find their individual voices through poetry.

“For me, my mission is to inspire dignity through poetry. So, in every single workshop, I want people to be encouraged and empowered to just go out there. I start with helping people realize that we all have a story,” said the engaging instructor who will often try to understand his students on a deeper level to draw out their unfiltered, unedited life stories.

Newcomers will typically be advised to write short free verses as they progressively gain confidence in sharing their bottled-up reflections and/or emotions.

The next step for folks who are serious about cultivating their poetry chops is to recite their work in public. To that end, Davis recently hosted a open-mic event at Public Works as an invitation for people to partake in judgment-free, free-form expression.

As for any one-on-one coaching he’ll offer a nervous performer before they step to the mic, Davis may remind them of whether they have an early family-friendly crowd or a strictly adult audience. In the case of the latter, he says, all participants have free license to convey their written material. No subject matter is taboo.

On that account, the multi-faceted artist added: “If you’re at my open-mic, tell me who you are, tell me your story, and then I’ll tell you mine.”

The hard-charging Davis has several long-term plans beyond preaching and poetry as well, in the form of releasing his own book. But instead of featuring personal verses of his own life in the upcoming publication, the prolific writer aspires to spotlight poetry on what he recently saw and learned as a missionary along the southern border. His recent sojourn in that area, he related, allowed him to gain new insight into the lives of Mexican migrants.

“I want to bring a better light and a dignified understanding to what’s happening at the southern border. That’s for sure where I’ll be directing my poetry in the next year or so,” promised Davis.

SUMMERVILLE, S.C., Sept. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Maritime Sustainment Technology and Innovation Consortium (MSTIC), established by The Naval Surface Warfare Center, Philadelphia Division (NSWCPD), is pleased to announce the achievement of its milestone 300^th member. That member is Systel, Inc. located out of Sugar Land, Texas. Systel designs and manufactures rugged computing solutions purpose-built for mission-critical applications in austere environments.

Established in June 2021, MSTIC focuses on innovative sustainment solutions to effectively address current and future security threats in maritime environments. The consortium brings together traditional and non-traditional government contractors, small and large businesses, for-profit and not-for-profit entities, and academic organizations collaborating to perform research and development and prototyping efforts. Their goal is to develop and mature technologies in the field of Maritime Sustainment that enhance the Navy's mission effectiveness.

"MSTIC is delighted to welcome our 300^th member to the consortium. Our members' capabilities align with solutions for which the Government is looking and the collaboration among them yields the relationships, teaming, and innovative ideas that deliver those solutions at mission speed," stated Program Manager, Tim Macon with Advanced Technology International (ATI).

"Systel is proud to be a part of this collaborative effort to deliver the solutions that our Government needs to support maritime sustainment and deliver advantage for any mission," said Systel CEO, Vimal Kothari. "We have delivered thousands of systems for maritime applications over the past 30 years with a relentless commitment to enabling mission success; MSTIC is precisely aligned with that commitment and provides a great way to connect with other like-minded leading innovators."

MSTIC is managed by ATI.

ABOUT ATI

ATI, a public-service nonprofit based in Summerville, South Carolina, builds and manages collaborations that conduct research and development of new technologies to solve our nation's national security challenges. Fueled by a community of experts from industry, academia, and government, ATI accelerates impact by using the power of collaboration to help the federal government quickly acquire novel technologies. ATI is a subsidiary of Analytic Services, Inc. (ANSER), a public-service research institute organized as a nonprofit corporation, which is dedicated to informing decisions that shape the nation's future.

ATI.org | LinkedIn | Twitter | collaborATIon app

SOURCE Maritime Sustainment Technology and Innovation Consortium (MSTIC)

New London ? One of the seven Coast Guard Academy cadets ordered off campus last month for failing to get vaccinated against COVID-19 disputed an academy officer’s statement Thursday that the cadets left “at their own convenience” and that the academy paid for their travel “to the location of their choice.”

In a phone interview arranged by his attorney, Michael Rose, whose practice is in Summerville, S.C., the cadet said he was forced to live out of his truck for three nights and four days after being ordered to leave the academy Aug. 19. The cadet said he is now living with a friend on another college campus due to a serious conflict with his parents that prevents him from returning home.

The cadet estimated he has incurred about $1,000 in travel and living expenses since his banishment from the academy and has received no reimbursement.

The Day agreed to the attorney’s request that the cadet not be named out of fear of retaliation.

In the academy’s statement Thursday, Cmdr. Krystyn Pecora, the external affairs officer, said Rose’s account of the way the seven cadets left campus, published online Tuesday and in print Wednesday by The Day, was “completely inaccurate.” The cadets left the academy “at their own convenience,” with the academy arranging their travel back to their homes and paying for it, Pecora said.

The Day reported the cadets had been disenrolled for failing to comply with the military’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate after the academy denied their requests for exemptions on religious grounds.

Rose told The Day the cadets were informed Aug. 18 that they had to leave campus the following day, when they were “escorted to the gate like they were criminals or something.” Rose then said the academy offered the cadets no help in arranging or financing their travel and that two of the cadets had no home to go to.

After speaking further to clients, Rose, who represents dozens of military personnel and service-academy cadets in a lawsuit challenging the military’s COVID-19 vaccination requirement, said Thursday he now understands the academy had threatened to escort Coast Guard Academy cadets off campus if they failed to leave by 4 p.m. Aug. 19. The cadet who spoke confirmed that was the case, saying he was given less than 24 hours to comply.

Pecora, in the academy’s written statement, said the seven cadets left campus at various times Aug. 19 based on their individual travel arrangements, with the last to leave departing around 8 p.m.

She said no cadets were escorted from the academy grounds.

“The Coast Guard Academy staff assisted the seven cadets with Coast Guard processes to make travel arrangements,” Pecora said. “The Coast Guard Academy funded travel to the location of their choice. All seven cadets are currently residing at a safe location, having either returned to their families or are being hosted by the families of fellow cadets. While the seven cadets have been disenrolled, they have not been separated from the Coast Guard Academy and are continuing to receive cadet pay and entitlements until their separation is processed.”

“The seven cadets will not be subject to recoupment of their education expenses,” she said.

The cadet who spoke to The Day Thursday confirmed the academy provided some assistance with travel arrangements and indicated it would reimburse the cadets for the cost of traveling to their homes. He said the academy suggested the cadets put their expenses on their personal credit cards.

He said another of the cadets also was unable to return home and is temporarily staying with the family of another of the cadets.

While at their new locations, the cadets are supposed to maintain certain military standards, such as engaging in physical activity, and must check in weekly with academy officials, the cadet said. And, though the cadet said the academy superintendent told the cadets they could not attend classes remotely, the cadet said he was told to periodically check in with his academic adviser.

“None of this has happened at the other four service academies,” Rose said. “The Coast Guard Academy is in a class by itself. It’s really outrageous, and one of the most outrageous things is this misleading statement it’s issued. Clearly, these cadets didn’t get to leave ‘at their convenience.’”

Pecora also provided a detailed timeline of the events surrounding the cadets’ disenrollment, starting with the Secretary of Defense’s Aug. 24, 2021 determination that “mandating the COVID-19 vaccine for service members is necessary to protect the military and defend the American people.”

The Coast Guard announced the vaccination mandate two days later.

“Subsequent to this announcement, fifteen cadets filed either medical exemption requests or religious accommodation requests in September 2021,” Pecora said. “Each request was evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the Coast Guard’s Office of Military Personnel Policy. The cadets were notified on March 14, 2022 of the denial of their exemptions or accommodations and given 10 business days to file an appeal. The cadets were informed in May 2022 that their appeals were denied by Coast Guard Headquarters and directed to report to the Coast Guard Academy clinic to receive their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.”

“Four cadets chose to become vaccinated, four cadets chose to resign from the Academy, and seven cadets refused the order to become vaccinated,” Pecora said.

On June 13, the seven cadets were informed they were in violation of military law and given an additional five days to get their first dose of vaccine, according to Pecora’s timeline. On June 22, they were notified of their disenrollment and given an opportunity to appeal to Coast Guard headquarters. On Aug. 15, they were notified that their appeals were denied “and were directed to proceed to an alternate worksite status beginning on August 19th, 2022,” Pecora said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

The Coast Guard, like all effective military institutions, has the responsibility to ensure that all its members are prepared and ready for duty, including not infecting other members with preventable diseases. Being vaccinated, as mandated by the Coast Guard, is part of the deal when you sign up. These babies, and their lawyer, should quit whining about the rules being enforced. If they don’t want to be vaccinated, then the solution is simple: resign and go home to mommy and daddy. The Coast Guard bent over backwards to be nice to these boys giving them every procedural protection imaginable. The organization is better off without them.

Well it very well may be you have a greedy lawyer who’s looking to exploit the situation for his game. Additionally this kid could’ve made a stink about it before he left if it was so unagreeable. It’s not like he didn’t know it was coming . Basically it boils down to- if you don’t wanna follow the rules then get out. Smarten up kid -you’re gonna be told what to do for the rest of your life-unless you’re an entrepreneur!

So, that’s the view from SC. Was Lyndsey Graham even consulted? Vaccination was a requirement. Perhaps a career in our Nation’s military is not the best choice for these cadets. On a separate issue: Thank you, editors, for (apparently) reinstating the 48 hours rule.

The Day’s Coast Guard Cadet story represents excellent investigative reporting! Something sorely missing from Connecticut’s local television stations and The declining Hartford Courant.