Roof Repair in Sumter, SC

In the spirit of Sunshine Week, many may be curious about its significance, especially if the weather doesn't seem to match the name.

Sunshine Week has become one of my favorite things to recognize. From March 11 to March 15, we see nationally nonpartisan collaboration among different groups in journalism, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of access to public documents and open government.

I did not know where the term originated from, but I did some digging, like most reporters do when it comes to gaining access to documents. Sunshine Week derives from the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project, part of the Brechner Center for the Advancement of the First Amendment, according to the University of Florida. The project "is an incubator for ideas and initiatives that give the public timely and affordable access to the information necessary for informed, participatory citizens. The Freedom of Information Project educates journalists, policymakers and the general public about the law of access in today's world," according to its website.

Hence, the Freedom of Information Act is the United States federal freedom of information law which requires the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased or uncirculated information and documents controlled by a government, state or other public authority upon request, according to the FOIA website.

In layman's terms, FOIA is the law which ensures citizens are informed about their government and other organizations. Despite what my professors said during my time as a student, my experience at The Sumter Item has shown me that FOIA requests are needed more frequently than expected.

In preparation for Sunshine Week, I went through emails, paperwork and receipts and calculated exactly how many requests I have sent formally and informally to different entities for various articles in 2023.

Formally I have sent 14 in 2023 and one in 2024 at the time of writing this column. Out of those 14 FOIA requests, 10 were requests sent to Clarendon County School District, one was sent to Santee-Lynches Regional Council of Governments, one to Clarendon County Council regarding former County Administrator David Epperson and two regarding an investigation on a Clarendon County building inspector. In 2022, one FOIA request was sent to CCSD regarding Superintendent Shawn Johnson's contracts.

Out of the 10 requests sent to CCSD, The Item was charged for three, which totaled $347.40. At the time of writing this on Feb. 27, $17.40 of the total still has not been cleared after receiving a receipt of payment on Jan. 29, 2024. For $347.40, the number of documents received was more than 500. Out of the final total, $130 of it was roughly less than 150 pages, $200 worth was less than 15 pages, and $17.40 worth of documents sent was less than 60 pages.

The formal FOIA requests to other entities were roughly more than 300 pages spread throughout the different requests. This does not include documents received by sources regarding these topics as well. These entities never charged The Item for the documents.

I have sent a lot more informal FOIA requests than formal, and it's only because when reaching out to these entities, they asked what I was requesting and sent it over immediately or within a few days, and The Item was never charged a fee. From what I could find through emails, informal requests totaled upward of 116 requests in 2023, but there could be more.

These informal requests were mainly for Clarendon County administration members or entities within the county. What shocked me was the entities you would expect to demand a formal request from a journalist were the ones that sent documents with no issue after a simple phone call explaining what I was looking for. I have sent informal requests through numerous state agencies, including the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources; South Carolina Department of Transportation; South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation; South Carolina Department of Education; and more. I have sent informal requests in Lee and Sumter counties.

The informal requests I have made resulted in more than 400 pages of documents given. Clarendon County School District stands out as the only entity to charge a fee to The Sumter Item for documents. It has also been late in providing them, sometimes incorrectly charging the newspaper. Media lawyers have been quoted numerous times stating where the district has violated FOIA laws.

That is what Sunshine Week is all about. We - journalists - recognize this week to continue to bring undisclosed information that should be public to citizens. Some entities might try to find a loophole in the law, but journalists most of the time get the information to inform readers.

As I have said in other columns, information for the public should not only be easily accessible, but it should also be free, transparent and easy to digest when looking through however many pages.

Happy Sunshine Week! For other reporters out there, let's keep doing our jobs to keep public officials accountable and our readers informed about what is going on within their government, school districts and other entities.

Ashley Miller is a reporter for The Sumter Item.

29 different art teachers from 25 Sumter County private, public and charter schools collaborated with students to create the art as part of the Inspire Festival.

SUMTER, S.C. — If you're walking around downtown Sumter, you might be noticing a little bit of color. Local students have been busy creating artwork to put in storefront windows for the annual Inspire Festival, but this public art will be up for the next month.

“It feels exciting that, like, your creativity, everything, your hard work is put into something that everyone will notice,” Fifth grader Jasmine Washington said about collaborating with classmates, like Idric Robinson-Hinton, on art for the windows.

“Everyone put forth their effort inside the art. They all worked hard. And it was like a group activity so school-wide, so you know from the tiny pre-Kers to all the way to fifth graders, they all did their best and tried to work with the art,” Robinson-Hinton shared. “It shows the inclusion with the school ‘cuz if you think about it, you might not think that when you add all art together, but when you see all of them together, it just makes the best art you could ever see.”

Students worked with art teachers like Kristen Sill at Wilder Elementary.

“Gratification is the word that comes to mind. It is it is such a wonderful experience to be able to contribute to the community by sharing their art and by having their art out for the community to appreciate. It builds their confidence even more, so they've been super excited about the window and they're pleased with the way that it turns out,” Sill explained. “Sharing the love of art with the community is building a stronger community and strong communities have better opportunities, better jobs, better places to eat, more fun places to go, and it’s building the confidence of the students as they're members in this community.”

Sumter High School Fine Arts Department Chair Heidi Adler says 29 art teachers from 25 different Sumter County schools worked together to create the displays downtown.

“Art makes people happy. Not only the artists that create it, I mean there's a profound sense of pride when you’ve put your work and your effort and your time into something and you see the final product, and then when others see appreciate it, it's an exciting time for the artists that have created,” Adler, who teaches ceramics at Sumter High, explained.

“This is a great way for the Sumter community to see all of the hard work that our teachers and students put into fine arts and fine arts education each and every day,” Heather Clemmons, the Coordinator of Fine Arts and Gifted Education for Sumter School District, added.

Clemmons said the district worked with students across the district to encourage the collaboration, giving teachers designated time to work on the displays.

“You’ve got an art teacher at each school and we're very limited in the time that we get to come together as a department and meet, so them having that time to work together installing their art for the walk of art project was a great thing,” Clemmons said. “It’s important that students have a niche whether it's fine arts through our band chorus programs, visual arts programs, even athletics. I just feel like students need to have something that they are involved in in addition to their academics to keep them grounded where they need to be as a student.”

It’s part of a larger message of connecting with the community, Adler says.

“Sumter, like many communities, wants to value their younger students, the younger population, and this is a really fun, easy way to say, ‘You matter. You're important. We have roles for you,’ and build them up and as they get older, you know, hopefully they take it upon themselves to contribute to the community and do things so that everybody gets, you know, a really great opportunity.”

This project was an opportunity to loop in students from all different schools from public to private to Liberty STEAM Charter School students like third grader Mason Miller.

“It feels like we are famous,” Miller smiled.

“I was excited because I love drawing,” Miller’s classmate, Peyton Nelson, added. “And when I first came to Liberty and I heard and I was in second grade and I heard there was going to be an art teacher. I was so excited.”

Ashley Stancil is the lead visual arts and digital literacy teacher at Liberty STEAM, which worked on a travel display to align with the school’s airline theme.

“I love that all of the schools, even the private schools and charter school, can all kind of come together on this project and we can all share our ideas and you know, share our artwork with the town,” Stancil said. “It's just a great way to collaborate.”

That collaboration is not just between students at different schools, but also artists of all ages like Sumter High Senior Gabriel Stewart.

“It challenges the younger generation to break a mold,” Stewart detailed about the process of creating the art. “To not just do what you're told but to explore what you can do and what you're capable of doing.”

Lauren Daylami is the director of operations for three downtown restaurants: Sumter Original Brewery, Sidebar and Hampton’s. She says these displays are helpful for attracting more people to the area.

“It gives everybody a real sense of community and real pride in the place that they live in where you can work, play and have fun here,” Daylami shared, reflecting on the displays set up in previous years. “It was great for our business. I love the time of the year that they've picked to do it. The sun's coming out. People are ready to come out and see things. So it's been a very positive impact for all of our businesses.”

Public history student Stevie Malenowski spent his summer job surrounded by boxes of documents that had not seen the light of day in decades.

Years of furniture pamphlets, corporate memos and yellowing photos tell the story of Williams Furniture Company, a major employer in Sumter, South Carolina, from the 1920s through 2004. Malenowski’s task was to sort through the collection and scan some 1,200 items for digital preservation.

He was excited to learn from the specialists at University Libraries, who taught him standards for digitization and how to create a finding guide. He was less excited, though, to learn more about lumber.

“Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was read more about wood products,” says Malenowski. “But the great thing about history is that the more you look into things, you see these characters start to emerge.”

Malenowski came to the project after taking a graduate class with history professor Jessica Elfenbein, who has been working to create a more complete historic record of forestry in South Carolina. In researching the industry in Sumter, known as part of the “wood basket of the world,” Elfenbein learned about the Williams Furniture Company archives at Sumter County Museum.

The museum loaned the archives to USC for digitization, and the collection is now available online through the South Carolina Digital Library.

“It’s amazing to think that all this history has been largely unknown until now,” Elfenbein says. “You’d never know that the ‘Williams’ in Williams-Brice Stadium is named for this furniture company in Sumter, or how the community there rallied to bring the factory to town. It was truly a community effort, and these are stories that are very important but little-known.”

Malenowski has also gone all-in on researching Williams and stayed on into the fall semester to complete the digitization project. He’s using the archives for his graduate thesis, which examines the impact of unionization on the culture of the Williams Furniture Company and the surrounding community.

“There’s so much to unpack in just this one area,” he says. “Having a union shop with an integrated workplace at this time was practically unheard of in the South, and it’s incredible how the union played a role in changing the social fabric of the town.”

Elfenbein hopes making the archives available will bring greater awareness of the far-reaching impact of this industry for the history of Sumter, South Carolina and beyond.

Last fall, Elfenbein taught an undergraduate honors course to feature the Williams collection. Lynn Robertson, longtime director of USC’s McKissick Museum, co-taught the course and led the class in creating a traveling exhibit that will debut later this year.

“All the students are from different academic backgrounds — business, science, the arts and, of course, a few history majors,” Robertson says. “What’s so great is that they all bring their own backgrounds, so they all look at it from different points of view.”

The course showed students just how relevant history can be as the students worked together to bring this untold history to the public for the first time.

In addition to creating exhibition displays, they worked in teams to conduct the first seven oral histories, which provide context for the archive materials and a different angle on the company’s story.

“Initially, I thought this class was completely unrelated to me, but I was wrong,” says Lauren Reasoner, an honors student in the College of Information and Communication. “Not only am I getting to professionally design the exhibit, but I also learned how to conduct oral histories, which turned out to be a crucial part of my senior thesis.”

Reasoner interviewed a Sumter resident whose grandfather sustained a devastating injury while working in Williams’ lumber yard, which shed new light on the company’s worker safety records. Other students talked with descendants of past owners and managers of Williams.

These interviews are now transcribed and housed in the Department of Oral History in University Libraries. Malenowski, along with another student, will continue the interviews this spring, thanks to grants from the College of Arts and Sciences Humanities Collaborative and USC’s Center for Integrative and Experiential Learning.

While the Williams collection is extensive, he says it offers an incomplete view of the company’s story without the perspectives of those who worked on the factory floor.

“The Williams collection is insightful, but it’s got such obvious blind spots. The workers are practically invisible, and you’d think the managers were the ones out there chopping down trees and building cabinets,” Malenowski says. “But we’ve finally gotten a list of people who want to share their stories.”

View the Williams collection online, or learn more about the Sumter County Museum. The exhibit will travel to locations throughout the state later this year. A comprehensive website, including content from the traveling exhibit, will launch in April.

Eriyonna Walcott is a senior at Sumter High School. According to the Coast Guard Academy, only one South Carolinian has been accepted so far this year.

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SUMTER, S.C. — It's college acceptance season for students nationwide, and in Midlands, one high school senior has found out she's going to the Coast Guard Academy. The Sumter High School student is the first and only South Carolinian to be accepted this year so far.

"Since I was probably like five or six years old, I just wanted to go to military," 17-year-old Eriyonna Walcott said. "My uncle, he's an officer in the Coast Guard. He retired as a commander in the Coast Guard, and I've always looked up to him my whole life. So, that just really inspired me to join the Coast Guard and be an officer."

Walcott said this inspiration and her school's ROTC program helped her confirm she wanted to join the military. Initially, Walcott said she planned to enlist right after high school graduation.

"I've never been the type of person to want to go to college or anything. That didn't happen 'til last year, late summer," Walcott said. "Ms. Gadson from seventh grade up until my 11th grade year summer, she's been juggling with me trying to convince me to go to college, so you know, Gear Up has really helped me. She made sure my grades were on point, my head's on the right track and all that type of stuff."

Because of Gear Up Counselor Audrika Gadson, Walcott is now the first person from South Carolina to be admitted into the Coast Guard Academy for 2024.

"You got kids who never thought they were gonna go to college accepted and ready to go," Gadson said, smiling. "Like, that's amazing."

Gadson has been working with Walcott and the Sumter High Class of 2024 for the past six years, making a difference, said principal Anamaria Sandor.

"The support they have received from the Gear Up specialist, it made a difference because they were exposed to more college options, to FAFSA, to meetings that they have with all the students to make sure that they know how to apply to the college, what letters they need, what recommendation, who to ask for recommendation," Sandor said.

"Makes me want to cry," Gadson said. "You know, you get a relationship with kids and, you know, you see so many kids never thought they were going to go even they just did, 'My path was strictly military,' you know, being able to talk to a child, be like, 'You know, well, you know, there's other options, you can still go to college and still be in the military at the same time.' You know, just introducing them to things that they never thought was possible and didn't know that exists, it's amazing."

The Academy said that only one person in the state has been accepted so far. In 2023, the Academy said only five students from South Carolina were accepted.

"It was either the Academy or the military. So, I feel like if you're determined to do something, you can make it happen. You have to believe in yourself and do everything you can," Walcott said. "ROTC - it helped develop my leadership skills and my responsibility. There's a lot of stuff in ROTC to help you with time management, all that type of stuff."

In addition to her school's JROTC program, Walcott said she's involved in many other extracurriculars, from the color guard and drill team to wrestling, swimming, track and National Honor Society.

"Another thing that got me here is all my support system. So, you know, my parents got number one, my principal, you know, everybody; they just kept encouraging me. So I really appreciate that," Walcott said. "If you go to college, you get more benefits, higher pay, that type of stuff. It's just a lot more benefits. I will get commissioning rather than enlisting. So yeah, I was like, you know what, maybe they're right. Let's do it."

SUMTER, S.C. (WIS) - An $80,000 chicken heist was foiled in Sumter County and a truck driver was taken into custody.

According to the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO), Christopher Thomas, 55, was supposed to deliver 41,000 pounds of chicken to two locations in Milton, Georgia, but had other plans to make cash.

”I don’t know how you get $80,000 worth of chicken out of the plant in the first place,” said an anonymous worker at Pilgrims Pride Plant.

Sumter County deputies along with the assistance from Lee County Sheriff’s Office arrested Thomas on Saturday evening.

According to the SCSO, Thomas — who is from Florence — was hired by Pilgrim’s Pride to deliver chicken and is suspected of having intentions of selling it.

WIS spoke to a worker at the plant who said this news comes as no surprise as these types of thefts keep happening.

”I’m not entirely sure how this is happening to be honest,” the worker said. “That’s a lot of chicken to be stolen out of there twice so I really have no idea how they’re even doing it and what they’re doing to stop it.”

Investigators believe Thomas sold part of the load of chicken he was transporting in various locations and was in the process of selling more when deputies pulled him over for a traffic stop.

When Thomas gave consent to deputies to search the truck, the investigator saw pallets loaded with cases of frozen chicken which was confirmed to be stolen from Pilgrim’s Pride.

Thomas was arrested with approximately seven pallets loaded with 215 cases of chicken that weighed 8,000 lbs.

It is believed Thomas sold about 33,000 lbs. of chicken.

Thomas is charged with breach of trust with fraudulent intent and is valued at $10,000 or more.

The worker gave insight into what the company could do to better manage the security of the plant.

“I guess the checkpoint to make sure on who’s coming in and out, what’s on the trucks and all of that,” the worker said. “I have no idea on how they get the trucks out there cause usually there’s these big trucks with freezers in them so I’m guessing they have one of those.”

If found guilty, Thomas can spend up to 10 years in prison.

Thomas appeared in court on Monday morning and was granted a $50,000 bond, but has yet to pay it.

In May, WIS News 10 reported on a similar incident in the same county where two men were arrested after being accused of stealing $40,000 worth of boneless chicken breast from Pilgrim’s Pride. However, investigators said the two crimes are not connected.

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