20 years and counting

“Boy, this is some school!” 

Fourth grader Jack Conroy had been inside the brand-new Daniel Island School for only a few hours when he gave The Daniel Island News his assessment on Aug. 14, 2006. 

He wasn’t wrong. It’s been 20 years, and a lot has changed since that first day. 

That morning, 543 students poured into a school that had never held a class before. They came by bus and bicycle, golf cart and car, or simply walked from home. The playground equipment was waiting to be installed. The cafeteria needed more tables. Some textbooks were still on the way. 

Behind the front desk was Cindy Holmes, looking out at a school with no history behind it. 

“I remember the feeling of ‘Wow, this is all new, and we are all in this together!’ It felt like a blank slate to create what Daniel Island School will become in the future years,” she said. 

Twenty years later, there are six people in the building who remember finding out exactly what it would become – and Holmes is still behind the front desk. 

Holmes, who moved to Daniel Island in 2001 and served on an education committee before the school opened, never expected the job to last two decades. Her own children, Julie and Justin, were a seventh grader and a fourth grader in the first yearbook. 

“I never imagined I would still be here 20 years later!” she said. 

Since then, she has watched some of the children who once passed her desk return as volunteers, substitutes, student teachers, coaches, and even teachers. “Full circle!” she beamed. 

Holmes shares the 20-year distinction with Pat Wilson, Carolyn Cohen Aarons, Laine Holmes, Amy Lapp, and Dani Roof. 

In 2006, Aarons was the only counselor for kindergarten through eighth grade. The inaugural eighth-grade class numbered just 32 students, and the entire faculty could fit inside one classroom for meetings. Before the school building was ready, the administrative team even worked temporarily out of Synovus Bank. 

“All the staff got to know each other pretty well,” Aarons said. “The school grew quite quickly.” 

Former kindergarten assistant Kelly Cobb remembers enrollment roughly doubling within the first few years. Holmes worked the front office alone until around 2010, when growth brought a second receptionist. Other once-combined positions were eventually split, while more teachers and counseling support were added. 

Some of that growth came from beyond Daniel Island. Before the Philip Simmons schools opened, six buses carried students to DIS, including students living down Clements Ferry Road. 

The school was growing alongside the island itself. 

Current-day principal Laura Blanchard remembers walking around the area while her children played soccer, when homes were only beginning to appear around Smythe Lake. As neighborhoods filled in over the ensuing years, DIS evolved with them. 

“I think a hard thing with a new school is there aren’t any traditions,” Cobb said. “The traditions that are now at DIS have come over time.” 

So they made them. 

A longtime active PTA and community involvement became part of the school’s identity. Students grew from kindergartners into middle schoolers under the same roof. Along the way came a track record of academic achievement: DIS has earned the Palmetto Gold Award almost every year since 2011. 

The numbers offer another measure of how far the school has come. Blanchard estimates approximately 24,000 to 25,000 students have matriculated through DIS during its 20-year history. Today, DIS enters its third decade with roughly 1,029 students and 110 staff members, including 60 homeroom teachers. 

“We have watched generations of students grow, learn, and find their voices here, and that is perhaps the greatest measure of our success,” Blanchard said. 

She now serves as the seventh principal in the school’s history. 

“What stands out to me most is how deeply the school has become a part of the fabric of Daniel Island,” she said. 

This year, DIS is marking the milestone with celebrations throughout the school year, including plans to do something special on the 20th day of each month. 

There’s also a new face in the lobby – though he’s considerably taller and featherier than most. 

Parent Andrew Stroman, whose two daughters attend DIS, spent the summer building and donating a 5-foot, life-size, 3D-printed Oscar the Osprey, the school mascot. Oscar now stands in the lobby alongside a commemorative anniversary sign, a new addition for a school looking back at its beginnings. 

“We want the year to feel like a celebration of 20 years of learning, growing, and soaring together,” Blanchard said. 

For the six staff members who were there from the start, the anniversary comes with something today’s students cannot quite have yet: the ability to see the whole span. 

Aarons has watched students change “physically, socially, and academically from kindergarten to 8th grade.” That inaugural year brought another first for her, too: her son, Daniel, born in October 2006, became DIS’ first faculty baby. 

And Holmes still has that first yearbook. 

Its cover carries a phrase that, in hindsight, sounds less like a theme chosen for a new school and more like a prediction: “We’ve Only Just Begun.” 

Twenty years later, perhaps they still have.