History

James B.Edwards Elementary School, located in Mt. Pleasant, SC opened its doors in the fall of 1981 with only seven classrooms being utilized for grades 1 and 2. Construction was still underway when the school opened. The overcrowded conditions at Whitesides Elementary resulted in the construction of James B. Edwards Elementary. Construction was completed in the spring of 1982, and the remainder of the school's population moved into its new building at that time.

The population of students at JBE increased from 325 to 1050 students. In 1990 part of our school was rezoned to Belle Hall Elementary. Presently our school's population is near 600.

During the 2011-2012 school year, the school formed a group called the JBE Neighborhood Planning Team (NPT). The NPT consisted of teachers, administrators, parents, community members, and business leaders. This group led the charge to make James B. Edwards a partial magnet school. In January of 2012, the NPT presented two possible partial magnet themes to the community. The two themes were leadership and global studies. For the two weeks that followed, parents, teachers, and community members voted on what the theme of the school should be. Over 400 votes were cast, and the final tally was extremely close. Because the vote was so close and many people expressed they were happy with both choices, the NPT made the decision to make JBE "The school of global leadership" and implement the best parts of both themes.

Who Was James B Edwards?

James Burrows Edwards (June 24, 1927 – December 26, 2014) was a politician and administrator from South Carolina who served in the U.S. Navy. He was the Governor of South Carolina from 1975 to 1979. He later served as the U. S. Secretary of Energy under President Ronald Reagan. Governor Edwards died in 2014 at the age of 87. (Source: Wikipedia)