ROCK HILL — Rising tensions at a local charter school boiled over this week after the second year of operations for Ascent Classical Academy-Fort Mill got off to a rocky start.

Parents held a protest in front of campus as the school day started Oct. 14 over what they described as opaque top leadership and significant staff turnover, including the firings last week of the school’s headmaster and a kindergarten teacher.

Some said they might pull their children out of the school. The crowd lining the sidewalk numbered about 50, including kids in their school uniforms carrying signs calling for the reinstatement of the fired staffers.

“It’s just going downhill really fast,” Renee Tribiano, the mother of a sixth grader at the school, said. “We’re trying to save our school.”

Some of the upse

See Full Page