By admin 
Gray Collegiate Academy isn’t done growing.
The popular West Columbia charter school, which has added regional satellite campuses in each of the past two years, is now setting its sights outside the Midlands.
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The athletics-oriented charter posted on Facebook last week asking followers to weigh in on where they wanted Gray to open its next location.
“Gray Collegiate Academy has BIG plans to expand across the great state of South Carolina—and we want YOU to help shape what’s next!” the school posted with a link to an online poll.
Poll participants could choose between seven counties — Calhoun, Spartanburg, Horry, Dorchester, Berkeley, Greenville and York — or write in their own selection.
It’s not clear why those particular counties were highlighted as options. The school did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Gray, which opened in 2014 with about 350 high school students, has grown into the largest K-12 brick-and-mortar charter school in the state while building a reputation for athletic and academic excellence.
Last year, Gray expanded into Irmo with a satellite campus for grades 6 through 10 (it’s serving grades 5 through 9 this year) and this year opened a northeast Columbia satellite for elementary school students.
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The South Carolina Department of Education has not yet released official enrollment counts for the 2026-27 school year, but Gray officials estimated earlier this year that they’d have more than 2,200 students between their three campuses.
The school’s principal, Brian Newsome, raised the possibility of further expansion at Gray Collegiate’s May board meeting, telling trustees that Gray had “imminent opportunities” to open additional schools across the state.
“There’s areas across South Carolina that reached out to us and said, ‘We want Gray in our community. What can we do to make it happen?’ ” he told the board. “They’ve got land, they have facilities, they got things.”
Newsome said he’d reserve the details for executive session — “we don’t publicly talk about [expansion opportunities]” — but acknowledged that Gray was working with Performance Charter School Development, an Idaho-based firm that is developing its Irmo campus.
He said at the May board session that he’d be meeting with Performance and NAI Columbia, a local commercial real estate brokerage, to review sites in the coming days.
“If we can build two schools in one year — in this school year — we can do anything else,” Newsome told the board. “I promise you that.”
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