Fort Mill School District names ‘perfect choice’ as new virtual academy director
The Fort Mill School District has found a new director for its virtual academy.
Emily McQuay, who has now spent 20 years in education, is replacing Christine McNeil, who will be principal of the soon-to-be-opened Forest Creek Middle School in Fort Mill.
“We are excited to have Dr. McQuay as director of the Fort Mill Virtual Academy,” said Superintendent Chuck Epps in a statement via district news release. “Her leadership skills and years of experience in education make her the perfect choice to lead the virtual academy as it continues to grow.”
McQuay received her undergraduate degree from Clemson and her master’s from South Carolina before serving as an assistant principal at a variety of York County high schools — including Rock Hill, Nation Ford and Catawba Ridge, which she helped open last year.
Most recently, this past year, McQuay served as the Assistant Director of Fort Mill’s Virtual Academy — and she filled an integral role during a particularly busy August, when the South Carolina Department of Education told school districts to provide a virtual option for students amid COVID-19.
“We had registration in July, so at that point we knew how many kids we were going to have, and so everybody took a piece and made sure kids got the classes they needed,” McQuay told The Herald in a phone interview on Wednesday evening. She added that putting together the virtual academy required coordination between a lot of moving parts — from the curriculum department, to the district’s technology department and more.
“It was just such a team effort,” she said.
The Fort Mill School District, which has roughly 17,000 students and didn’t have an all-virtual option prior to the pandemic, had a virtual enrollment of more than 5,000 students (K-12) when the 2020-21 school year began, The Herald previously reported. McQuay said it has been “such a great experience” to build Fort Mill’s virtual academy from scratch.
“That’s not something I ever thought that I would do in my career,” McQuay said. “So it definitely was a challenge, but it’s been a good challenge.”
One of McQuay’s primary overarching tasks as director of the virtual academy? Find a way to make this endeavor serve as a long-term solution for providing more flexible learning options for students.
“It was kind of a thing we were pushed into doing, you know,” McQuay said. “It was something a lot of people had talked about for years: ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be great if we could?’ Well, now that we have it, let’s try to keep it going and give our families another option to choose.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 2:50 PM.
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