Back to school means a lot of things.

It’s exciting to find out who your child’s new teacher will be. It’s fascinating to kids who are entering a new grade. They’re one year closer to adulthood, no matter how far off we as parents know that milestone is.

We’re lucky to live in a school district like Charleston County. We’re even luckier to live east of the Cooper where there is no doubt that our teachers are some of the best and our facilities, little by little, are becoming state-of-the-art.

Mount Pleasant Academy, the state’s oldest public school, and Moultrie Middle School, named after General William High School, have both been rebuilt. The doors opened this week to students who have been housed at Wando South while construction was going on. These facilities are incredibly beautiful and truly a treasure. They are a testament to what community involvement can produce.

Without the Town of Mount Pleasant’s Blue Ribbon Committee for Schools, comprehensive input would have never been received by the school district.

These two schools in particular had long outgrown their accommodations. But set aside overcrowding, both facilities were lacking the necessary technology needed to teach today’s children. Gone are the days of an overhead projector. Every classroom should have a SMART board and at least two student computers. These two new schools do.

They were designed with vision. That vision provides students with a environmentally friendly building, all the tools and resources students and teachers need and an undercurrent of excitement which will keep students hungry for more.

Three more schools will undergo rebuilding this year. And they too have faced growing pains and outdated learning tools. But as with the staff at Moultrie and Mount Pleasant Academy, the teachers, administrators and students make do with what they do have. Somehow it all comes together.

Mamie P. Whitesides Elementary School is being built on Rifle Range Road, just down the street from its existing site. That building will be complete this year. Jennie Moore Elementary School and Laing Middle School will be rebuilt on the Jennie Moore property, creating what Park West enjoys - a true lower school academic campus.

We are lucky, and as parents, we have a lot to be thankful for. Our children don’t have to go to private school to get exceptional educations. They can get it right here in our neighborhood schools.

And our administrators and teachers can be thankful that the parents in this community are hands on and involved.

It’s a great team effort that benefits future generations immensely.

This week the Moultrie News published a commemorative section on both Mount Pleasant Academy and Moultrie Middle School, complete with pictures and interviews with both principals. Congratulations on two beautiful new schools.