Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5 High School for Health Professions

Community Facility

OCSD5’s High School for Health Professions is a charter school serving Orangeburg high school students wishing to pursue a career in healthcare. OCSD 5 is a Title I school with a free/reduced lunch rate of 99%, yet it has maintained a graduation rate of 98.5% over the course of its nine years in operation which is well above the state average of 80.3%.

Thanks to SC Community Loan Fund and Uplift America, an innovative cross-sector partnership, the school district was able to finance a state-of-the-art building in order to better serve a new generation of healthcare professionals.

Although the High School for Health Professions has always been a bright spot in the community, it was long housed in an outdated building lacking central air conditioning. The school moved to its new facility in 2017, a 16,500-square foot space on 7 acres of land. In 2018 the loan was still held by the project’s developer and Orangeburg Consolidated School District needed a permanent financing solution.

SCCLF, a USDA Community Facilities Relender, loaned OCSD5 $3,825,000 to refinance the purchase of the new facility. The goal of the USDA Community Facilities Relending Program is to provide affordable, long-term financing for large-scale projects that support rural communities, and that is exactly what this loan did.

The loan allows this rural school district to decrease their debt service spending, thus freeing up funds to support classroom activities. Thanks to collaborative approaches to rural development, OCSD5 now holds an asset which can prepare countless students for future careers in healthcare.