Students Have An Opportunity to Become Trilingual

Students have an opportunity to become trilingual in Spanish, English, and Mandarin at a charter school which specializes in STEM subjects.

At Pioneer Technology and Arts Academy, visitors to Levi Si’s classroom are greeted with “ni hao” which means hello in Mandarin Chinese. Students at PTAA will be challenged to become trilingual before they graduate.

The new STEM charter school in Greenville is located in the buildings that were previously used by the defunct Phoenix Charter School and has sixth and seventh grades. Plans are underway to expand to a new campus with dorm rooms for exchange students, and increase to 160 students by the end of this school year. In future years there are plans to add grades eight through twelve, and a possible K-5 program.

PTAA received its charter in December 2015, and is the only charter school in Greenville, but is not only for students in the Greenville district. Students who wish to apply for enrollment can live within a 55 mile radius.

“We chose Greenville to give another option for the community that needs a tuition-free school other than (the Greenville) ISD,” PTAA Superintendent Shubham Pandey said.