Last week, a room inside the Florence County Detention Center traded its usual rules and routine for caps and gowns.
Five people graduated. It was the first ceremony of its kind at the facility, and every one of them earned a GED while still housed there, something that was not even possible in Florence County until this spring. For years, anyone who wanted to take the test had to wait until they were released or transferred somewhere else. Now there is a testing center right inside the walls, the result of a partnership between the Florence County Sheriff's Office and Florence One Schools Adult Education that has been in the works since 2023.
The people who built it, Captain Lynnette Patton and Dr. Lisa Justice among them, talk about it the way you talk about something you waited a long time for. Higher wages down the road. Stronger family literacy. A real shot at not coming back. One of the graduates put it plainly to the room, that the past is only a chapter, not the title of the whole story.
It is easy to write a place like that off as the end of the road. Last week, it was a starting line instead.
Also Worth Knowing
McLeod Health is putting $75,000 into nursing. The gift goes to Florence-Darlington Technical College to strengthen its nursing program, at a time when the region needs more nurses than it has. Money that turns into people who take care of us.
The library has something worth driving to. The Florence County Library System is the only stop in the Pee Dee for a traveling exhibit called Foundations of a Revolution: South Carolina 1775 to 1777, built with the State Archives and featuring original documents from the founding era. A real piece of history, close to home, in a year when the whole country is thinking about where it started.
Florence 1 Schools is hiring bus drivers for the coming year, with paid CDL training, a starting wage of $17.59 an hour, and benefits. No experience needed to begin, which makes it one of the more accessible good jobs in town right now.
Local artists, the clock is running. The Florence Regional Arts Alliance is taking submissions for its SMALL WORKS 2026 show through July 3. It is open to adult artists across the Southeast, but the wall is right here in Florence.
A quiet changing of the guard at the Chamber. The Greater Florence Chamber honored outgoing chair Paige Ard at a luncheon downtown this month, and Ashley Christenbury of First Bank steps into the role on July 1. The kind of handoff that keeps a community's engine running.