The Charles Webb Center

The Charles Webb Easter Seal Center had been doing a marvelous job serving the Charleston disabled community for decades.  It was a perfect example of how privately run charities can serve the community much better than the government.  As the government took on more of the responsibilities the private sector charities began to get squeezed out of the picture.  About a year after we arrived in Charleston we began to hear about changes that were on the horizon for the Charles Webb Center

.  Easter Seals would be pulling their support and we began to hear rumors that the board of directors was in secret negotiations with Roper Hospital to buy our building.  The center was housed on a prime piece of property at 325 Calhoun Street, which was almost directly across from the hospital and they had their set their sights on our building.  Unfortunately, while the board was talking to Roper, they certainly were not talking to the parents.  Rumors were flying and it created some very bad feeling between the parents and the board. We spent hours attending meetings planning our strategy to confront the board to find out what would happen to our wonderful program.  The school system was still completely clueless on how to handle the younger children and our fear was that our kids would be left with nowhere to go.  The

parent advisory committee along with the administrators at Charles Webb began to sketch out plans for an integrated daycare/after school program called “A Step Ahead”.  We were prepared to take the program private if we lost support from the board, because there was no reason this program could not continue to be viable with or without the Charles Webb board.  Our efforts began to get the attention of some in the media and since many on the board were prominent members of Charleston society things began to get nasty.  It all came to a head when one of our parents saw a public notice hidden in the newspaper announcing a Charles Webb board meeting, yet none of us had been given any notification.  Of course we sent our number one advocate, Dennis, and he witnessed the vote to sell the building.  However, he was able to convince the board of the viability of the program and it was agreed that a new location would be located.  The Charles Webb Center would continue after all. The “A Step Ahead” business plan we had developed was soon implemented and our school continued to grow.  Today the program is still housed in the same facility we moved to almost twenty years ago and the program is still thriving under the Charles Webb name.