BISHOPVILLE - In a cluster of portable buildings on a lot behind the Church of Christ, the MLD Higher Learning Academy is trying to offer 75 students something different in a school district that academy officials say has failed its children.

In one room, part-time teacher Barbara Wilson guides 15 fourth- and fifth-graders through a lesson on words that describe the sense of touch. Some students sit at computers donated by a nearby school district.

The class prepares students for the Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test, South Carolina's annual high-stakes exam on which the pupils and their new school will be judged.

"I think we're filling a big void for the district," said principal Benita Dinkins-Robinson. "A lot of these kids would have been home."

Lee County School District has a different view. Superintendent Lloyd Hunter says the district is being forced to divert precious resources to an unproven concept.

The district initially denied the school's charter, creating an impasse eventually broken by the courts. The delay forced a hasty startup last summer that one teacher says has hurt the school, which serves fourth through eighth grades.

This tension, between local school districts and community members who say their children deserve an alternative to failing schools, is the focus of charter school legislation nearing final passage at the Statehouse.

The measure backed by Gov. Mark Sanford that cleared a legislative conference committee last week would create a statewide charter school district solely focused on approving and monitoring charter schools.

Supporters say the current rules make it too easy for local school boards to block new charter schools, which are independently run public schools held accountable for student performance but granted flexibility to try alternative techniques with targeted groups of students.

Ten years after the state passed a law first allowing charter schools, fewer than three dozen are operating.

David Church, executive director of the South Carolina Association of Public Charter Schools, says that's because the law only provided for one "authorizer" - the local school system.

The school district where Dinkins-Robinson, a former truancy officer, started the new school is in a poor county with little industry to provide jobs and tax revenue. The unemployment rate in the county hovers near 10 percent.

Eighty-three percent of the district's students have family incomes low enough to qualify them for free or reduced-price lunches.

Last year, the district received the state's lowest rating, "unsatisfactory." And more than two-thirds of the students scored "below basic," the lowest score, on the annual state test.

Hunter said diverting funds to a charter school impedes the district's efforts to serve its poor, rural population, and suggested the district could meet more students' needs if the state provided more money to hire quality teachers and administrators.

But students say they were glad to leave the district's schools, where they say teachers struggled to maintain discipline.

The school's protracted battle with the school district has created a host of problems.

District administrators stopped providing lunches about halfway through the first semester, leaving students angry and school officials scrambling to feed the pupils.