Myrtle Beach Year-Round Living: Schools, Healthcare, and Traffic

Schools: An Honest Enrollment Undershoot, Alongside a Genuine Bright Spot

Horry County Schools is a large, growing district, but its own numbers tell a more complicated story than the county's boom-town reputation suggests. Current district enrollment stood at 47,177 students as of a September 2025 report — 13,609 in high school, 11,261 in middle school, and 22,307 in elementary school. That figure is roughly 1,000 students short of the district's own 48,291 projection for the 2025-26 school year, even as Horry County's overall population keeps climbing.

The district looked into why, surveying 298 families who withdrew students. Fourteen percent said they wanted "more options" than the district offers. Of the documented withdrawals, 1,725 students left Horry County entirely, while another 1,356 stayed local but shifted to charter schools, private schools, virtual programs, or homeschooling. Named draws for those families included Discovery School (279 students), Atlantic Collegiate Academy (175 students), and Coastal Christian High School (97 students) — a real, specific counter-narrative to the assumption that a fast-growing county automatically means a fast-growing public school district.

Set against that honest headwind is a genuine bright spot: per the district's own Fall 2025 State Report Cards, Horry County Schools recorded its highest graduation rate on record, with most schools rated excellent or good. The standout is Scholars Academy, a program held on the Coastal Carolina University campus that lets 9th-12th graders earn a high school diploma alongside AP and dual-enrollment college credit. Scholars Academy scored 99.34 out of 100 on its first-ever state report card for the 2023-24 school year and was independently reported as South Carolina's #1-ranked high school as of October 2024.

Honest gap: whether Scholars Academy repeated that #1 ranking specifically in the newer Fall 2025 report-card cycle could not be independently confirmed — the district's own newsroom page describing that cycle was not accessible during this research. Treat the 2023-24 #1 ranking as confirmed and the Fall 2025 repeat as unconfirmed, and verify directly with Horry County Schools before treating any single school's current ranking as settled.

Healthcare: One Major Hospital Carrying a Big Trauma Load

Grand Strand Medical Center, owned and operated by HCA Healthcare, is the area's major hospital: 403 beds, established in 1978, and carrying both a Level I Adult Trauma Center and a Level II Pediatric Trauma Center designation, along with DNV-GL certification as a Comprehensive Stroke Center. It has expanded more than once in recent years — a $15 million addition in 2014 covering pediatrics, surgery, and ICU space, and a $14.5 million expansion in 2021 that added 32 patient beds. A Galen College of Nursing campus opened on-site in 2022, tying the hospital into the region's own nursing pipeline.

Honest gap: Tidelands Health is referenced across sources as a second health system serving the southern part of the Myrtle Beach area (toward Georgetown County), but this research could not independently confirm its facility details, bed count, or service-area specifics. Anyone weighing healthcare access for a specific address, especially south of Myrtle Beach proper, should confirm directly which system's facilities are actually closest and what services they offer.

Traffic: US 17 Congestion and a Contested Parkway Extension

The area's main coastal spine, US Highway 17 — running as Kings Highway and Ocean Boulevard through the city core, with a Bypass route inland — is the subject of an active widening project described by WMBF News as "nearing completion" as of a June 2026 report. That report followed drivers describing chronic congestion in blunt terms: "it bottlenecks every day," per WPDE reporting. This research could not confirm the project's specific cost or full timeline; treat the widening as real and underway, not as a solved problem, until confirmed directly with the South Carolina Department of Transportation.

Separately, Carolina Bays Parkway (SC Highway 31) — the main north-south relief route running inland, parallel to US 17 — is at the center of a live, contested extension fight. State transportation officials presented extension plans in October 2025 that drew, per an October 2025 WECT report, "strong opposition" from residents on the North Carolina side of the state line. This research could only confirm that dispute at the headline level; the specific route options, costs, and residents' objections were not independently verified and should be confirmed directly with SCDOT or the relevant North Carolina agencies before treating the parkway's extension as either settled or dead.

Putting It Together, and a Professional-Consult Disclaimer

Year-round life in Myrtle Beach means a school district that is, by its own numbers, enrolling fewer students than it expected even as the county grows — alongside a genuinely elite program in Scholars Academy that has already been ranked the state's #1 high school once. It means one major hospital, Grand Strand Medical Center, carrying serious trauma and stroke-care responsibility for the region, with a second system (Tidelands Health) whose exact role here isn't fully documented. And it means a highway network under real, current strain: US 17 mid-widening, and a relief-route extension that is actively contested rather than resolved.

None of this is educational, medical, legal, or relocation advice. School zoning, rankings, and report-card results change year to year; hospital services and coverage areas can change; and road projects shift in scope, cost, and timeline. Confirm current school assignment and rankings directly with Horry County Schools, confirm healthcare access and Tidelands Health's specific facilities directly with the relevant provider, and confirm the current status of both the US 17 widening and the Carolina Bays Parkway extension directly with the South Carolina Department of Transportation before making a relocation decision.