School board puts off decision on Beach Elementary School
The Lee County School District Board took no action at their meeting today on reopening the school following a presentation by their consultant Accenture.
Fort Myers Beach Elementary School parents and community members are slamming a consultant’s report as misleading and erroneous which recommended closing the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School during a presentation at a Lee County School District School Board workshop this past week.
Parents had been concerned about the report’s findings after Superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin announced on March a consultant would be used to give a report on the future viability of the school when parents had been pushing for the school to reopen since Hurricane Milton.
The lack of action followed the report by Accenture, which recommended not reopening the school but instead repurposing the school as a hybrid charter school operated by the Town of Fort Myers Beach. That is supposed to be the worst-case scenario if the school didn’t meet cost reductions by the 2026-27 school years based on an interlocal agreement with the Town of Fort Myers Beach that some parents and community members believe the school district is violating.
School board member Armor Persons recommended the school district rebuild the school. “I see a pathway for them to be very viable,” Persons said.
Other members appeared less certain following the consultant’s report and Carlin said she would report back to the school board at another time.
School board Chair Samuel Fisher said he hadn’t made up his mind on the school, Vice Chair Jada Langford Fleming called for incorporating Beach Elementary School students temporary into Heights Elementary. Board member Melisa Giovannelli said the school board couldn’t make the decision on its own and needed more community input.
The school has not been opened since getting a couple inches of water from Hurricane Milton in October. Students have been attending San Carlos Park Elementary since then.
Bill Ribble, an Estero resident who was elected to the Lee County School District Board in November to represent the school board district that includes Fort Myers Beach Elementary School, said he considered himself “a corporate guy” and “I don’t think we can get back on there. I think we are just going to put good money into bad money.”
Ribble did say, though, that the school district should look at how other school districts have rebuilt in North Carolina and asked about the district elevating its electrical outlets at Fort Myers Beach Elementary School.
Parents were furious with the contents of the consultant’s report which preceded the board’s discussion during a workshop. Parents challenged the report as misleading, questioning the accuracy of the data and its decided advocacy for closing the school. The report has led to a number of questions, including what direction the consultants were given and why the reopening of the elementary school has been delayed for a report when an interlocal agreement between the school district and the Town of Fort Myers Beach requires that the school be open through at least 2027.
Fort Myers Beach Elementary School PTO Vice President Monica Schmucker said parents have been concerned for months as an ad-hoc committee meeting with school administrators have questioned the delays in repairing the school since Hurricane Milton.
While the district spent $641,000 on remediation and stabilization efforts on the school (the majority of which was covered by insurance) after Hurricane Milton, it has not done the necessary repairs to reopen the school.
School administrators had estimated the cost of the repairs to reopen the school at a low of $1.3 million to slightly more depending on the repairs, up to $13 million if a full rebuild was chosen.
Yet the consultants said they believe the lowest cost to reopen the school would $7.2 million, without offering any data to support their estimates. The consultants referred to a “third party” who works with Miami-Dade schools and cited permit fees, design costs, furniture and contingency costs for repairing the school.
After Hurricane Ian, the school district spent $6 million to repair and reopen the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School in a project that was far more extensive than what would be required to reopen the school. That project also included tearing down several buildings.
Schmucker said repairs of the school could include filling in the floors with concrete to prevent future flooding damage.
Schmucker said there is a “lack of accurate information” in the report. “Faulty data in is faulty data out,” she said. “There are a lot of items in the report that doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t paint a very complete picture,” Schmucker said.
“I don’t trust anything in the report,” Schmucker said. Schmucker said the hiring of the consultant to delay reopening the school and building the cafeteria is a violation of the interlocal agreement.
Schmucker said the intentional delays in repairing the school should extend the terms of the interlocal greement past the 2027 date since the school was not open after Hurricane Milton through June and is not expected to be open this fall. “They owe us the time they have delayed,” Schmucker said.
Fellow parent and ad-hoc committee member John Koss objected to the consultant’s estimate of a cost of $27,000 per student. Back in 2022, the district had estimated the cost per student at $21,000 and since then there has been a number of cuts to staff at the district. Koss believes the number for operations is actually closer to $15,000 but that the district is using other methods to estimate the cost by adding in other costs not related to the day-to-day operations of the school.
School spokesman Rob Spicker said the figure cited by the consultants is the one submitted by the district to the state. Spicker did not respond to questions as of press time as to which year was being cited or why the figure would have grown since 2022 when personnel has been cut and the district has been merged into San Carlos Park Elementary School.
The district has also not released a copy of its operations budget for Fort Myers Beach Elementary School and budget documents on the district’s website do not list the budgeted cost for the school.
In 2022, the budgeted operational cost of the school was $1.7 million, a figure Koss said is now several hundred thousand dollars less.
The Fort Myers Beach Elementary School has the lowest budget of any school in the district and is its highest performing K-5 school. “You don’t close down the best performing school,” Schmucker said.
The entire Lee County School District budget was $2.9 billion this year, up from $2.5 billion in 2022.
“We cut costs” at Beach Elementary School, Schmucker said. Former Principal Tracy Kohler told town councilmembers at a recent meeting how she had to let staff go during her tenure at the school in order to meet budgetary goals set by the school district’s administration.
Meanwhile, the consultants hired by the district estimated their report on Fort Myers Beach Elementary School would cost $185,000. The firm is on a three-year retainer the school board approved in 2023, which has paid them more than $6 million to oversee building projects and services in the district.
The district has yet to release documents concerning how the consultants were instructed to complete the report and their scope of work.
The district has budgeted $6 million to build a new cafeteria building for the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School but hasn’t put out the project to bid. The cafeteria is required to be built as part of the interlocal agreement. “They owe us what they owe us,” Schmucker said.
Schmucker said hurricanes don’t get the school out of the agreement with the Town of Fort Myers Beach to operate the school through 2027.
Parents asked the school district to use $5.8 million that was being planned after Hurricane Ian for portables and to instead build a permanent cafeteria building at a higher elevation with an auditorium. That was codified into the interlocal agreement.
“You don’t get out because of another hurricane. Nothing that Milton brought prevented you from building that cafeteria,” Schmucker told the school board. “Honor the agreement.”
“You are in charge of our kids’ education. Teach them to have integrity and honor their word,” Schmucker said. Schmucker said the school board should give the school portable classrooms in the interim to bring students back to Fort Myers Beach while the school board makes a decision on the future of the school.
Superintendent Dr. Denise Carlin, who was elected by Lee County voters in November, made no pledges to reopen the school at this week’s school board meeting. She has declined multiple request for interviews.
Carlin said she recently met with Town of Fort Myers Beach Manager Will McKannay and the town’s legal counsel. Carlin said the meeting was “productive.” The Town of Fort Myers Beach Council voted to authorize McKannay and the town’s attorneys to contact Carlin and push for the reopening of the school in order to abide by the interlocal agreement.
Beach Elementary School graduate Tessa Schmucker, now a middle school student, asked the board during public comment why the school hasn’t been repaired since Milton and why a cafeteria that was promised to be built this year hadn’t been built per an agreement between the town and school district.
“Don’t your promises matter?” Schmucker asked. “Are you going to teach us that we keep our promises or that your word means nothing?”
Questionable data on past hurricanes
The consultant’s report included some erroneous data including referring to Hurricane Charley as being in 2024 when it was in 2004. The report says that the storm brought six to seven feet of storm surge though it did not damage the school not delay its reopening further than any other school in the district. The report also mentions hurricanes Irma and Wilma which did not bring any significant flooding or damage to the school.
“The amount of risk that this building has of another catastrophic event of having severe damage to the building is pretty much a guarantee,” the report said.
However, between Hurricane Donna in 1960 and Hurricane Ian in 2022, the school never had an extended period of closure from a storm that is being experienced now.
According to the consultants, the school board spent $9.7 million into the school to be operational since Hurricane Ian though the report is not clear if this is including normal day-to-day operations since the school’s spokesperson Rob Spicker said Hurricane Ian repairs cost approximately $6 million. The report says the district has spent $1.4 million on the school being operational since Hurricane Milton yet the district says it has spent approximately $640,000 on repairs since Milton.
The report at one point says it will cost another $3 million to get it open again though the district has said the lowest amount to reopen the school would be $1.3 million and the consultant’s report has estimated it at $7.2 million up to $9.9 million.
The consultants said another option was to purchase modular buildings for students to attend this fall.
The consultants said they surveyed approximately 700 Lee County residents about the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School and said about half were concerned about the reopening. The report did not include extensive details or data about the survey.
Beach Elementary School gets support from Persons
The Fort Myers Beach Elementary School did have support from Persons.
Persons suggested that the Fort Myers Beach Elementary School could help solve some of the growing pains the district is experiencing in the eastern part of the county. Persons said that Fort Myers Beach Elementary School could follow the model of Sanibel’s K-8 school, where about 60% of students who attend are from off island.
Persons said the town council is working diligently to promote the school.
Persons said the best option would be to put up “a brand new school that will take any surge like all of the new buildings on the beach.”
“I really feel that looking at the Sanibel school, that being our model, it should go very well,” Persons said.
Persons said the district has made it easier for students to attend the school from off island.
The school district’s population was at 80 students before Hurricane Ian after a high of about 150 in the 1990’s. The population dipped to about 50 students after Hurricane Ian but climbed back up to 72 after the school reopened. That number has since dropped after Hurricane Milton.
The delays in reopening the school will make it harder for the school to attract new students as the uncertainty grows about its future, Schmucker said.
“They are putting us in an impossible situation,” Schmucker said.
Board Chair Samuel Fisher asked whether the district can put in concrete slabs, flood vents and raise the electrical outlets to prevent catastrophic flooding damage in the future.
Accenture consultant David Griffith said if the district filled in the flood level with concrete, the damage to the school would be significantly less costly than Milton if a similar storm hit.
Board member Melisa Giovanelli said she believed the thoughts by Persons was “valuable” but said “this decision should not just be a board decision.”
Giovanelli said “I don’t think we have enough community input. We know what Town of Fort Myers Beach wants and I respect that. I think we need to reach out to what Lee County wants. That’s who we count on.”
Giovanelli said the school board to reach out to local businesspeople and Realtors for input.
Parents speak out
Fort Myers Beach Elementary School parent Jennifer Tardiff-Paradiso said the small classrooms at Fort Myers Beach Elementary School have helped her daughter learn.
She said teachers there “gave her the care and her attention she needed.”
“We lost everything in Hurricane – not just photos and clothes – churches homes, the pier everything,” Tardiff-Paradiso said. “The school was still there.”
Tardiff-Paradiso said “Our entire community rallied around our families because they knew instinctively we would need the school to care for our most vulnerable.”
Koss said the process by the school district has not been inclusive or transparent.
“It feels like the lesson this district it wants to teach its students is to not honor agreements,” Koss said.
Fort Myers Beach Mayor Dan Allers called upon the school board to give guidance to the superintendent to “take closing the school off the table and that will ease tension.”
Alexis Cooper, a parent of Fort Myers Beach Elementary School students, called on the school district to “give us our school back. Stop busing us to different schools.”
Cooper called the school district’s handling of the school as “institutional negligence.”
Schmucker said she was most concerned about statements made by school board member Jada Langford Fleming about repopulating Fort Myers Beach Elementary School students into Heights Elementary School in Fort Myers this year, thus taking away the identity of the school. Schmucker said that proposal was the “least in touch with our community.” Fort Myers Beach Elementary School staff would in effect no longer be identified with the Beach School.
“We will basically lose our Fort Myers Beach identity,” Schmucker said.
The Fort Myers Beach Elementary School wasn’t the only issue on the school board’s agenda on Tuesday. Faculty union members were not happy about a contract agreement.
While Fort Myers Beach Elementary School parents spoke up at the school board meeting to save their school, a large number of residents from Alva spoke out against a $400 million bond issue the school board was planning to vote on that night which includes building a school in their community to support the Lehigh Acres community. Residents warned it would harm the environment and would create dangerous conditions and longer travel for students, and would be a waste of money. Alva residents questioned whether the school was part of a plan to develop Alva, a rural area with a sensitive environment with a large community of residents weary of development proposals.
The $400 million bond includes the new East High School NNN in Alva, as well as Cypress Lake Middle School and Hector Cafferata Jr. K-8 schools rebuild.
Meanwhile, the school board on Tuesday voted to issue up to $400 million in bonds for the potential construction of three new schools including a new school in Alva that is opposed by many in the community. A large group of residents attended Tuesday’s school board meeting to oppose the new school building that they say will be located in an unsafe area for motorists in an environmentally sensitive area with wetlands that is far away from where many of the Lehigh Acres students live.
Several board members expressed hesitancy with approving the bond but ultimately voted for the resolution pending future discussion.