Updates on the Fight for Quality Public Education in Brevard County, FL
0:00 Thank you.
56:28 it might save us on some uh electrical costs you know might save
56:29 us a little bit on overhead but
56:31 it’s really staffing you know we would still staff the school
56:35 for 500 and we only have 250.
56:38 aside from teachers it’s it’s the ancillary staff so principal
56:42 system principal administrators
56:45 um you know full-time media specialists full-time cafeteria
56:49 staff you got so you know that’s the
56:51 that’s where the overhead is when you have it under enrolled
56:54 school that’s where you
56:55 you’re not operating efficiently so and i’ll let sue hand talk
57:01 about condition of roosevelt versus
57:03 the condition of capeu sir um generally speaking they’re in
57:08 about the same condition they’re about
57:11 the same age and over the next five to eight year period they
57:15 both need about five to seven million
57:17 dollars in improvements so it’s they’re pretty similar would be
57:20 the answer to that
57:21 yeah follow-up um so in the in the balance of things how was it
57:30 that roosevelt was chosen
57:32 to be the recipient as opposed to cape view being roosevelt’s
57:35 recipient uh children
57:38 you can start i’ll start okay so the um the feeder chain goes to
57:43 coco beach junior senior high school and
57:46 roosevelt is adjacent to coco beach junior senior high school so
57:49 that seemed like the the better approach
57:51 from a facility standpoint we’re pretty neutral as to which goes
57:55 which direction but i think from an
57:58 educational point of view and transportation and things like
58:01 that it made more sense to consolidate
58:03 into roosevelt than into cape view there are also a couple
58:08 unique elements at the roosevelt campus it
58:13 used to be a middle school so it has a gymnasium you know most
58:16 elementary schools do not have a gymnasium so
58:18 that’s a really benefit to have a gymnasium especially if it’s a
58:21 school with 500 or so students
58:23 you know and there are some other buildings that
58:27 the cafeteria is bigger you know there’s there are things that
58:29 because it was an old middle school that
58:31 made it more attractive to consolidate there
58:34 okay um i’d like to open it up to the floor to anybody from our
58:40 side that might want to have
58:41 conversations based on it anybody want to go first okay uh first
58:46 of all i appreciate the opportunity
58:48 to have the two bodies get together i wish we’d done this uh
58:51 earlier i think it was a great idea so
58:54 kudos to you guys for for asking for it um you know obviously it
58:58 makes financial sense from a black
59:00 and white it’s almost a no-brainer why we wouldn’t you know why
59:03 this is an option but there are other
59:05 factors to to take into account and miss jackson your your
59:09 argument was probably one of the best ones i’ve
59:12 heard uh to to to the counter um since out of all the
59:16 discussions we’ve had um my concern is um obviously
59:22 title one funding and there’s other little things that get the
59:24 improvements that have to be made to
59:26 roosevelt to bring on kindergarteners and first graders and
59:29 bathroom additions and things of that
59:31 nature that’s all minor stuff my biggest concern is um making
59:35 sure that we keep enough capacity because
59:38 we don’t know what the space industry is going to do we don’t
59:40 know what the space uh patrick
59:42 space force base is going to do um and there’s probably no way
59:45 to project with 100 certainty
59:48 because it’s it’s a growing industry and things come out of the
59:52 out of the woodwork you know we
59:53 don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow but that being said
59:57 um and i’m personally trying to to meet
59:59 with space florida and to meet with patrick’s space force base
1:00:04 and edc to try to learn are there
1:00:06 anything is there anything that they can in the foreseeable
1:00:09 future see coming down the pike that might
1:00:11 change that the need for capacity i agree with you and as far as
1:00:14 the affordability i think that’s huge
1:00:16 because if the space industry does continue to grow at the rate
1:00:19 that it is and there is a workforce
1:00:21 coming they have to go somewhere and they all can’t afford to go
1:00:24 to be here um so that’s certainly a
1:00:26 consideration i appreciate you guys bringing that up it’s
1:00:30 certainly something i’m i’m sure each of us
1:00:32 are weighing it heavily i know it’s it’s you know nobody’s
1:00:35 taking this decision lightly and i just
1:00:36 want you to know it didn’t fall on deaf ears i’m certainly um
1:00:39 weighing that and and we’ll consider
1:00:41 that as i as i investigate further mr campbell
1:00:48 echo my thanks and as i said to some of the cape view parents
1:00:53 who shared before i don’t expect any
1:00:55 different than for you to fight for your city because it’s not
1:00:57 just a school it is a part of
1:00:59 your city i recognize that it’s being the only school in your
1:01:01 city and i did a little research a
1:01:03 couple months ago okay which which cities don’t have a school
1:01:07 and this would make uh cape canaveral the
1:01:09 largest city without a school i think you guys are just under 10
1:01:12 000 population and the other cities
1:01:14 in our county that don’t have a school are are underneath that
1:01:19 um so um you know like grant valk area
1:01:21 and the other ones that don’t have school so i i understand i
1:01:24 don’t expect any different than what
1:01:26 you’re doing right now because you’re fighting for your people
1:01:28 um and and for your community um
1:01:32 i that the questions i think have mostly been um answered by dr
1:01:38 rendell and miss ham i would just
1:01:41 i did want to just share some things as we’ve had these
1:01:45 conversations just thoughts that have come
1:01:46 through information that’s been given and things that i’ve
1:01:49 looked up um you mentioned um miss jackson
1:01:52 about the homeschool families and the choice options one of the
1:01:55 things that’s happening we’ve talked
1:01:56 about short rental short-term rentals a lot but one thing that’s
1:01:59 also happening to the population not
1:02:01 just in cape canaveral but in a lot of our beachside communities
1:02:04 and across the country is the graying
1:02:06 of our community we just listened to a demographics presentation
1:02:10 at our fsva conference last month
1:02:11 and of course florida is getting a huge influx of population but
1:02:15 many places across our country and
1:02:17 especially along the coastal parts of florida the community is
1:02:21 not just um it’s graying and so those
1:02:24 meaning those it’s the same people who have lived there forever
1:02:26 their kids are grown and gone they’re
1:02:28 still there but there’s no more children so it’s not just a
1:02:30 short-term rentals it’s the demographic
1:02:32 shift that’s happening as the people who are moving in don’t
1:02:35 have kids and part of that is graying but
1:02:38 also part of it is just our birth rates dropping so across the
1:02:41 country school districts are having to
1:02:44 deal with the fact that there will be fewer kindergartners as we
1:02:48 move forward and again while florida has
1:02:50 received a huge transfer in from other states that birth rate
1:02:55 drop is not really um that’s not really a
1:02:59 thing that we’re benefiting as much from most of our population
1:03:02 growth is coming from transfers in but it’s
1:03:04 not necessarily meaning a population growth in students and so
1:03:06 so it’s not just a short-term
1:03:08 rental problem there is a gray and aging of our population and a
1:03:11 low birth rate thing that is
1:03:12 compounding that but i i mentioned the homeschool families
1:03:15 because i looked at okay what if everybody
1:03:17 came back that’s zoned all of our school arts from charters by
1:03:22 the way there’s only one that i
1:03:24 could see our last numbers i could only see one student who
1:03:27 lives in the the city of that cape view
1:03:30 boundary who actually goes to our charter school so charter
1:03:32 schools aren’t pulling kids so much there
1:03:35 may be some homeschool families and we can’t calculate that
1:03:38 number as much but considering the huge
1:03:40 burst in uh homeschool options in the last year that we have had
1:03:44 across the district cape view actually
1:03:46 saw a very small dip so i don’t think that is it’s not that
1:03:50 there are that families are making other
1:03:52 choices there just aren’t the kids um but i want to i want to
1:03:56 recognize the changes that we expect might
1:03:59 happen i i just have i want to push back and it would be
1:04:02 information that it would be maybe research
1:04:04 on on affordability thing because i will tell you when i drove
1:04:08 around you know cape canaveral a month or
1:04:12 so ago what i saw was the great big beach houses that hardly
1:04:15 anybody can afford and a bunch of really
1:04:17 little ones so i’d like to know what can you buy for 375 000 in
1:04:23 cape canaveral in palm bay west melbourne
1:04:26 port st john it might be a bigger house you know is that didn’t
1:04:31 talk about size it’s average price but
1:04:34 if it’s average price for a two-bedroom one bath you know what
1:04:37 would be a great beach rental but not
1:04:39 necessarily a great place to to bring up a handful of kids i i
1:04:42 don’t know that i don’t know that and
1:04:44 i know i know where i know my community i know palm bay you know
1:04:48 is sometimes gets a bad rap but you
1:04:50 can buy a lot of house in palm bay for 375 000 um and a and a
1:04:54 bigger lot than even where i live in west
1:04:58 melbourne um so that’s the other reason why families are looking
1:05:02 at other places is because it’s not just
1:05:05 the price tag but how much house can i get for that especially
1:05:07 if you’re raising kids
1:05:08 um but uh you know we we did look at other options i i listened
1:05:13 to lots of parents stood
1:05:15 out in the parking lot and talked to a handful of people about
1:05:17 the choice options thank you mr willis
1:05:20 um they want to know about the choice schools dr rendell didn’t
1:05:22 mention this but those two choice
1:05:24 schools are less than 15 minutes each way like one of them is 11
1:05:28 minutes drive and the other one’s like
1:05:30 you know 12 13 minutes so families have choices and and to be
1:05:34 completely honest as someone who lives
1:05:37 way down in the south end there’s it would take a lot even if we
1:05:40 didn’t have those to attract people to
1:05:42 the farthest most out of the way school that we have a beautiful
1:05:45 school i went there in december and you
1:05:47 can see the dunes from the playground is beautiful but it would
1:05:50 take a lot to get people to fight that
1:05:52 traffic and that distance to to come from other schools but
1:05:55 since we do have those two choice options
1:05:57 right there on the doorsteps um that’s what that’s what makes
1:06:00 making it a special center difficult
1:06:02 um and so um but those are the things that i i’m thinking thank
1:06:08 you mr uh shoryak for mentioning
1:06:11 that but you know but again 80 percent actually over 80 percent
1:06:15 of our total budget district-wide
1:06:17 is people 80 to 85 it’s always been that way since i’ve been on
1:06:20 the board as people
1:06:21 um so uh you know i appreciate the things you guys have brought
1:06:26 up i appreciate the concerns that the
1:06:28 parents have brought up because those are things we want to if
1:06:30 we if we have if we have already thought
1:06:32 them through but we haven’t said it out loud we need to say it
1:06:35 out loud because we want the community
1:06:37 not just cape canaveral but the whole county to know no we are
1:06:40 thinking through these things and i
1:06:42 say we as a board i i mean we as a district because the staff
1:06:45 has spent so much time and we spent the
1:06:47 money to make sure we had outside voices um to help us with that
1:06:51 but wxy didn’t make the decision
1:06:54 they gave us the data and then we we moved forward but we wanted
1:06:57 that information um from someone who was
1:06:59 looking at it um and to be completely honest you know an
1:07:03 additional factor that’s actually we were
1:07:06 already moving in this direction the staff was presenting this
1:07:09 to us you know starting in the um
1:07:11 last year and in the fall um but since then the pressure from
1:07:15 the state on us on school districts
1:07:17 has been increased and i don’t know how much you follow
1:07:20 education news um but you know florida’s got
1:07:23 their own doge system going on now and just to be completely
1:07:27 honest i i read an article that the
1:07:29 the person who’s heading that up has said they want to look at
1:07:31 school districts first and our commissioner
1:07:33 of education sat in front of a room full of school board members
1:07:37 a month ago and told us that we are
1:07:39 leaving under enrolled schools open now he said that to us in a
1:07:46 word saying that we weren’t being
1:07:49 responsible to our taxpayers what i if i had had a personal
1:07:52 conversation with him what i would tell us
1:07:55 is our taxpayers love their small schools and our taxpayers and
1:07:59 certain communities don’t want us to
1:08:01 close our small schools and so i get that i i still think staff’s
1:08:05 moving along and and we need to make
1:08:07 the decision but i just want to let you know there is an extra
1:08:09 pressure that’s that is actually adding
1:08:11 on of the state looking at us and saying why are why are you
1:08:15 doing this and some pressure and i you
1:08:17 know there’s been some conversation about schools of hope that
1:08:19 doesn’t really apply necessarily to cape
1:08:21 view because it’s it’s not in the right zone um even though we
1:08:25 did get a letter that’s not part of
1:08:27 this and all that happened after we were already heading that
1:08:29 way um but to not confuse the
1:08:31 issue i just want to let you know that you know we are we are
1:08:33 going to be facing additional pressure
1:08:35 and so even though we’re looking at cape view this year it may
1:08:38 not be the last school or community
1:08:41 that we have to look at and say is this the best use of taxpayer
1:08:45 dollars um you know i um it’s it’s
1:08:49 really tough decisions and it’s super not fun but i do
1:08:53 appreciate you guys sharing concerns and if if
1:08:56 if we as after we get done going down the line if you guys come
1:08:58 up with another one please by all means
1:09:00 share it because we want to make sure we get everything out i
1:09:03 feel like on the table today
1:09:05 and have all those questions answered so the public knows that
1:09:09 we have uh thought of everything that
1:09:10 we can thank you mr chair thank you ms campbell uh mr trenton
1:09:14 sure i guess i could have just recorded
1:09:18 ms campbell’s um and replay it because it was so good um thanks
1:09:21 ms campbell for being so thorough
1:09:23 uh again thank you guys for uh you know knowing the voice of
1:09:28 your community that asked for this and
1:09:31 you reached out to us and we’re happy to to sit down uh to go
1:09:35 over everything i think it was a great
1:09:37 idea dr rindell uh going through the presentation i mean it’s
1:09:41 one thing to you know flip through slides
1:09:43 you know or or or look on our you know website and look at our
1:09:46 presentations but to see it you know
1:09:48 here and hear it and have feedback on it is is incredibly
1:09:52 important so you know thank thank you for
1:09:54 doing that um i i’m happy that you you acknowledge the numbers
1:09:59 are the numbers and that’s what you know
1:10:02 we’re looking at here um at the same time having our our finger
1:10:07 on the pulse of people you know it’s it’s
1:10:09 more than just numbers that we deal with and you too as a city
1:10:12 it’s it’s numbers and then it’s people
1:10:15 and you you have to it’s a that’s a tough balance uh you know
1:10:18 you’ve been struggling with uh and i don’t
1:10:21 just mean you i mean communities have been struggling with the
1:10:24 short-term long-term rental balance it’s been
1:10:27 tough you know because i’m sure you have uh people in your own
1:10:30 community that says that’s my
1:10:32 property i can do what i want so you have to deal with people in
1:10:35 numbers as well um so it’s always
1:10:38 a tough decision but now that you’ve seen it up out in front
1:10:41 there you know we also get
1:10:42 bogged down in our own little communities as you know i i saw
1:10:48 some online to say
1:10:50 they’re acting as if coco beach and cape canaver were their own
1:10:53 little uh districts and not not even
1:10:56 thinking probably that we have 100 schools we have 80 86 or 85
1:11:00 traditional schools we have
1:11:02 a county it’s a county district that we have to deal with and
1:11:04 you know and if we were spending
1:11:05 40 percent more per student at in any any district um that would
1:11:10 need our attention you know it isn’t
1:11:12 just you know i’m not picking on a a school b school c school it
1:11:15 has nothing to do with that so these are
1:11:17 tough decisions that um uh we knew it was gonna be tough at the
1:11:20 beginning you know that’s why we we went
1:11:22 out and and get the wxy uh uh consultant group to that has gone
1:11:26 through things to think of everything
1:11:29 possible don mr don willis you know you brought that up about
1:11:32 what what other things that we thought of
1:11:34 well they they brought up a lot of things and things that we
1:11:37 didn’t even think about but even even the
1:11:39 kind of uh consultant said you know we’ve seen this many times
1:11:43 over and consolidation is is something
1:11:46 that you should consider they never told us what to do obviously
1:11:48 that’s what we’re doing here and we’re
1:11:50 in a very unique position that we have two schools that are
1:11:53 suffering from the same causes uh only seven miles
1:11:57 apart or even less than that um so we’re actually fortunate to
1:12:01 have that answer if we didn’t have
1:12:03 that answer we’d have some some major issues um so you know we
1:12:06 after looking at everything you go
1:12:09 through the positives and the class half full and dr undell
1:12:12 brought that up about the opportunities for
1:12:14 the students and that uh we’re not going to have an overcrowded
1:12:17 school if we if this is the the route we go
1:12:19 so um we got to feel comfortable in that i think that the whole
1:12:22 beach side and you guys know this the
1:12:24 whole space coast is really facing many of the same problems and
1:12:30 you know when we talk about the
1:12:32 you know if the space industry does well things are going to be
1:12:36 great well if this the better the
1:12:38 space industry does the more the prices are going to go up and
1:12:41 the less the families are going to be
1:12:43 able to purchase uh in cape canaveral that’s true that’s finance
1:12:48 um that’s supply and demand and when i
1:12:50 look online here it’s great but we have some realtors here as
1:12:53 well you can’t buy a three-bedroom
1:12:55 house in cape canaveral for under a half a million dollars um
1:12:58 yeah and it’s not going to go down anytime
1:13:01 soon all right real estate doesn’t um yeah unless you’re looking
1:13:04 at 2008 and you know we can’t
1:13:06 predict that uh but you brought up some great points and it is
1:13:10 good to get it out you know like
1:13:12 mr campbell said there’s anything that we’ve thought of already
1:13:15 that we just didn’t get it out here’s a
1:13:17 great time for us to get it out and you know we’re still looking
1:13:20 into things and looking over numbers
1:13:21 and listening to people so um but it took you guys to to ask for
1:13:25 this meeting we appreciate that i think
1:13:27 your uh uh your people in cape canaveral are going to appreciate
1:13:32 the the extra step and you know
1:13:33 think about whatever we think about here in cape canaveral we
1:13:36 have a city just south of you in coco
1:13:38 beach it’s going to be in the same situation we have two schools
1:13:41 we saw that so uh we wouldn’t need
1:13:43 to have one set of solutions we would need to have two sets of
1:13:46 solutions so um that’s uh that’s about
1:13:49 all i got here i know it’s just it’s it’s um it’s a tough thing
1:13:52 when you’re talking about your own
1:13:54 community school so uh we thank you for bringing it up and
1:13:58 fighting for what you think is right
1:14:01 all right um well let me just start off by saying i i too want
1:14:05 to echo the sentiments that i appreciate
1:14:07 the willingness to come together and have this conversation my
1:14:09 district is the most recent
1:14:11 district to have gone through a school closure so i understand
1:14:13 what it does to a community and how
1:14:15 they’re left raffling for years to come i understand that i do
1:14:18 um what i’ll say with this situation is
1:14:22 that there’s a few things that we have that are i’m going to
1:14:24 call them somewhat of a blessing in
1:14:25 disguise i looked at surrounding counties some of our other
1:14:29 larger counties school districts they’re
1:14:31 closing a lot of schools i mean some as many as 34 schools that
1:14:35 are on the chopping block and i’m
1:14:37 going okay so i feel very fortunate that we’re in brevard and we
1:14:39 have the economy that we have here
1:14:40 one of the double-edged swords that we have is as mr morrison
1:14:44 indicated 80 of the rentals in all
1:14:46 of our county are our beach side and coco beach and cape canaveral
1:14:49 which means that that’s
1:14:51 not where most people are raising families i am sympathetic to
1:14:54 the fact that the market can be
1:14:55 shifting that can happen but we also have to face the reality of
1:14:59 what is right now and how many
1:15:00 dollars do we have and how are we going to move forward and be a
1:15:02 good steward with the money that
1:15:04 we currently have and not continue on a trajectory that’s going
1:15:07 to be two and a half million five
1:15:09 million seven and a half million and just keep on going one of
1:15:12 the things that mr trent brought up
1:15:13 that i thought this is such a unique opportunity and i think
1:15:15 this is something that will be very specific to
1:15:17 this community that no other community i think within brevard
1:15:20 will have is that those students will
1:15:22 have the ability to go to school from kindergarten through
1:15:25 graduation together so right now with cape
1:15:27 canaveral and coco beach having separate elementary schools they
1:15:30 come together when it’s the middle
1:15:31 school high school so they’re learning you know they may or may
1:15:34 not have been at the elementary with
1:15:35 them so that’ll be a very unique opportunity for that community
1:15:38 to be able to say we’ve got to go to
1:15:39 school with these kids from kindergarten through graduation and
1:15:42 that’s going to build a community sense
1:15:44 that’s going to be very strong so i think that’s something to
1:15:46 look at um one of the other things
1:15:48 that you know if this does go that direction the fact that an
1:15:50 elementary school is going to have an
1:15:52 indoor gymnasium that’s extremely unique and so there’s going to
1:15:56 be some opportunities that will
1:15:57 present themselves there as well so i know that um everything is
1:16:01 focused on the negative on this is not
1:16:03 being a good thing but there are opportunities here that this
1:16:06 could end up being a really good thing for
1:16:08 the community it could build a sense of community that strengthens
1:16:11 coco beach and canaveral or cape
1:16:12 canaveral and really ties them together um again i i am i am
1:16:16 sympathetic to this because i i know how
1:16:19 much this is it’s scary it’s unknown what’s it going to look
1:16:22 like how are students going to be impacted how
1:16:24 are teachers going to be impacted but i’m also the mindset that
1:16:27 this could be a very very good thing
1:16:28 and we all are faced with having to really make tough decisions
1:16:33 based on things that we didn’t create
1:16:36 problems we didn’t create so to speak so um that’s one of the
1:16:40 the nuances of being in this position so
1:16:42 i appreciate you guys being willing to come and talk to us about
1:16:45 this i if it does go this direction
1:16:47 and i don’t i don’t know that it will because again the board’s
1:16:50 going to have to make this decision
1:16:51 um i would just hope that the community both communities will be
1:16:55 receptive to trying to look
1:16:56 at this as a unique opportunity that only that community will
1:16:59 have and that there might be some
1:17:01 things there that are very specific to coco beach cape canaveral
1:17:05 that will improve that area not
1:17:07 necessarily make it a not a good thing so thank you guys thank
1:17:12 you miss wright um for me i wanted to
1:17:14 let you guys know mr morrison i had conversations early about
1:17:18 this and i told him where i would be looking
1:17:21 a lot of the places that you guys have already mentioned i went
1:17:24 through on a deep dive for
1:17:26 on the rezones i did look at that as an option because we’ve
1:17:29 done that in the past we’ve taken
1:17:30 sections from other places and when you look at the surrounding
1:17:34 um opportunities if you take from
1:17:36 any of those you lower them to a place where it’s even worse so
1:17:39 that wasn’t an option um mr morrison
1:17:42 and i had a conversation with the uh the zoo because they have
1:17:47 the um the aquarium out there and is
1:17:49 there an opportunity there um and when we had that conversation
1:17:53 we realized that the zoo had already
1:17:55 engaged over at coco beach and had a program running with their
1:17:58 aquaponics program and everything else
1:18:00 there and kind of what we were similarly trying to put together
1:18:03 at cape canaveral was already in existence
1:18:05 over at coco beach and um there was the conversation about
1:18:08 splitting and creating two other things and there
1:18:10 was no want by certain organizations not just the zoo but other
1:18:14 places that i had contacted
1:18:16 to create a charter school that would be in that realm so i
1:18:19 tried as much as i could in there um as
1:18:22 far as there’s some conversations earlier about the cape canaveral
1:18:25 and costs of other school district um other
1:18:27 cities if you do the trend rates across and i’m not a realtor so
1:18:32 please like my deep dive that i looked at
1:18:35 we find the most kids inside population right in that three
1:18:39 bedrooms where we see it because
1:18:41 a lot of four bedrooms there’s not as many of them a lot of two
1:18:43 bedrooms is not as populous so that’s
1:18:45 usually where we look and if you look at the trends of palm bay
1:18:48 is about a hundred and twenty thousand
1:18:50 dollars less to 150 000 less per three bedroom and it goes
1:18:53 around like melbourne’s about a hundred less
1:18:56 so those areas that i saw in that three bedroom and again i’m
1:19:00 not a realtor when i was doing it and
1:19:01 this may be wrong and i can look at your numbers and stuff like
1:19:04 that that’s what i saw um indicated
1:19:06 that families that were trying to look for a place to afford may
1:19:09 look in those places when they move here
1:19:11 so that was that um i also looked at and i was in the process of
1:19:15 possibly knocking on some doors because
1:19:17 i do that but i have not done that um but the zones that are
1:19:21 there are zoned into cape canaveral already
1:19:24 and i have talked to some people that live in the area not that
1:19:27 they have the kids but they had told
1:19:29 me that their kids they would rather have gone to roosevelt and
1:19:32 some of them that i am friends with
1:19:34 which is not a good indicator um told me that the reason that
1:19:37 they homeschool or they’re not a part of
1:19:40 the school system was because they wanted to keep them there and
1:19:43 not attend cape view now that’s not an
1:19:45 indication of an a school district or whatever that’s just who
1:19:47 they were those are those southern rim
1:19:49 families that are inside of the the actual zone for cape view as
1:19:53 far as the educational value i agree
1:19:57 a hundred percent a k through 12 model shows the highest
1:20:00 educational return period when you have
1:20:03 the schools real close to each other it’s one of the reasons we
1:20:06 put the middle school here in viera
1:20:08 right next to the high school is it has a couple of options but
1:20:11 the educational um
1:20:13 the the numbers that come out of it are extremely higher than
1:20:16 they are if they’re separated
1:20:18 one of the reasons for that is is that your students can
1:20:20 actually take upper level classes
1:20:22 there’s opportunities to be part of clubs that are not in other
1:20:25 places so if i’m a student at the
1:20:27 elementary school and there’s some interesting things that are
1:20:30 going on cross collaborative clubs both
1:20:33 in elementary school and middle school dealing with the
1:20:35 environment dealing with sports dealing with
1:20:36 all of those things can all work together coaches can walk down
1:20:40 and help out at a school right down the street
1:20:43 than they can going all the way to another city so the
1:20:46 educational value that i the research that i did
1:20:48 indicates more towards roosevelt um the cost of the buildings in
1:20:55 in my my design is one of the less
1:20:58 factors of what i did but those numbers that dr indell brought
1:21:01 forward were pretty close um he put 2.5 and
1:21:04 five it’s give or take a little bit over that and a little bit
1:21:06 under that it’s not but it’s very it’s
1:21:08 within fifty thousand dollars of those numbers so that was true
1:21:12 um the current trends right now of cape
1:21:14 view moving down um was significantly you know showing that
1:21:18 downward trend and i even had these
1:21:21 discussions with my wife who is good friends with mr morrison um
1:21:24 and uh we were talking about it in the
1:21:26 trend rates that miss campbell brought up earlier for birth
1:21:29 rates and stuff like that don’t indicate
1:21:32 that there’s an opportunity that even if people were able to
1:21:34 afford that this would be a population
1:21:36 boom in the area so we did do that um and those are just some of
1:21:40 the things that i put down i wanted
1:21:42 to indicate for you guys um again just like mr wright said we’re
1:21:45 not in any place to make a decision today
1:21:47 i just wanted to tell you guys what i when i did my research and
1:21:50 i deep dove a lot of the angles this
1:21:52 is what i found out um and i’m continuing to go like i i may go
1:21:56 knock doors i’m not saying that i
1:21:58 won’t but um i really want to try to to to do a little bit more
1:22:01 but that’s what i found so if you
1:22:03 had any questions miss campbell you were you were writing some
1:22:05 stuff down did you have another question
1:22:07 she always just so you know we know each other so well so miss
1:22:11 campbell miss campbell usually starts
1:22:14 coming around and she wants to say something no no i i was
1:22:16 making notes as i thought because we had a
1:22:18 conversation about another school earlier this last year and
1:22:21 when it comes down to it our where
1:22:23 where our focuses are different is our focus has to be on
1:22:26 serving students
1:22:28 not on serving buildings and not on serving cities and that
1:22:33 makes it really tough but we have to keep
1:22:36 our eyes laser focused on serving students and this is not it is
1:22:44 tough to say but you know and i and we
1:22:49 try not to be territorial my schools down in district five you
1:22:52 know your school’s done up in district two
1:22:54 but if i when i look at the numbers and dr rindell shared with
1:22:58 us and he shared some of that with you
1:23:00 today that we’re spending one and a half times the average
1:23:04 amount of dollars we’re spending on students
1:23:06 in other schools which means that we’ve got some schools and i
1:23:10 guarantee you they’re in my area that
1:23:13 we’re spending twice as much on students at cape view as we’re
1:23:16 spending on some schools in palm bay and
1:23:18 that’s hard for me to swallow and it’s not just because i love
1:23:24 palm bay more than i love cape canaveral
1:23:26 because it means we’re also spending twice as much on cape view
1:23:29 students as we are in schools in titusville
1:23:31 and in other areas in coco that are some really struggling
1:23:36 schools and need all the support that
1:23:39 they can get and that is a really hard thing for me to swallow
1:23:43 so when it comes down to it i have to
1:23:45 make my decision as a school board member on what’s best for
1:23:47 students and i know we’ll hear um yeah there
1:23:52 have been some parents that say what’s best for my student is to
1:23:55 stay at at cape view because they
1:23:56 love their school and they love their teachers and you know it’s
1:24:00 hard to imagine when you have grown
1:24:02 to love something that you could find that same thing in another
1:24:06 place right i’m from texas you can
1:24:08 probably hear it i love the state of texas i just got back two
1:24:11 days ago i love my family out there
1:24:14 it’s hard to imagine that i would ever fall in love and call
1:24:16 home
1:24:18 this place that i said never florida because of the hurricanes
1:24:21 but i’ve been here for 17 years
1:24:23 six 18 almost and i love this place and i love the people so it’s
1:24:26 it’s hard for the families to
1:24:28 think that i could find a school and a place that will meet my
1:24:33 child’s needs at an at another location
1:24:35 it doesn’t help your city well like i said i have to make my
1:24:39 decision on what’s best for students
1:24:42 and so as we look at all these things um you know that that’s
1:24:45 where my heart’s gonna go um and and my
1:24:49 mind i don’t make my decisions with my heart make them with my
1:24:52 mind and and all of me but um that’s
1:24:54 that’s the that’s the tough thing that makes our focus um uh
1:24:59 different um but i know that you guys see
1:25:01 that and i appreciate it again uh and i just hope mr chair if we
1:25:05 can open them in case they had any other
1:25:07 yeah yeah yeah i’m just gonna lob it back mr yeah i just have
1:25:11 one final question and comment first of
1:25:13 all i just like to thank dr rendell and sue and the entire team
1:25:16 because it’s been a couple years in
1:25:18 of making and research and exploring all this and um so just
1:25:22 know none of that nobody takes this decision
1:25:25 lightly um and a lot of work has gone into this um and i’m
1:25:28 speaking for myself this is for conversation
1:25:30 we’re spitballing it i’m not speaking for the board i’m just
1:25:33 curious and mayor morrison you had mentioned
1:25:35 that um you city would be interested in giving a helping hand or
1:25:38 working with you know with the
1:25:39 district so you know we have uh facilities repairs maybe not all
1:25:43 of them would be imminent but i know
1:25:45 i’ve toured both of them and i’m just telling you from a novice’s
1:25:48 eye looks like cape view needs things
1:25:50 immediately where roosevelt may need some things to take on the
1:25:53 new kids but it’s looks like it’s in
1:25:55 great shape so to answer your question ms king i just it’s my
1:25:59 personal observation um but to ask you the
1:26:02 question if you know we need some facilities repairs we
1:26:05 obviously have operational deficits
1:26:06 would the city be and this is me speaking once again but would
1:26:09 the city be be in a position to
1:26:10 provide some financial assistance towards meeting those those
1:26:14 gaps and helping us you know if we’re
1:26:16 going to if we were to keep it open for a year um help us you
1:26:20 know to to cover those costs so it’s not
1:26:23 such a such a big hit on on our taxpayers on the district and i’m
1:26:26 not asking for an answer right now
1:26:28 i’m just saying that’s something i would like to throw out there
1:26:32 no i think now is the time uh and
1:26:34 i i will mirror what you said i’ll speak on behalf of myself
1:26:37 obviously that would be a decision the
1:26:40 council would have to make but um absolutely i mean when you
1:26:43 look at our budget and the timing of this
1:26:45 boundary change you know we pass our budgets and i can tell you
1:26:49 there’s things in the budget
1:26:52 that would fall under you know we’ll invest to to avoid some
1:26:56 outcome and if the outcome was that we’re
1:26:59 going to lose our school um and what that means when that
1:27:03 happens to what i’ve called it the tipping
1:27:06 point of of short-term rentals i would say is me west the
1:27:10 individual absolutely we’d be willing to invest
1:27:14 and with the physical repairs it doesn’t fix the enrollment
1:27:18 problem the second thing i would say is
1:27:21 with a beautiful building sure maybe it goes up a little bit and
1:27:26 uh but but the enrollment strategies
1:27:30 and that’s where we would need the school board’s help and
1:27:32 guidance but if it’s funding and expertise to
1:27:36 talk about because if we can improve the education for the
1:27:43 students by you with your primary responsibility
1:27:48 to do that by being good partners to say well you can’t take
1:27:52 them from other districts as dr rindell said
1:27:55 we can make the school safer
1:28:00 uh aesthetically pleasing uh the things that that families want
1:28:04 the second part is well how do we let
1:28:06 people know that you might get a lot more house for 350 000
1:28:14 inland but you do not get the amenities
1:28:17 that that you get out in cape canaveral in coco beat so yes you
1:28:21 pay more but where can you literally
1:28:24 walk down like you said to the dunes and have that experience um
1:28:29 i met my my wife in high school but
1:28:32 the reason the whole reason i live in cape canaveral was because
1:28:36 cape view existed and uh her brother
1:28:40 they moved out there for that quality of life and paid more than
1:28:44 what they could have what they were
1:28:45 paying in titusville and so i think we’ve seen just such a
1:28:50 different time that was back in the 2000s
1:28:53 but that decision today still holds merit and so yes we drive by
1:28:57 the school board member thomas and we
1:28:59 see those improvements we’ve talked about that at a high level
1:29:03 and we wanted the opportunity to know
1:29:06 if this board is even willing to consider with the january 20th
1:29:10 coming up quickly my answer would be yes
1:29:14 and i would argue that it’s probably one of the highest priority
1:29:20 expenditures to protect
1:29:23 what makes cape canaveral truly unique is we’re one of the few
1:29:27 residential zoned and you go all over
1:29:29 florida and where do you find pretty much exclusive residential
1:29:33 zone right along the beach
1:29:35 and uh we can sell that and we can do better we’ve brought in an
1:29:40 administrative team that our city
1:29:42 manager mr touchberry and our city attorney mr garganese who’s
1:29:45 really made a transformation with the
1:29:49 department directors on how we’re addressing short-term rentals
1:29:51 which sort of the wild wild west
1:29:53 it just got out of control and we didn’t have a lot of things we’re
1:29:56 starting to see those improvements
1:29:58 paired with mayor pro tem and the council said but i think not
1:30:02 only capital improvements in the facility
1:30:07 but uh enrollment strategies that are complementary to say we it’s
1:30:12 a win-win we want families to move
1:30:14 here we want we don’t want transient doors uh you know at the
1:30:19 rate of what it is we’re heavily
1:30:22 transient population today but uh the folks that are sitting
1:30:26 here are all residents and we love our
1:30:29 visitors but it is it has got to that point and uh we’re ready
1:30:34 to push back and i think that’s a big
1:30:36 change from what’s been historical and so um that’s why we say
1:30:42 you know we feel like it’s moving fast
1:30:45 it’s been a top cape view has been a topic you can go back to
1:30:49 the 90s it’s always been a discussion of
1:30:51 cape view and uh you know i look at the data i guess trying to
1:30:56 find any optimism and i see that cape view
1:30:59 that’s what you’ve actually held on the the uh the past few
1:31:03 years and maybe even out performed uh roosevelt
1:31:07 but 263 back in 2020 it held identical to 21. it increased to 288
1:31:14 then it fell down again 268 and
1:31:17 back up so it’s sort of holding from 2020 and i’m not a real
1:31:23 estate professional but you know that i
1:31:25 i appreciate all the work that’s went in that the board shared
1:31:29 um none of us have a crystal ball but
1:31:31 i think if there is an indicator for both roosevelt and cape
1:31:35 view is can we grow within ourselves where
1:31:39 we’re not moving boundaries and rezoning can we change the the
1:31:43 types of investors in cape canaveral and i
1:31:46 think it’s worth a shot and but i know we could not do if you
1:31:51 did not have the city’s support i think
1:31:55 your decision is even more clear uh but with our our willingness
1:31:59 and effort because we’re in a unique
1:32:01 circumstance uh we believe cape canaveral certainly is inflated
1:32:06 in price due to the short-term rentals but
1:32:09 i do think that’s coming down and i think that we can add to uh
1:32:14 finding properties were highly developed
1:32:18 but there’s some large uh properties that were zoned
1:32:22 commercially and now with live local act those can
1:32:26 now become residential housing and so those are new things that
1:32:30 just happened that maybe can change
1:32:33 this trend but we do need to have sounds like a three-bedroom
1:32:37 house is where most families and so
1:32:39 that’s the question miss sue will tell you more about those
1:32:42 numbers but that’s where we that’s where
1:32:44 i see it and if we’re at 275 today uh you know i don’t think it’s
1:32:48 500 next year that’s not realistic
1:32:51 but what would a meaningful progress be to say we’re tracking we’re
1:32:55 getting there and so uh to me to add
1:32:59 another 200 um i guess be at least 200 homes right i mean if not
1:33:06 less and i think we do have the capacity
1:33:09 for that um but it’s not going to be easy i don’t have all the
1:33:13 answers but investment from my perspective
1:33:16 absolutely and thank you mr i want to follow up with that if you
1:33:20 don’t um and i don’t know the answer
1:33:22 to this i’m just i’m not trying to put you on the spot does the
1:33:24 city of cape canaver right now
1:33:26 or are you guys entertaining any kind of incentives to offer
1:33:29 industry to come to the city not just
1:33:31 not just relying on industry on this on the space center itself
1:33:36 but actually trying to attract industry
1:33:38 or space related companies to your city which automatically
1:33:41 would bring families which automatically
1:33:43 want to make them locate there i would ask our city manager i
1:33:47 know that yes i’m aware of some
1:33:49 conversations meeting with nasa and the folks that with the
1:33:52 growth that’s happening but mr touchberry
1:33:55 good good afternoon everyone keep touchberry city manager for
1:34:00 the city of cape canaveral i’m
1:34:00 going to invite tamsin bell our community development director
1:34:03 to come forward and she can elaborate in
1:34:05 greater detail regarding what efforts that we’re making i will
1:34:08 tell you that we we have conversations all the
1:34:10 microphone please with our businesses and industry we’re having
1:34:16 conversations all the time with our
1:34:19 businesses and our industries we’re looking at and what
1:34:22 partnerships that we can engage in with nasa
1:34:26 and everything that’s going on at the space center we are aware
1:34:29 of some efforts to increase internship
1:34:32 programs that can bring students and other families to our area
1:34:36 we have a cra that of course that can help
1:34:39 with development and growth but again this is tamsin bell she’s
1:34:42 our community development director and i’ll
1:34:45 just defer to her well thank you keith you covered a a bunch of
1:34:48 them as i was getting up here
1:34:51 um yeah there are a lot of state and local initiatives um there’s
1:34:55 we have uh worthy we have the ability to
1:34:57 leverage state uh and federal programs for workforce development
1:35:02 we are again continuing to build
1:35:03 partnerships and getting to know our businesses uh and finding
1:35:07 ways that we can leverage public private
1:35:09 partnerships to encourage investment there’s um there is
1:35:13 workforce housing and also economic development
1:35:16 funding incentive programs that are allowed in our cra strategic
1:35:20 plan which we could build out uh actual
1:35:23 programs to incentivize uh business attraction uh
1:35:26 entrepreneurship development um and uh and business
1:35:29 incubation and acceleration uh through economic development
1:35:33 incentives so we do have those programs in our
1:35:35 tool belt uh that we can further develop in partnership with our
1:35:38 uh council and our leadership and attorney and
1:35:41 and flesh those out and we’re also um hoping that uh workforce
1:35:45 incentives as far as related to housing
1:35:48 uh and and employment we can leverage some of those since we’ve
1:35:52 developed further uh enforcement and um
1:35:55 uh management of our short-term rental housing so we’ve um had
1:36:00 some interest in trying to uh build out a
1:36:04 partnership to encourage student housing uh use with our short-term
1:36:09 community as well so short-term rental
1:36:11 community community as well so we have a few ideas in our
1:36:14 pipeline that to build out there’s nothing
1:36:16 existing at the moment but those are things that you’re working
1:36:19 on yeah and our strategic plan for our
1:36:21 CRA it does allow for some financial incentives for that and
1:36:24 then there are there are existing programs
1:36:27 already through uh career source in the state as well that we
1:36:30 can use to help draw folks to our to our area
1:36:35 thank you thank you thank you you guys have anything else if you’d
1:36:39 like to say anything else
1:36:41 i’m going to back over to you i’m making sure i’m on there this
1:36:48 will be my last question i promise
1:36:51 and i’m the fun one you’ll probably realize um and you said the
1:36:57 word the four letters d-o-g-e and for the
1:37:01 first time in cape canaveral this past budget season we went
1:37:06 line by line over all administrative costs
1:37:10 and i understand that you’re getting downward pressure from the
1:37:16 state on closing these schools
1:37:19 does the school board have any plan to look at your budget line
1:37:26 by line for efficiency
1:37:28 and for any type of uh inflationary spending that may be just
1:37:34 bad uh projections of what it might be
1:37:38 because and i understand where you are at with the state giving
1:37:42 you this pressure
1:37:44 but if and maybe the state is not looking at the fact that
1:37:49 government efficiency can be more than just
1:37:52 closing the school and they’re giving you pressure to close the
1:37:57 schools
1:37:58 that are underutilized however as we we said cape view this has
1:38:03 been up and down with cape view for
1:38:07 years so i was wondering what are your plans to doge yourself
1:38:11 and have fun with that because
1:38:14 we doged ourselves in our budget more or less with the mayor and
1:38:20 i extensively going over line by line
1:38:22 and it was painful for our staff they did a great job of making
1:38:27 sure that they brought back things to keep
1:38:31 things within budget we dropped our taxes two years in a row and
1:38:36 so i’m wondering what do you have any
1:38:39 plan for that because it would make it an easier conversation
1:38:43 with the state if we had the ability to say oh
1:38:48 so um we found this much that we can cut back overall in our
1:38:53 district for administrative costs or
1:38:57 oh cost overruns or anything like that if you wanted to keep a
1:39:01 school open yeah and i would um
1:39:03 dr rindell i mean we do that every year but dr rindell can
1:39:07 probably speak to it but i would also
1:39:09 say that regardless of where we do cut and where we go the costs
1:39:13 of the school right now as far as
1:39:15 the flatline costs are there they exist they’re not going to go
1:39:19 away whether we were able to find
1:39:20 savings in other places so go ahead dr correct i mean i think
1:39:24 the question is would we as an
1:39:25 organization engage in some kind of zero based budgeting process
1:39:29 we actually already do that every
1:39:31 year we build our budget anew basically every year we actually
1:39:36 have taken measures this year this
1:39:39 current fiscal year to get leaner at the district office and we’ve
1:39:43 done that we’ve reduced millions
1:39:44 of dollars worth of positions here at the district office we
1:39:47 actually are meeting with staff to do the
1:39:49 same thing for next year to try to get leaner here at the
1:39:53 district office but as mr susan kind of
1:39:56 pointed out there the costs for operating the school are the
1:39:58 costs for operating the school and when
1:40:01 you’re only generating half or less than half the money to
1:40:04 operate the cost of the school that’s
1:40:05 inefficient so you know but as far as us as a district going
1:40:10 through our budget we do that every year
1:40:12 we do okay understood and then just as a follow-up on this so
1:40:17 there have been studies done and some of
1:40:20 them even through universities such as brown and yale where they’ve
1:40:25 gone and done a comprehensive accounting
1:40:27 survey of cost when they close and merge schools together versus
1:40:35 if they didn’t and in 2024
1:40:38 they found that a lot of the school closures
1:40:44 it just was the money was absorbed into other expenses and other
1:40:48 costs um for the district so
1:40:52 truly the the comprehensive accounting uh survey that they did
1:40:58 this was a student for her executive
1:41:02 thesis her master thesis was grace miller she did this for with
1:41:07 yale she studied the economics and the
1:41:09 education her analysis was of 109 districts between 2017 and
1:41:16 2020 she found that mergers did yield some
1:41:20 savings but it was soaked up by new spending such as higher
1:41:23 salaries and combined districts
1:41:25 and higher cost by students to and from schools further away as
1:41:31 well as things that were needed within
1:41:34 the district and other areas so are we really going to save
1:41:38 money by doing this miss jackson i think that
1:41:41 um i can speak specifically to that and then i have a couple
1:41:43 board members that would probably sound
1:41:45 so i was part of the team that came in and saved um cape view
1:41:49 originally when it got on the
1:41:51 chopping block i raised funds i came here to this board meeting
1:41:55 and i i battled for it um when those
1:41:58 transitions were going on and they closed some schools and then
1:42:01 reopened them and all that stuff
1:42:03 i will tell you confidently i said at that moment that those
1:42:06 were not going to be savings because
1:42:08 i didn’t feel they would be and i was right when it comes to
1:42:11 this one i will tell you i applied the
1:42:13 same principles that i did back then and found that the costs
1:42:16 when you look at them because i did a deep
1:42:18 dive because although i trust dr andella you know you always
1:42:21 have to check it the costs are directly
1:42:23 based upon the salaries of a portion of it is directly based on
1:42:27 the salaries of the actual um staff those
1:42:30 salaries go up across the district so just because they moved to
1:42:33 maybe roosevelt doesn’t mean that the
1:42:35 increase of salaries is going to all of a sudden happen it’s
1:42:38 just that you move one unit to the
1:42:39 other so the revenue as far as or the cost of the actual staff
1:42:44 which is about half to three quarters of
1:42:46 it is going to be um relatively the same as far as the
1:42:50 facilities that’s exactly what it is there’s no
1:42:53 difference in cost whether you’re replacing a fan over at cape
1:42:56 view and whether you’re replacing a fan
1:42:58 over at roosevelt or somewhere else it’s all going to be the
1:43:00 same so they’re pretty relative when you
1:43:02 talk about the differences between the two i think that um so
1:43:05 when we looked at them i i promise you i
1:43:07 did i did look at that from a 100 percent perspective of let’s
1:43:11 deep dive each one of these and i feel
1:43:13 confident that that was true and i and i will take a look at
1:43:15 your comprehensive because that’s what we’re
1:43:17 doing right um but i will tell you that a lot of the school closures
1:43:21 and stuff like that that happened
1:43:23 in the past were under kind of a different pretext and i also
1:43:26 wanted to say that the when i did the work
1:43:29 with x y and z i deep dove into how they came up with all of
1:43:33 their numbers and some of theirs also
1:43:35 included some of those accounting principles so that’s all i
1:43:39 thank you i appreciate that because i think
1:43:41 it’s good for all of us to understand you know these things and
1:43:45 i’m always a hard question listen you
1:43:47 didn’t that’s not a hard question we want to answer just more
1:43:50 specifics so that we’re just very
1:43:51 clear whether a school has 260 students like roosevelt and cape
1:43:55 you have right now or it has 500
1:43:57 something if we consolidate that or it’s got 700 800 until we
1:44:02 get over that they all have a principal
1:44:04 they all have an assistant principal they all have a secretary
1:44:07 they all have a bookkeeper they
1:44:09 all all have one or two clerks they all have a guidance
1:44:12 counselor that’s six full-time staff
1:44:14 that i just named um that you know with benefits you know i that’s
1:44:19 cafeteria manager and janitorial
1:44:22 janitorial staff in addition to that regardless of if they have
1:44:26 260 kids or 900 a thousand kids they
1:44:29 all have a full-time music teacher a full-time art teacher a
1:44:33 full-time pe teacher and a full-time media
1:44:35 specialist and i’m not going to talk about things we put we fund
1:44:38 out of millage because that’s a separate
1:44:40 bucket but those were all funding out of the general funds and
1:44:43 so and they’re all having esc supports
1:44:47 services and social workers and things like that so when we talk
1:44:51 about that that’s that is several
1:44:52 hundred thousand dollars just just right there and then we talk
1:44:57 about the you know there are some i i
1:45:00 get the you know water utilities efficiencies it’s going to be
1:45:04 some savings you have the same number
1:45:05 of people they’re going to have to flush the toilet same number
1:45:07 of days maybe you don’t save so much on
1:45:09 water but so that’s some of it but the people is the biggest
1:45:12 part because and and that’s where i that’s
1:45:14 where i when i talked about the the thing i’m having a hard time
1:45:17 swallowing is they’re almost every
1:45:19 single elementary school in the south end has got 600 700 800 i’ve
1:45:24 got some knocking on a thousand
1:45:26 and if you count the two metal lanes together they’re the
1:45:28 largest elementary school in the county with
1:45:30 over with about 1500 1400 1500 kids now that they’re separate so
1:45:34 they have separate but the let’s say
1:45:36 um west side which i think is our largest elementary school in
1:45:39 the south end they got a second ap assistant
1:45:42 principal but they with almost a thousand kids still only have
1:45:46 one music teacher one art teacher one
1:45:49 pe teacher one media specialist serving four times as many kids
1:45:53 so do you see where we’re coming from so
1:45:56 this the savings is in the people so this is not a savings that
1:45:59 goes away and disappears because we’re
1:46:01 going to be able to serve the same number of students and still
1:46:04 i’m going to put this forward serve them
1:46:06 better than the schools that are larger if we consolidate to roosevelt
1:46:11 so that’s where the
1:46:13 savings comes from so i appreciate the pushback but i just want
1:46:15 to get very specific this is what
1:46:17 we’re talking about that cape view has for such a small number
1:46:20 of students see now you can see the
1:46:21 great advantages they’re getting which is probably why their
1:46:24 parents love it so much because they’re so
1:46:25 you know they’re so small they get that extra personal attention
1:46:28 they’re going to get personal
1:46:29 attention but i that’s those are i just just thought of and you
1:46:32 know can think of a dozen staff members
1:46:34 right there that we’re saving because we’re um we’re putting
1:46:37 them in we would put them in one place
1:46:40 um and again i just have to push back because i i’ve got really
1:46:42 large schools down in my end who are
1:46:44 who are making do with the same number of staff for three times
1:46:48 as many people of students so um
1:46:51 appreciate the question uh but uh it i believe absolutely will
1:46:55 be a savings
1:46:56 ms jackson just so you know we get a lot of real tough questions
1:47:00 you you you fire off as many as
1:47:02 you have because we’re ready for it we we would love to answer
1:47:04 anything you have because that’s what
1:47:06 we appreciate you being here today so don’t feel like you can’t
1:47:08 ask anything so go on this right
1:47:10 no i was just going to also come out on the fact that a lot of
1:47:13 times when you see a savings like
1:47:14 that and we say okay it’s going to save two and a half million
1:47:16 dollars what you expect to see is
1:47:17 as a budget reduced by two and a half million dollars because
1:47:20 now you saved that right in essence
1:47:21 but that doesn’t always translate out exactly that way because
1:47:24 unfortunately inflationary costs have
1:47:26 gone up i mean the cost of everything insurance our electric
1:47:29 bills our fp and l we’re all getting
1:47:31 hit with all these same things so um so while it may save you on
1:47:34 one side you’re going to see
1:47:35 something else that increases a lot of times which is why the
1:47:37 budgets continue to increase so
1:47:39 okay um ma’am yes ma’am yes thank you okay do i have it
1:47:47 it’s on it’s on okay all right i might be putting the cart
1:47:51 before the horse
1:47:53 but i i am curious about what the let’s set let’s assume that
1:47:58 the school board decides
1:48:00 we’re going to close capeview elementary the school board under
1:48:03 the florida constitution has the
1:48:05 authority to do whatever it decides votes to do with the
1:48:09 property have you given any thought to what
1:48:11 what you’re going to do with that property i think dr rindell
1:48:15 said the staff’s conversation is to sell
1:48:17 but we haven’t even gotten there because i haven’t i didn’t want
1:48:19 to think that was appropriate miss
1:48:20 king just because we haven’t made a decision right first piece
1:48:23 right we wanted to give you the
1:48:24 opportunity ahead of time and again if you guys if that was the
1:48:27 decision which i don’t even think we
1:48:29 talk about it now but i would say that if you wanted to come to
1:48:31 another meeting and explain anything
1:48:33 um i as a chairman would be more than willing to work with
1:48:36 whatever you guys need okay the second
1:48:39 part to that is that i have heard from various people that the
1:48:43 possibility of a stem school being
1:48:45 put in that area rather than selling the property or maybe leasing
1:48:50 it for another use another educational
1:48:53 use and again maybe i’m putting the cart before the horse as you’ve
1:48:57 said you’ve not discussed what you
1:48:58 would do with that property if and when um but that’s that’s
1:49:02 something that i think needs to be
1:49:04 considered yeah i and just so you know miss king and i’m sorry
1:49:07 that you guys at any time um want to
1:49:10 speak up so i called a couple of the charters um across the area
1:49:14 that i know have interest in
1:49:16 everything else and their break point to create a charter is
1:49:19 around 500 to where it’s revenue to where
1:49:21 it’s worth it for somebody to come in not saying that if you
1:49:24 didn’t put something in there it might be
1:49:25 able to attract more um but they had all indicated that there
1:49:28 was not enough students that were there
1:49:30 to put a charter school in there to their magnitude now that’s
1:49:33 not to say we’ve seen charter schools
1:49:35 come up that are smaller than that and everything else so i
1:49:38 think those conversations are post a vote
1:49:40 and everything else but ms king i as the chairman would be more
1:49:43 than willing to work with you guys i
1:49:45 can’t speak from other board members but i think we we get
1:49:47 through voting on this first and then however
1:49:50 that goes we make decisions pastely thank you anybody else you
1:49:55 guys good i’ve got just sir
1:49:58 on shuttering as an option was that discussed what was that
1:50:04 shuttering the school as opposed to just
1:50:07 closing it outright you’re saying instead of doors you’re saying
1:50:11 instead of close it and shutter it
1:50:14 but don’t sell it don’t do anything until there’s a plan and
1:50:16 then come back to it is what you’re saying
1:50:17 potentially yes so maybe there’s an opportunity that you’re
1:50:20 saying that things might change in
1:50:22 the year that we do it and then reopen it i don’t i don’t know
1:50:25 any of that yet okay um i have not we
1:50:28 have not this is from what you see other meetings this is the
1:50:32 first time this is the one we only meet
1:50:34 together right so everything that we’ve had is online and um i
1:50:38 we have not discussed that from
1:50:39 whatever so okay when it comes time if that’s the word direction
1:50:43 we can talk about that thank you
1:50:45 is there any other feels good everybody good all right well
1:50:49 listen you guys all public that came here
1:50:52 today we appreciate you guys thank you for coming out city of
1:50:55 cape canaveral i want to tell you i
1:50:56 really appreciate you guys reaching out um the last about three
1:51:00 four years i’ve i’ve tried to get us
1:51:02 together with other cities but we’re always meeting at the same
1:51:05 time on tuesdays so it’s very difficult
1:51:07 so mayor morrison um appreciate you and your leadership and all
1:51:10 your city council’s leadership we
1:51:12 appreciate you guys and your staff you guys are very
1:51:15 professional came um many people may not know but miss
1:51:17 esther uh saved me she i left uh i think it was my ipad or
1:51:21 something and she ended up holding on to it
1:51:24 for a full day after a league of cities meeting for me so i
1:51:26 could go back and get it so i want to say
1:51:28 thank you so much for that so what’s that anyways i appreciate
1:51:32 you guys thank you so much this meeting’s over
1:51:38 maybe some pictures of my kids yeah yeah thank you
1:52:08 um
1:52:21 you