School board moves forward on Beach Elementary School

By NATHAN MAYBERG nmayberg@breezenewspapers com

Fort Myers Beach students could be r e t u r n i n g t o t h e F o r t M y e r s B e a c h Elementary School as early as this fall, Lee County Schools Superintendent Dr Chris Bernier said this past week at a meeting of the Lee County School Board

All that appears to remain in the way is a n i n t e r l o c a l a g r e e m e n t b e t w e e n t h e school board and town, and a vote by the s c h o o l b o a r d t o a p p r o v e f u n d s f o r rebuilding the campus that was damaged by Hurricane Ian

Bernier said he would like to have an interlocal agreement ready this month so that the district can vote on starting work on a rebuild so the school can reopen in time for the fall

Dr. Chris Bernier

Bernier said the district’s attorneys have been in discussions with the town’s attorney for an interlocal agreement “I have had two meetings with the mayor One face-to-face at the new town hall and the other one via Zoom. They were both quick meetings. They were

DeSantis

really an update of him to me about the p n Allers of progress at the school and when it may open this fall

Bernier said an interlocal agreement will ensure that the Bay Oaks Recreational Campus would be available for afterschool care of students The interlocal agreement may also set trigger points about whether the enrollment doesn’t increase at a set number of parameters about how the community would be engaged on "the future of the school, Bernier said “ T h e B e a affected by the storm,” Bernier said.

The district has been cleaning up the campus and r e s t o r i n g t h e h i s t o r i c a l b u i l d i n g o f t h e B e a c h Elementary School, which is on the National Registrar of Historic Places In a presentation Monday, Chief Operations Manager Jeff Wagner said the historic building was essentially stripped down to its studs and

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Aware” program, making it impossible to track the private aircraft

But unlike DeSantis, Scott did not try to weaken the laws

Mike DeForest, an Orlando television investigative reporter, discovered in February that DeSantis’s office has been reviewing and delaying Chapter 119 requests sent to agencies under the governor’s command, including the Department of Corrections, the Department of Health, and the FDLE

More than 280 batches of records were sent to the governor’s office in 2021, wrote DeForest, with dozens returned to the agencies more than two months later and a few kept for nine months or more This appears to be in complete contradiction to the Public Records Act, which demands government agencies turn over public records in a “reasonable” amount of time and makes unjustified delays unlawful

The “executive privilege” decree Dempsey signed, which was essentially drafted by DeSantis’s lawyers, is the greatest threat to open government in Florida since the 1992 amendment engraved Sunshine into the Constitution

In that case, an anonymous petitioner identified only as J Doe sought documents pertaining to a secret committee of “six or

Dehumidifiers have been put into place due to the extensive water damage

The majority of the board favors rebuilding the campus in two phases, at a cost of $10.4 million for the first phase and $9 1 million for the second phase if enrollment warrants it The first phase construction would be to accommodate 80 students The second phase would include demolishing the buildings that are connected to the historic building of the school and rebuilding them An enrollment metric would be developed in the future for a second phase.

The school had an enrollment of between 82 and 87 students before Hurricane Ian, and approximately 50 students after Hurricane Ian Its 2022 budget was $1 7 million with approximately $400,000 in state and federal aid.

Bernier said plans for the school rebuild “will also include some rightsizing of the faculty and staff” to bring the school’s cost-per-student down

School board member Chris Patricca said that would make her “far, far more comfortable in terms of the operational costs ” seven pretty big legal conservative heavyweights” that DeSantis said helps him vet candidates for appointments to the Supreme Court

Other sources have revealed that one member of the shadow committee is Leonard Leo, the Federalist Society guru who effectively controls federal judicial appointments under Republican administrations

Doe sued for relevant documents that weren’t forthcoming Asserting executive privilege, the governor’s lawyers argued that executive privilege is “rooted in the separation of powers ” They also claimed that “the privilege is not for the executive but for the benefit of the public to ‘protect the effectiveness of the overall governmental system at stake ’”

It is as LeRoy Collins objected 68 years ago Government is once again telling the public what is good or not good for them to know

M a r t i n D y c k m a n p r e p a r e d t h i s commentary for The Florida Center for Government Accountability, a nonprofit 501(c)3 dedicated to helping enforce open government laws.