The Escambia County School Board is moving forward with plans to convert Warrington Middle School into a charter school. Meeting the Florida Board of Education deadline of May 1, members on Monday signed off on a charter contract and lease agreement. But, the deal has yet to be finalized.
After the board’s 11th hour vote of approval during Monday’s emergency meeting on the issue, the documents are now in the hands of Charter Schools USA and its chosen provider Renaissance Charter School, Inc.
“What I would anticipate happening is there may be a few points that they may counter on or ask for something different,” said Dr. Tim Smith, Superintendent of the Escambia County School District. “We’ll see what our next steps are.”
The signed contract and lease agreement were delivered late Monday. As of Wednesday afternoon, the school district had not heard back.
“I’m sure they need to review and see if they’re good with it all and hopefully they are,” Smith said. “But, if there are a couple of points that they are not, we’ll have to figure out how to proceed and get that all handled.”
The performance-based charter agreement calls for an initial term of seven years, beginning July 1 of this year and ending in 2030. The charter contract will be automatically extended for 15 years if the school earns a C grade within the first four years of operation.
Smith said the district has been in negotiations on a charter agreement for months, more intensely the past few weeks.
One of the priorities for the district has been to maintain the existing attendance zones for the school.
“The students at Warrington and who live in the Warrington Middle School zone right now, that’s who the school is going to start out this year with, grades 6th, 7th, and 8th, handling the zoned assignments,” said Smith. “That’s pretty straight forward, not much different from this year.”
But, the plan is for the charter school to expand to include grades K-5 for the 2024 school year and eventually evolve into a K-12 school. And, as the school’s enrollment grows, language currently in the contract ensures that a certain number of seats would be reserved for those middle-school kids in the surrounding community.
“So, where we settled on was 200 sixth-graders, 200 seventh-graders, and 200 eighth-graders in year four moving forward,” Smith explained. “Then if there are extra seats the Warrington Middle School students who live in the zone would have preference.”
District 4 Board Member Patty Hightower hopes that “preference” will be agreed to.
“The Turnaround Plan and the reason we went to charter was because of the students who live in that community and not students who live elsewhere,” she said, after discussion about fears the charter school would begin to place a higher priority on recruiting students outside the district.
District leaders are also hoping Charter Schools USA and its operator, Renaissance Charter School, will sign off on the lease agreement, with a rental payment of $1 a year for 30 years.
As part of the lease, the district will maintain responsibility for larger repairs to the building, which is more than seven decades old.
If the charter school company wants to make major improvements or additions to the campus, the two parties will collaborate to identify funding sources.
One of the sticking points was a request that the district be held responsible for the cost of building enhancements if the charter contract is terminated at some point down the road. Smith maintains that’s non-negotiable and it would be illegal.
“We’re not going to be on the hook and indebt the future school board to pay that,” the superintendent declared. “That doesn’t align with state law. It’s important to follow the law and we will do that.”
Board chairman Paul Fetsko, whose District 2 includes Warrington Middle, voted in favor of the lease agreement. But, he joined District 3 Board member David Williams in opposing the charter contract, which passed 3-2.
“I believe, firmly, that the school district, had we had the independence to operate that school, we could have turned it around ourselves,” said Fetsko, pointing to previous successes. “There were too many things going on to have a reasonable outcome.”
There were “too many cooks in the kitchen,” he proclaimed.
But, at this point, Fetsko says he believes the School Board has put forth its best and final offer for a charter school contract and he’s hopeful that state education officials, who’ve been involved since the beginning, will continue to broker the negotiations to a resolution.
If a deal doesn’t get done and the Florida Board of Education forces Warrington Middle to close, the board chairman says the district is already working on a backup plan to include rezoning.
“If no one operates that facility next year, we have already taken care of where the students will go and their bus routes have already been established.”
