Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
A homeschoolers’ association that appeared before the Jefferson County School Board last week expecting to seal the deal on a lease agreement for the use of a district property instead got told to vacate the building.
As it unfolded at the School Board meeting on Monday evening, Jan. 11, the Jefferson County Homeschool Association, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, came prepared to sign the lease agreement that School District Attorney George Tom Reeves had prepared in advance.
Reeves explained that as written, the agreement called for the group to pay a dollar rent for the space, with the contract set to expire on June 30, 2021.
The only thing that remained to be decided, he said, was the monthly amount that the association would have to pay for utilities, which amount he had left blank on the contract.
It was left to School Superintendent Eydie Tricquet to recommend a figure, based on her analysis of how much the entire facility, which includes the old gymnasium on Water Street, paid on average monthly for water, sewer and electric services.
Based on her calculations of three months of billings, Tricquet’s recommendation was that the association should pay $512 monthly for utilities. Which amount, she said, represented a fair portion of the total that the district paid in utilities for the entire building monthly.
Tammy Brookins, the founder and head of the association, objected to the amount as being too high. Her organization, she said, occupied only part of the building, and only two days a week at that, or for about 10 hours weekly.
At most, she said, 15 of their students occupied the space at any one time.
There was no way that her group was consuming that much in utilities, Brookins said. Nor was her group able to afford $512 monthly, even if it wanted to pay it, she said.
Brookins reiterated that her group occupied but a small portion of the building, and had done so only for a few months. How much, she wanted to know, had the district paid in utility bills prior to her group’s occupying the space?
Tricquet suggested that if each of the 30 families in the organization paid $20 monthly, it would more than cover the utility costs, a suggestion that Brookins rejected, saying it was unfair to the parents and would discourage group membership.
“There is no way that we have that kind of money,” she said, noting that neither she nor anyone else in the organization got paid. “It’s unreasonable to ask us to pay $500 for a space that you haven’t used in years.”
The organization, Tricquet countered, was getting use of a 3,000 sq. foot building, so the least it could do was to pay the utility bills. The district, she added, had to pay utilities on the building, and it was only fair that organization pay its share.
She reminded Brookins that, as superintendent, it was her job to ensure the fiscal health of the district, a responsibility that she took seriously. She further reminded Brookins that the organization had been in the building three months without paying anything.
“You generate no funds for us and we still have to pay the bills,” Tricquet said. “I’m in favor of what you’re doing, but I can’t put you in the building for free. That’s not a good fiscal decision.”
She noted that the Florida Department of Education (FDOE), which has oversight of the district’s finances, would also not look favorably on such a decision.
Moreover, she added, she knew of at least one other group that was willing to pay significantly for the building’s lease.
School Board Member Bill Brumfield agreed with Brookins that the $500 was too high. But he also recognized that her offer to pay $20 monthly was too low, he said.
He suggested that a reasonable compromise would be $100 monthly.
School Board Member Shirley Washington supported the superintendent, whom she said was following policy. If the former superintendent had made the group misleading promises, this was not on the new superintendent, Washington said.
She, for one, Washington said, also didn’t appreciate that the group had been in the building for several months without the School Board’s knowledge, a view that School Board Member Sandra Saunders shared.
After much more back and forth between the board members and Brookins, and Tricquet reasserting her recommendation that the monthly charge should be $512 monthly, the board voted 4-1 to support the superintendent’s recommendation.
It didn’t end there, however. There followed a lengthy continuation of the discussion, as Brookins, “hearing chatter from her people,” relented and agreed to pay the $100 monthly.
In terms of parliamentary procedures, however, consideration of the new proposal required a new motion, one that Brumfield was preventing from making, as he had voted on the losing side in the last motion.
The new motion, Reeves explained, had to come from one of the four board members who had voted for the $512.
In the end, Chairman Charles Boland wavered and made the motion, which Brumfield seconded. But first, to make the motion, Boland had to relinquish the gavel to vice chair Gladys Roann-Watson, again in keeping with parliamentary procedures.
In the end, it was all to no avail, as the motion failed 3-2, with Washington, Roann-Watson and Saunders voting no.
The motion having failed and the $512 monthly charge not being acceptable to the organization, Reeves advised that it only remained for the board to decide when the group had to vacate the building.
Tricquet recommended 30 days, which the board affirmed, giving the group until Feb. 10 to vacate the building.