Abandoned Bradenton school campus likely to go up for sale

The next occupants of the Orange Ridge-Bullock Elementary School campus will likely work with students, but it’ll come at a cost.

During a workshop Tuesday, the Manatee County School Board discussed the future of the school at 400 30th Ave. W. The school closed at the end of the 2015-16 academic year, as part of a long-term district plan to balance enrollment in the district. The district cited the poor building quality as one of the reasons to close the school.

The majority of students from Orange Ridge now attend Rogers Garden-Bullock Elementary School.

Both Rowlett Academy for Arts and Communication and Team Success, two existing charters in Manatee County, have expressed interest in taking over the building. Rowlett has already been approved to open a middle school as early as the 2017-18 academic year, and Team Success would like to expand from a K-8 school to include a high school in the next two years.

Representatives from Rowlett asked for an expedited process so they’d be able to prepare.

“We want to make sure that when we’re making the school, we tell them we have a location. We’re asking for a really quick turnaround on this whole process,” said Brian Flynn, the retired Rowlett principal and a consultant with the conversion charter school.

An early issue in the board discussion, which was also brought up by Rowlett representatives during public comment, was whether the board was required by statute to offer the campus to the charters before offering it to the public and whether the campus would be offered free of charge. Charter school representatives cited Florida Statute 1002.33, which says surplus district assets shall be offered to charter schools the same way they are offered to public schools.

Both Mitchell Teitelbaum, the district’s general counsel, and Jim Dye, the board’s lawyer, said the statute didn’t apply because the campus was not being offered to other public schools in the district for use.

That statute, Superintendent Diana Greene said, most often applies to things like desks or computers.

“If we make it available, hey we’ve got desks. The charters have the same right to those desks as our public schools do,” Greene said. “We’re not making it available to anyone.”

Board member Bob Gause didn’t agree, saying the intent of the statute would indicate the charters should have first grabs and shouldn’t have to go through the same bid process as outside entities. Gause asked if the property had to go up to bid or if the board could “gift” the property to a charter, but his idea didn’t seem to gain traction with other board members.

Instead, the majority of the board and Greene favored moving forward with selling the site through a request for proposal process, giving preference to proposals that use the facility as a school.

“I’d like to see a multiplier or a preference given in that matrix to an educational facility. I don’t know what the details of that look like,” board vice chair Charlie Kennedy said.

Board member Dave Miner wanted to be sure that the evaluation process doesn’t necessarily just favor the highest bidder, who may want to turn the site into something like a hotel.

“I think we can find a balance,” Greene said.

This story was originally published October 11, 2016 at 5:24 PM with the headline "Abandoned Bradenton school campus likely to go up for sale."