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Schools

School Board given a primer in building woes

Blue Ribbon Committee members spell out what went wrong at Homosassa Elementary.

By BARBARA BEHRENDT
Published March 31, 2005

INVERNESS - A year ago today, School Board members stood in the shining new cafeteria and media center at Homosassa Elementary School, proud of the first major improvements the campus had seen in decades.

At the time, school officials were nearly ready to move in furnishings and students. Weeks later, those hopes were dashed when it was reported that the new buildings were riddled with serious construction flaws.

On Wednesday, in stacks of reports, the School Board saw a recitation of the many mistakes made that allowed the Homosassa Elementary expansion to fail. During a special workshop, board members met with the citizens committee they appointed to get to the bottom of the problem.

They discussed that committee's findings and recommendations, as well as the findings and recommendations from the state Department of Education, which also studied Homosassa.

During the meeting Wednesday, the board discussed improving safety in the wake of Jessica Lunsford's death. Specifically, the board considered a policy that would bar contractors from hiring registered sex offenders to work on school sites.

Board Chairwoman Pat Deutschman said she believed school officials were eager to put the construction problems at Homosassa behind them.

Blue Ribbon Committee member Priscilla Watkins urged the board to make needed changes. "You don't require written, signed, dated reports from anyone. That's standard operating procedure," she said. "It's not a responsible way to run your business."

She described how hard the committee had to work to go through a variety of documents to determine what happened and when. "You shouldn't be pulling teeth to find out what you're doing," Watkins said.

School Board member Linda Powers said the district has grown so rapidly that processes haven't caught up with the growing complexity. The problems at Homosassa Elementary "has really made us wake up."

Another Blue Ribbon Committee member, Phyllis Dixon, showed the board an analysis she did of inspection requests and inspections. "Hindsight is 20/20 . . . but there were a lot of discrepancies there if they had been watched and could have been picked up at the time."

The School Board scheduled a workshop for 1 p.m. April 18 to talk further about the next steps to improve the construction department's planning and operations.

Deutschman insisted that the board itself needed to talk about the topics that have been raised. She noted that one major criticism in the Department of Education's report has been that the board has not been involved enough in school planning processes.

"I think it is a conversation we absolutely need to have," she said.

Although the construction problems have dominated the district's discussions for the past year, student safety has become an even more important focus since Jessica was killed.

The School Board has expressed strong interest in immediately developing a policy requiring contractors to ensure that sexual offenders do not work on school construction jobs. The meeting was the first since the district learned that John Couey, the registered sex offender accused of killing the 9-year-old girl, had worked as a mason's helper at Homosassa Elementary, where Jessica was a third-grader.

School Board attorney Richard Fitzpatrick brought the board a proposed policy on Wednesday. It says that all contractors must screen workers on school jobs to be sure they are not sexual offenders or predators, undocumented workers, or have arrest records that include violent crimes or crimes against children.

Fitzpatrick also proposed adding a provision that would ban any direct or indirect contact between workers and students.

Fitzpatrick said the school system and contractors informally have agreed on these restrictions in the past. "This simply puts it into writing, puts it in the contract," he said.

Contractors who violate the provisions could have their contract canceled "so we have the hammer of the dollar when it comes time to enforce it," Fitzpatrick said.

Board member Lou Miele said he wasn't sure setting a policy putting the responsibility on the contractor was enough. He said he wasn't sure that the board was protecting children by doing simply that.

The board decided to allow the staff to gather more information on the topic and to take up Fitzpatrick's proposed policy at the April 12 regular School Board meeting.

Barbara Behrendt can be reached at 564-3621 or behrendt@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 31, 2005, 01:42:24]