Fort Myers Beach Elementary’s possible return as a town-sponsored charter school involves two distinct financial questions: the cost of operating a school and the cost of repairing or replacing the building. At the first meeting of the town’s new advisory committee, Assistant Finance Director Jeffrey Newman presented preliminary estimates of roughly $1.55 million in one-time startup costs, $1.16 million for staffing and $481,000 for non-staff operations. Those figures cover setting up and running a school, not the separate and unresolved cost of the building.
First Committee Meeting
The Facilities, Safety, and Operations Committee is one of six ad-hoc panels created by the town at Town Council direction to help prepare a charter-school application, according to Beach Talk Radio News. The committee held its first meeting Thursday, the outlet reported. Its listed members are John Koss, Albert Dambrose and Patrick Vannesse.
The town's plan calls for a kindergarten-through-fifth-grade school, and putting together the charter application itself is expected to take about six months — the same window in which all six ad-hoc committees are scheduled to dissolve.
Disputed Repair Estimates Still Unresolved
The building at the center of all this has sat empty since Fort Myers Beach Elementary closed in October 2024 after flooding from Hurricane Milton. What it would cost to bring it back is where accounts diverge sharply. The school district of Lee County initially estimated repairs somewhere between $1.3 million and more than $6 million, then later cited a range of $7 million to $9 million, per the Fort Myers Beach Observer and Bulletin's coverage of a May school board vote. A separate Beach Talk Radio News account put district repair estimates at $3 million to $6 million, while the Observer and Bulletin's April report cited a range running from $1.3 million to upwards of $10 million — the outlet's own figures have shifted across its reporting, underscoring how unsettled the numbers remain.
A consultant report commissioned for the district, built on an analysis from Superintendent Denise Carlin's office, offered yet another set of figures: modernization at $3,674,400 versus full replacement at $4,593,000, with modernization pegged at 80% of replacement cost, according to the Lee County School Board's own Castaldi Report. That same report separately laid out a minimum-repair option at about $7.2 million. WGCU summarized the consultant's broader findings differently still, describing preservation costs of $3 million to $4 million versus $4 million to $5 million for new construction. Despite all these competing numbers, the report's bottom-line recommendation was blunt: demolish the remaining permanent buildings, numbered 02, 07 and 11, a step that the document says would still require preservation reviews and sign-off from the Lee County School Board before it could happen.
Enrollment and site capacity
The School District of Lee County’s 2024-2025 Student Enrollment Plan listed Fort Myers Beach as an attractor school, which students from any zone could request, but said the district would not provide transportation. The School District of Lee County’s Castaldi Report says Building 02 represents 138 student stations and describes a 138-student capacity.
Koss Pushes Back on the District's Numbers
Koss told the committee he does not believe the school district's previously cited repair costs and said the consultants' report was crafted with a hidden agenda aimed at supporting demolition.
The town and school district have discussed an interlocal agreement.
Town and District Still Negotiating Terms
Town staff and the school district have been hashing out the terms of an actual property transfer — lease length, cost and what restrictions might apply if a future school were to close, Beach Talk Radio News reported. The politics behind that negotiation have been bumpy. Mayor Dan Allers had offered the town's willingness to take over the elementary school as a charter school in exchange for $12 million and the school property, but the school district superintendent countered with an offer of zero dollars to Town Manager Will McKannay. The school board nonetheless voted to give the town the school property for a charter school and set a 120-day deadline for the town to produce a working plan; McKannay has since discussed extending that deadline to 12 months with school district officials. McKannay did not address Observer and Bulletin questions about the charter school's financial impacts or the competing repair estimates.
Deputy Town Manager Traci Kohler, a former principal of Fort Myers Beach Elementary, is also involved in the effort. The Education Freedom Foundation is helping with the charter-school application.
