2004 0922 Regular City Commission Meeting

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Summary Minutes: Regular City Commission Meeting September 22, 2004 City of Sunny isles Beach, Florida are used as public buildings and communities use their schools every day of the week and the only real requirement that they have is a one-time form that when any group is using the building that they have the insurance. Mayor Edelcup said that one of the things they covered was being able to use it for adult education, etc. Commissioner Thaler said one question that comes up is the criteria of other children that do not live in Sunny Isles Beach coming into this school, Ms. Weisman said that right now Sunny Isles Beach does not have enough children to fill the school, and so what they do is block by block, the parent group goes and tries to do boundaries, She said that it is a year-long process to set boundaries, and we can go back for attendance boundaries every year. Mayor Ede1cup said we start the school with children from other areas because we haven't got enough of our own but gradually over the years we populate the City with more children, what happens to children that have started in our school that came from other areas, do we allow them to stay? Ms. Weisman said once a child is in a school, we make it an option if there is a place for them to go to. Mayor Ede1cup said that they are aware that some Broward County children come over here because we are on that border, and Ms. Weisman said they are aware of it and are trying to control this. City Attorney Dannheisser said that we recently found out that a huge development is going into Gulfstream Race Track, it is a DRI, and is in Broward County, and we were trying to determine if that would have any impact on the City, whether we needed to participate in the process, and we asked the question as to schools and we were told that they may in fact be allowed to attend schools here. Ms, Weisman said that the general policy is "no", however, the Nickerbee No Child Left Behind Federal Law, says that any child has a right, if their school is a low performing school for two years or longer, to transfer to any other school regardless of County. Mr. Welsh asked if the school is at its maximum and parents move into Sunny Isles Beach in November, December and January with children, can they come into our school even though it is at its maximum, and Ms. Weisman said yes they can, She said that Bal Harbour Schools were capped for a very short period of time last year, and Ojus Elementary is currently capped. Marianna Talalaevsky, a subcommittee member, asked about overcrowding and capping the schools, because of the new guidelines. Ms, Weisman said that the boundaries are reviewed each year, and that our class size amendment becomes fully implemented by the year 2010, it is 18 in the primary grades and then it goes up to 25 in high school and that they are building the City's school to meet those guidelines. She said if there are at some point in time where there are well over 1,600 K-8 students in Sunny Isles Beach, from our demographic studies, it is going to be a long time and by then we will have at least two more schools built. She said in terms of their own policy of transfers, once a school reaches 115% capacity they would be closed to any transfers they would give, there would be none, there would only be the children within the attendance boundaries. She said that they can't go over that class size reduction because they would lose money, and are working very hard to get into compliance right now, She stated that they would leave some space and she will see how they are doing with the building of QQl the K-8 they are building on FIU, she said that she doesn't think they will open it with 7th and 8th 4