2011-0809 City Commission Workshop

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Summary Minutes:City Commission Workshop August 9,2011 City of Sunny Isles Beach,Florida Commissioner Aelion said historically this has been a problem but what steps have been taken to improve this problem,when you enforce the rules and change the rules to accommodate the end result, and he doesn't know why they have only been looking at this recently when the problem has been ongoing. Mr..Greenfeld said he can't answer for district policy that has been established for a long time but it has been long standing as to what types of identification,what types of proof of residency can be requested by a school. Can the schools go out and verify that, yes but in many cases they are very short staffed and don't have the resources to be able to send somebody out. When something is reported to them where they do suspect that cars are coming over from the Broward line, that information is provided to the school administration and they do follow up when in some cases,those children are forced to withdraw immediately into their new schools. Mayor Edelcup said that he thinks one of the problems we have is a personal incentive to make sure there is adequate space for the children who live in our City to go to this school, unfortunately the School Board itself doesn't have that same impetus, they get per capita no matter where the kid comes from they are going to get paid by the State to have that kid educated there, and so it is not the same feeling and he is sure that it is not as high on their priority list because they are going somewhere within the Miami-Dade system whether it is in Sunny Isles Beach or a neighboring City and they are going to collect the same dollars either way and so why spend the extra dollars to weed them out when they are going to wind up costing money for themselves and not have those dollars available for education, and so the incentive is not quite the same unfortunately. Commissioner Scholl said the fact is Dr. Weissman has not been vigilant. He sat with her personally about 18 months ago and offered her IT support,offered her Police support,offered her whatever she needed, no follow-up, she gave him good lip service but no follow-up. My neighbors on many occasions their kids play with kids from Broward County who go to the same school with them. Again, there has not been an atmosphere of wanting to police this from day one. He appreciates their position and within the School Board, he can promise them that there has not been an atmosphere of wanting to deal with this issue, and the atmosphere hasn't been there from day one. On the contrary, he would say from day one it was a very open door policy, but we have gotten very little support. Now that you all need something, he feels like maybe we will get some attention. But you just sat here and told us all the reasons why you can't enforce, we need a plan, and Mr. Greenfeld said that they try to enforce it. Commissioner Scholl understands that but there is a disconnect between what is happening at that school and your state of mind, what you just described, it is a big disconnect. He said he went to the Commission and he said let's give him IT support, let's give them whatever they need because all he keeps hearing is that they are short staffed,they can't follow through. We offered it up, no follow-through, it could be they didn't want it to happen. The truth of the matter is, for whatever reason there is a mentality that this is not something that they really want to deal with on a vigilant matter. Now maybe with the overcrowding the tide is starting to turn but unfortunately once you open the flood gates, it is very hard to go back, and he knows now that it is very difficult. You have kids at the school and he feels terrible but he blames the parents,the parents shouldn't put kids in that situation where they have to live under the guise of not really being within a community that they go to school under. He said what he would like to see before we really took any agreement with the School Board seriously is a Plan of Action that says this is what we can do,this 3