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No communication from school board

By Staff | Oct 22, 2024

To the editor:

I have written the following letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis concerning the lack of communication to parents at The Sanibel School on Sanibel:

Dear Mr. DeSantis:

My name is Erin Field, I have two daughters attending The Sanibel School in Sanibel, Florida.

It is hardly unexpected that the Lee County School Board is once again falling short in its responsibilities to our children in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.

This situation mirrors the challenges we faced during Hurricane Ian, manifesting once again as a significant lack of communication from the Lee County School Board to the parents.

There has been zero communication on the timeline of the reopening of The Sanibel School.

How is it that:

– All business is already reopened after Hurricane Milton that were open prior?

– The Sanibel Recreation Center that is attached to the school is open (has been since Oct. 14)?

– The Sanibel pool that is attached to the Sanibel Recreation Center is open (has been since Oct. 15)?

– Why has the school board offered zero communication as the status of the school to the parents? What if they are out for the year? A week? We don’t know. Parents are being left in the dark.

– How many (the rumor on the island is two) rooms at the school were affected? If only a few rooms are affected, why ship all 250 kids off island to Heights Elementary — 25 minutes away — and how much is that costing as a taxpayer?

More importantly:

– What does it do to a child’s mental health status to wake up one hour earlier, losing that one hour of sleep at night for a child five times a week for the foreseeable future?

– What does it do to a middle schooler’s mental health status to attend an elementary school again, not have sports, or school dances?

– No after school activities for my elementary school child as well — those are replaced by bus drivers that don’t know their routes. (The second bus showed up at The Sanibel School at 4:20 p.m. on Oct. 16. Remember, school gets out at 2:10 p.m.)

– What is the mental health cost of an elementary school child on a bus for almost two hours this afternoon?

The teachers and staff at The Sanibel School and the Sanibel Recreation Center have been amazing. Thank you to them for at least listening and lending an ear to this extremely frustrating time, because we do not know the simple status of The Sanibel School.

Mr. DeSantis, I implore you to step in. You built the causeway back in three days, surely you can step in and get the 250 children that attend The Sanibel School back home. Haven’t they been through enough with Hurricane Ian?

Please also make the Lee County School Board accountable for their lack of action and communication. It seems that they have not learned their lesson at all from Ian.

Lastly, until we receive more information on the status of The Sanibel School, I will be calling and emailing every single media outlet, podcast, influencer, and representative on the internet daily. This will be my new job — making sure that you do yours, Lee County School Board (yet again.)

Erin Field

Sanibel