- April 18, 2024
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The Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club’s future will look different than its past, and the School Board will have to make decisions in the coming months about what to do with the costly district-owned facility, Superintendent Cathy Mittelstadt said in a March 23 School Board workshop.
"That's a very delicate balance that we're trying to walk, to get forward to a good healthy place financially, but also be able to be a good partner to community members."
— CATHY MITTELSTADT, Flagler Schools superintendent
Options include working with a potential private investor who Mittelstadt will meet with later this week or partnering with local governmental bodies that could help support the facility.
The school district has owned the Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club ever since it accepted it as a gift from ITT decades ago. But providing a community gym and pool isn’t part of the district’s K-12 educational mission, and district staff have warned that the facility’s maintenance and repair needs could be costly as it ages, potentially pulling money away from K-12 uses.
COVID-19 also led to revenue decreases at the facility last year.
“COVID has caused all of us, in whatever organization you serve in, to pay attention to your budget and look where you stand,” Mittelstadt said at the workshop. “The last several months, we’ve been trying to bring forward as much information as we can, recognizing that it is an aging facility and we will need to make some decisions moving forward — and when we make those decisions, those decisions, funding-wise, take out of opportunities at our school-based sites because of the way that we’re funded from Tallahassee.”
The district, she said, is not obligated by its mission to provide the programs that are available at the Swim and Racquet Club.
“It is unique. It is a beautiful thing,” Mittelstadt said. “We’ve heard from so many people from our public on how they access that and utilize that facility. But at the same token, Board, I will tell you moving forward — the financial concerns we are sharing with you — there will be some decisions to be made over the course of the next month or two as we share some opportunities.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to look different on how we provide that service, that is not our mission,” Mittelstadt said. “So that’s a very delicate balance that we’re trying to walk, to get forward to a good healthy place financially, but also be able to be a good partner to community members.”
