- May 2, 2024
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Flagler County plans to end its relationship with Advanced Technology College, a technical school center created in 2001 through a joint effort with the Volusia County school district and Daytona State College.
The ATC is available to Flagler and Volusia students, but after it opened, Flagler officials saw a steady decline in the number of local students who wanted to attend school there.
“What we found was that because students were leaving (Flagler Palm Coast High School) and Matanzas to go to the career center, they felt a disconnect from their home school,” Kristy Gavin, the attorney for the Flagler County School District, said Tuesday at the School Board meeting. “They just did not desire to be in Volusia County all day when they were losing their relationships with their friends here.”
In 2009, the Flagler school district decided to stop funding spaces in the charter, but in 2011, the School Board extended the ATC charter for two years to determine whether it was better to terminate or extend the charter.
“When it initially started, (Flagler) had the most students attending there,” Gavin said. “Now, both Flagler and Volusia schools haven’t had students attending.”
Staff from the Flagler County School District recommend that when the charter expires on June 30, the district terminate its relationship with the charter. There are no high school students currently attending the school, Gavin said.
“When we decided we couldn’t continue to fund spots without having students there,” said Superintendent Janet Valentine, “it really became an engineering college. We continued the charter and we continued the meeting, but we knew the building was changing.”
Daytona State College is currently using the building, and has no plans to stop, so staff suggests that Flagler and Volusia counties cede their right to the ATC building and 25 acres of land surrounding it. In exchange, the college would cede its right to the 75 remaining vacant acres next to the ATC parcel that the three agencies purchased jointly prior to opening the technology center.
Then, when the Flagler and Volusia school districts sell the land, the districts would divide the proceeds of the sale proportionate to how much they paid originally. Gavin said the plan is to hold on to the property for a few years, in anticipation of an upswing in the market, before selling. Daytona State College would have no right to any money from that sale, but would have a right of first refusal on the sale of the property.
“The bottom line is, Daytona State College wants to have the building and wants the property surrounding the building, but they do not have the money to pay for it at this time,” Gavin said.
School Board members directed Gavin to move forward with necessary paperwork; the plan will ultimately come before the board for approval.
