Flint, MI— The Flint Board of Education will be holding a planning workshop for its vacant properties at 5:30 p.m. this Thursday, June 16 at the Accelerated Learning Academy located on 1602 S. Averill Ave in Flint.
The workshop is open to the public and comes on the heels of another vacant property workshop held on June 13 at which board members discussed separating out their current vacant property holdings into “categories” before taking further action on selling or leasing them.
“You may want to list three categories,” said Gordon VanWieren Jr. of Thrun Law Firm, which has been engaged by Flint Community Schools to help manage the disposition of its properties.
VanWieren went on to list those potential categories, stating that the board should consider a “these properties are definitely part of our future” category; a “these properties may be part of our future” category; and a “these properties are not part of our future” category.
The FCS board decided to reconvene on June 16 to finalize which properties should fall into each suggested category as well as confirm next steps and a relative timeline for the properties’ sale or lease.
The list of vacant properties up for discussion on June 16 is not available on the meeting’s public agenda. However, FCS Board President Joyce Ellis-McNeil closed the June 13 vacant property workshop by welcoming the public to discuss their ideas at the June 16 follow up.
“Please do come on Thursday, bring a little bit of information, and maybe we can be a little bit more informal here, back and forth,” Ellis-McNeil said. “The public can come back and we’ll have more conversation and give you a little bit more space and time to answer your questions.”