Dear Friends of Enlighten Education Co-op (EEC),
It is with some sadness that I announce that we have suspended operations of EEC. It has been a long labor of love that first began in 2018. Financing our operations has always been a challenge as we pursued various methods of helping our young people get a better education. At one point we had attempted to raise money to pay retired teachers to work part time in our school district in Lee County and had won approve for a pilot project for that proposal. The money for that project never materialized so we shifted course toward the micro-school movement that found encouragement with the passage of HR1 last summer. It allows Florida parents to receive about $8000 per student as they seek non-public alternatives for their children.
We acquired space at 3592 Broadway in Fort Myers in March of 2023 and began renovating the space. For various reasons by December we had still not received our occupancy permits and the financial costs made it impossible to continue without partners. So we relinquished the space where we hoped the micro-school would be and put our projects on hold for now.
We will advise all of you who have been so encouraging through the years if and when we begin operations again, hopefully with strong financial backing. We have had many people ready to move forward with us who were experienced in education and enthusiastic about our mission, but I did not want to build a volunteer organization. I felt our people should be paid and work together under the worker co-op model described elsewhere on our website.
So many thanks to all of you who have helped us in this mission and my hope, on this Resurrection Sunday, is that we will find a way to resurrect EEC some day in the future.
Blessings to all, Will Bronson, President of Enlighten Education Co-op, Inc.