Before You Call Eatonville Incapable, Show Us Your Record

Editor's note: This is an opinion column. Allegations involving the current Hungerford transaction are disputed and remain the subject of active litigation. Orange County Public Schools denies violating Florida law, and no final judgment on the merits has been entered.

I keep coming back to one word.

Capacity.

For months, people with more money, more staff, more attorneys and more institutional power than the Town of Eatonville have questioned whether Eatonville has the “capacity” to own and develop Hungerford. Orange County School Board member Melissa Byrd put it plainly during a January workshop: “I have never been shown the town can take care of this piece of land.”

And according to the lawsuit now pending against the School Board, Dr. Phillips Charities CEO Kenneth Robinson went even further in a June 2025 email to the OCPS superintendent, expressing concern that Eatonville lacked the “capacity, capability, and credibility” to make development of Hungerford a reality. That statement is quoted in the filed complaint.

I have thought about those words a lot.

Because after everything that has happened to Hungerford, Eatonville is somehow the institution being asked to prove itself.

That is backwards.

This relationship has never been equal

There is something deeply unhealthy about a relationship where one party controls the asset, controls the timing, controls the terms, decides when the other party has waited long enough, and then points to the weaker party's condition as justification for keeping control.

If this were a personal relationship, people would immediately recognize the power imbalance.

In government, we dress it up in words like “stewardship,” “partnership” and “capacity.”

But Eatonville did not begin with Orange County Public Schools.

Hungerford did not begin with Orange County Public Schools.

Black people built Eatonville when the surrounding society doubted that Black people were capable of governing themselves at all.

And Hungerford existed as a significant Black educational institution long before the School Board controlled it. Its historic campus approached 280 acres, and education was tied to agriculture, industrial training, trades, work and self-sufficiency. Last week I wrote that legality alone cannot answer the question of what happened after that system changed.

Now I want to ask a different question: How did the institution questioning our capacity perform when it had control?

Show us your record

This is not complicated.

If Eatonville must demonstrate its ability to manage Hungerford, then OCPS should demonstrate its stewardship of Hungerford.

Show us the maintenance history. Show us the capital investment. Show us the educational outcomes. Show us what happened to vocational and agricultural education. Show us the enrollment. Show us how Hungerford compared with other Orange County schools.

Show us the land transactions. Show us what was sold. Show us what was received. Show us where the money went. Show us what was demolished. Show us what remained.

And most importantly: show us the permanent benefit Eatonville received after decades of School Board control.

Because the end of this story cannot simply be that the original institution disappeared, much of its land was transferred away, the remaining acreage became surplus property, and now Eatonville is being lectured about whether it can handle what is left.

OCPS itself has sold parcels from the historic Hungerford property over time, including land affected by the construction of Interstate 4. The last public high school on the property closed in 2009, and the district subsequently pursued multiple attempts to sell the remaining land.

If that is stewardship, then put the stewardship record on the table.

The capacity argument is harder to swallow given what OCPS is going through right now

Orange County Public Schools operates at a scale Eatonville could never imagine. Its overall budget is measured in the billions.

Yet OCPS is currently dealing with declining enrollment, school consolidations, rising expenses and enormous healthcare costs.

The district reported losing thousands of students in recent years. It consolidated seven schools. District leaders have described major financial pressure associated with their self-insured health plan and warned that declining enrollment directly reduces operating revenue.

And you know what? I understand that.

Running a massive public-school system is difficult. A large budget does not mean every dollar is available for every problem. Money is restricted. Expenses rise. State policy changes. Enrollment changes. Healthcare costs increase. Buildings cost money to maintain.

Context matters.

But that is precisely my point. OCPS wants the public to consider all of that context before judging its financial condition.

Why isn't Eatonville entitled to the same consideration?

Why does a multibillion-dollar institution get an explanation for its limitations while a historic Black municipality gets a verdict?

When OCPS struggles, we analyze the system. When Eatonville struggles, somebody says we lack capacity.

I consider that a discriminatory double standard. Not because Eatonville should escape accountability. Because the same standard should apply to everybody.

Eatonville has never been perfect. Neither has anybody else.

I get tired of hearing that Eatonville has been “stagnant” for thirty years as though nothing has happened here and nobody has tried.

That is not the Eatonville I remember growing up in. There were programs. There were activities. There were people organizing. There were businesses. There were adults trying to create opportunities for children.

There have certainly been political problems, financial problems and missed opportunities. I have criticized our own government plenty. But the historical record does not show a community where absolutely nothing was happening either.

A capacity-building initiative described by GAI Consultants nearly a decade ago included an $18 million HostDime headquarters project, a new Hungerford Elementary School, expansion of the Boys & Girls Club, improvements to Kennedy Boulevard and planning related to the Hungerford property. GAI described its work as helping an understaffed Eatonville get a seat at the table with powerful outside institutions making decisions that affected the community.

Read that last part again. Helping Eatonville get a seat at the table with institutions making decisions affecting Eatonville.

That power imbalance did not begin yesterday.

And then there is former Mayor Angie Gardner

This part of the history has to be documented accurately because future generations need to understand how quickly positions can change when power enters the room.

In April 2023, Mayor Angie Gardner publicly said she wanted Hungerford returned to Eatonville. Her words were clear: “We secure the land, place it in a land trust for our generations to come.”

She said securing the land would prevent Eatonville from having to fight the same battle under every administration and every new RFP.

As late as November 2024, Gardner publicly described a Town proposal to OCPS that would place Hungerford into a trust with representation from Eatonville, the School Board and other stakeholders while the Town determined the land's future. She called it a “viable plan.”

Less than a year later, the position had changed dramatically. Gardner became one of the most visible supporters of transferring the 117 acres to Dr. Phillips Charities, calling the proposed deal transformational and saying it would protect Eatonville from predatory development.

The Eatonville Town Council did not follow her. Council members voted 4-1 against the proposed arrangement, with Gardner on the other side. Council members later said they felt excluded from discussions surrounding the deal. Gardner denied that there had been a “backdoor deal.”

That reversal deserves scrutiny. Not rumors. Not personal attacks. Scrutiny.

Gardner has also worked as an educator for Orange County Public Schools; public reporting identified her as a Hungerford Elementary teacher, and historical public payroll records list her as an OCPS second-grade teacher.

And campaign-finance records show that on June 25 of this year, Gardner's County Commission campaign received a $1,000 contribution from Shayla Prather, whose husband Terry Prather chairs Dr. Phillips Charities. Dr. Phillips' own biography identifies Shayla as Prather's wife.

Let me be precise here: a legal campaign contribution is not proof of a quid pro quo. I am not claiming that it is.

But public relationships surrounding public decisions should be disclosed, especially when the decision involves one of the most consequential pieces of land in Eatonville's history.

Gardner subsequently ran for the new Orange County Commission District 7 seat. In the Aug. 18 election, she received 1,465 votes, or 7.78%, finishing fourth and not advancing to the runoff.

I am not celebrating that. The election is over. My concern is what Eatonville was left with.

People have every right to ask why

One of the most disturbing parts of the current lawsuit is an allegation that conversations occurring outside public view went beyond litigation strategy and included discussion about whether Eatonville had the capacity to manage Hungerford, whether the Town had been a good partner and whether the community had been a good steward.

Those are allegations. OCPS disputes the lawsuit.

But they are serious allegations because those are policy questions — questions about Eatonville's competence, its future and whether its people should control the land.

The same lawsuit alleges that Robinson's capacity email preceded renewed discussions between Dr. Phillips and OCPS, followed by a memorandum of understanding and ultimately the proposed purchase arrangement.

Again, the court has not determined that those allegations are true. But the judge has refused to throw the case out. That means the process deserves examination, not dismissal.

Dr. Phillips may be a charity. That does not make ownership irrelevant.

I want to make something else clear. I am not arguing that Dr. Phillips Charities is incapable of doing good things.

They have resources. They have experienced leadership. They have access to capital and professional development expertise. Their plans have discussed health care, early childhood education, green space, cultural uses and other potential benefits.

But this argument has never simply been about whether somebody can build something nice. It is about who owns the land when the nice things are finished.

Who controls development? Who decides what changes twenty years from now? Who receives contracts? Who receives revenues? Who benefits from appreciation? Who controls the historical narrative? What does Eatonville permanently own?

Having respected people in leadership does not answer those questions. Having an advisory committee does not answer them. Listening sessions do not answer them. And calling a transaction a partnership does not make ownership disappear.

Representation is not self-determination.

We have seen this movie before

That is what frustrates me most. Every generation seems to inherit another Hungerford fight.

Another proposed sale. Another developer. Another promise. Another argument about what Eatonville supposedly cannot do. Another outside institution explaining what is best for us.

And another generation of residents trying to learn enough history fast enough to stop something they believe should never have reached that point.

That is exhausting. I do not want my son dealing with this. I do not want children growing up in Eatonville today to reach middle age and discover that they are still attending meetings about who should control the last major piece of Hungerford.

Somebody has to end the cycle. That requires understanding how the cycle works.

Eatonville's weaknesses cannot become everybody else's excuse for controlling Eatonville

This Town has problems. Say them. Audit them. Fix them.

Hold elected officials accountable. Demand competent administration. Demand financial controls. Demand serious planning. Demand professional development partners. Demand that any community-led Hungerford plan show financing, governance, maintenance, revenue and execution.

I am completely comfortable with that standard.

What I will not accept is Eatonville's imperfections being weaponized as evidence that Eatonville should surrender its right to self-determination.

Especially by institutions that have their own problems. Especially by institutions that had decades to show what their stewardship would produce. Especially when the historic community at the center of the discussion was functioning before those institutions ever controlled the land.

Before you call us incapable, show us your record.

Before you tell us we cannot maintain Hungerford, show us how you maintained it.

Before you tell us we cannot finance our future, show us what your billions produced for Eatonville.

Before you tell us somebody else must own the land in order to save us, show us why ownership by Eatonville was not given the same institutional commitment.

And before anybody asks another generation of Eatonville residents to simply trust the process: put the entire process on the table.

The emails. The meetings. The investments. The land transfers. The proceeds. The maintenance. The educational outcomes. The agreements. The political relationships. All of it.

Eatonville does not need to be protected from itself.

It needs the same thing our founders demanded in 1887: the right to build, govern, own, fail, learn, improve and determine our own future.

That is what self-government means.

And I intend to do everything I can to make sure this Hungerford fight does not become another inheritance we leave our children.