Gimenez delivers $3 million for Reynolds School, workforce housing plan advances

Monroe County schools got a $3 million boost in Key West as federal money for Reynolds School moved a long-stalled preservation project into the center of the district’s workforce-housing strategy. District leaders said the grant could help keep teachers and staff in the Keys by setting off a chain of moves that ultimately opens land for as many as 150 apartments at Trumbo Road.

U.S. Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez presented the check on May 5, and the district said the funding would go toward the 1927 Reynolds School property, which was severely damaged by Hurricane Irma in 2017 and has sat vacant for years. The plan calls for restoring the historic brick building facing Reynolds Street while demolishing the non-historic rear structure and replacing it with a new building for the district’s facilities and maintenance teams.

That part of the project matters far beyond Reynolds Street. School officials said moving those operations out of other buildings would help free up district property for housing, including the 3.85-acre Trumbo Road site, where the district has already tied its plan to 150 early-evacuation building permit allocations from the city of Key West and a contract with developer Integra. In earlier reporting, officials said the Trumbo project could yield as many as 150 workforce-housing apartments, a scale that would make it one of the largest employee-housing efforts in the Florida Keys.

The funding also keeps alive a broader district relocation plan that has been years in the making. In November 2025, officials said Reynolds would eventually house adult education programs, including GED and English classes, and that the district was paying about $60,000 a year to rent adult-ed space on Eaton Street. They hoped to break ground in early 2026 and finish in summer 2027, then move facilities and maintenance staff from Bruce Hall on United Street into the new Reynolds building. Bruce Hall, a 1925 Ecclesiastical Seminary for the Episcopal Church, was said to need an estimated $20 million renovation.

The presentation drew Key West Mayor Dee Dee Henriquez, County Commissioner Jim Scholl and several school board members, underscoring how much the project overlaps with the county’s housing crisis. School board member Sue Woltanski said she had spent three years pushing the project in Washington and credited Gimenez and his staff with helping it advance. The district’s effort comes as public employers across Monroe County compete for the same scarce housing, from the school system to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and Key West police, and the stakes reach well beyond families with children in school.