- December 4, 2025
District staff presented the Flagler County School Board with the results of the 2025 Life Safety Casualty Inspection for all of the district’s campuses and off-site facilities. Sixty deficiencies were found at Bunnell Elementary School. No other campus or site had more than eight.
District Safety Specialist David Bossardet said all of the deficiencies at all of the sites have been corrected.
The vast majority of the BES deficiencies were related to illumination failures on exit signs and emergency lights, Bossardet said.
Plant services personnel are tasked with doing monthly inspections, and those deficiencies would have been caught before the annual spring inspection which Palm Coast Fire Department and Flagler County Emergency Services assist the district with. But due to being short-staffed and a change of staff because an employee and his replacement both went on emergency medical leave, the regular inspections weren’t completed and reports weren’t properly checked, Bossardet and Plant Services Director Kory Bush said.
Since then, new processes have been put in place to guarantee oversight in the future, Bossardet and Bush said.
“We’ve made adjustments to our (standard operating procedure) moving forward to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Bossardet said.
Bossardet said there would have been warnings if the batteries were going dead, but monthly checks would have found that they were wearing down.
“Had there been an emergency and all the deficiencies had been there, there would have been a big price to pay,” Board Chair Will Furry said. “We have to make sure these new controls will take care of this problem.”
