Okaloosa County School Board Member Brett Hinely will seek election to the District 5 seat he has held since being appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis in August 2024.

• Hinely, who filled the vacancy left by Dr. Diane Kelley after she became principal of Destin High School, said in an interview that he decided to run for a full term after spending time learning the role and finding that the work grounds him to the community.

“It grounds me to the community,” Hinely said. “Over a period of time I said, I could do this for another term and other people encouraged me too, as well.”

Hinely is the president of Cove Marine, Inc. and Bluewater High & Dry, and also directs Marina Cove Realty, LLC and Freedom Distributions, LLC. A U.S. Air Force veteran, he holds a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Auburn University. He is a Niceville resident and product of the Okaloosa County school system, with three daughters who also went through the district.

Learning the role

Hinely said he came into the role with no knowledge of the intricacies of the job and that the learning curve around government finance was the steepest adjustment.

“I’m a big financial guy and I went in there naive on government financing,” Hinely said. “I remember the first time I sat down with the School District’s CFO. I said, ‘I want to see the balance sheet and the income statement,’ and government finance is a whole different animal.”

He said his approach has been to acknowledge what he doesn’t know and dig into the details.

• “One benefit about going in not knowing a lot is, I don’t know but I’ll find out,” he said.

Hinely said he believes having both business-minded members and career educators on the board creates a balance of perspectives.

“There are aspects I am not familiar with and I still keep learning from school educators,” he said. “But being a businessman, I bring a perspective.”

He said a strong school system improves property values and benefits the broader community, not just families with children in the schools. He said that perspective drives his belief that everyone in the community has a stake in supporting public education.

“A good school system in a district improves property values,” Hinely said. “I’m totally behind everybody contributing to a school system, not just based on the age or if your kids go there or what have you, because it’s important to the community as a whole.”

Infrastructure and the half-cent sales tax

As the board’s representative on the construction side, Hinely said overseeing capital projects has been his biggest task. The district funds projects through three sources: the voter-approved half-cent sales tax, regular capital improvement dollars from the 1.5 mill property tax, and bonds. Bond funding is being used for the new Pineview K-8 school in Crestview, set to open next school year, and the expansion at Destin Elementary.

Hinely said the half-cent sales tax, which expires in 2030, has allowed the district to work through a list of projects the public approved, including new multipurpose buildings, cafetoriums, and conversions of old cafeteria space into classrooms. He said the district’s regular capital budget alone is not enough to keep up with infrastructure needs.

• “It’s very apparent that we don’t have enough money and we need that half-cent sales tax. We’ve been spending it by what we told the public we were going to spend it on,” he said.

He said he would like to see the tax renewed when it comes before voters, calling it a consumption tax that also captures contributions from tourists to Okaloosa County. Hinely said he supports sunsetting taxes so that future generations can decide whether to continue them.

“I don’t want to have a tax that is in perpetuity,” he said. “I want the next generation to decide if that tax is worth it or not.”

The district would also like to see most portable classrooms eliminated through permanent construction, though Hinely said keeping a small number on hand makes sense for flexibility when demographics shift rapidly. He said the goal is to build permanent infrastructure rather than relying on portables as a long-term solution.

Beyond the larger projects, Hinely said the district faces ongoing needs that are less visible to the public, including aging chillers, air conditioning systems and new efficiency controls that reduce energy costs. He pointed to the age of some facilities, noting that Ruckel Middle School was built in 1956.

“You still have the bones that need work,” he said. “All those things cost money and the technology has changed.”

Enrollment, school closures and funding

The district is navigating enrollment and funding pressures. The board recently made the difficult decision to close two schools as demographics have shifted, with enrollment declining in the southern and central parts of the county while growth continues in the north.

• “Nobody wants to close a school. You have employees that have been there sometimes their entire career at that one school. You have communities that rely on that school,” he said. “But demographics are demographics. When population goes up, you have to accommodate it. When they go down, you have to accommodate it.”

He said even those who opposed the closures generally understood the reasoning. “I think overall, even the people that didn’t like it understand the issue. And if they had to sit in our seats, they would go the same way,” he said.

Hinely described a smaller example in his own district, where the board ended bus service from the Bluewater Bay area to Destin Middle School after ridership dropped to eight students. He said the district honored commitments to students already enrolled but stopped accepting new riders.

“If I was going to continue that for those eight people, that means I am lacking in my fiduciary responsibility for the rest of the community,” he said. “You have to make those tough calls. But that’s why we sit in that seat.”

He said long-range planning in a school district is difficult because trends can reverse quickly. He pointed to areas in the southern and central parts of the county where enrollment was increasing 10 years ago and is now declining, driven in part by rising property values that make it harder for young families to afford housing.

On the state’s Family Empowerment Scholarship program, Hinely said he supports school choice as a parent’s right but takes issue with the current funding structure, which pulls scholarship dollars from the local school district’s budget. He said he believes the legislature will eventually fund the program at the state level rather than through local allocations.

He said the growth of private and charter school options means the district needs to change how it approaches the public, something public school systems have not traditionally done.

• “We’re competing against those schools. We need to market the District and show our strength and our A-plus status,” Hinely said. “Just look at our band and sports programs. Just huge. We need to market education and the whole well-rounding of a student, and we need to promote that.”

Workforce and teacher pay

One of the first questions Hinely said he received after joining the board was why Walton County teachers are paid more than those in Okaloosa County.

“My answer was, I don’t know, but I need to find out,” he said.

He said he sat down with the district’s chief financial officer and requested a comparison. Working from approximate figures, he said the disparity comes down to Walton County having a significantly higher property assessed value, fewer students and an additional millage rate that Okaloosa County does not levy. The result, he said, is that Walton County has substantially more revenue per student to work with across all categories, including salaries, benefits and infrastructure.

• “We’re doing more for less over here,” he said.

He credited the district’s move to a self-insured health plan as a significant win for employees, saying it provided better service at a better cost and has allowed the superintendent to issue staff bonuses in consecutive years.

“That’s been a huge win by the district,” he said.

The district has also opened a free employee health clinic in Fort Walton Beach, with plans for additional clinics in the central and northern parts of the county.

District 5 and military families

In his home district, Hinely said the biggest challenges are aging facilities and declining elementary enrollment. He pointed to Eglin Elementary School as likely one of the oldest facilities in the district and noted that Edge Elementary recently turned 100.

The district also plays a role in supporting military families stationed at Eglin Air Force Base and Hurlburt Field. Hinely said the base carries a designation that allows service members with children who have special needs to request a permanent change of station to Eglin because of the services the school district provides, including specialized educators and facilities.

• “That is huge for the military families, and it speaks to what our district offers,” he said. “But it’s also had an impact on our school district. We have to provide that special educator and special facilities, and that is a challenge in my District 5.”

As an Air Force veteran and self-described military brat who moved every two to four years growing up, Hinely said he understands the challenges military-connected students face. He noted that all schools in the district carry the Purple Star designation for military family support, and said Okaloosa County was the first district in the state to earn that distinction at every school.

Looking ahead

Asked what success would look like at the end of a full four-year term, Hinely said he wants to see the district continue improving with students as the priority. He pointed to career and technical education programs producing students who graduate with industry certifications and can enter the workforce immediately.

“Everything boils down to our students and what’s best for them to become a part of the community,” he said. “Being a good steward of the money and looking at the infrastructure and trying to take care of those things.”

He said success also means continuing to develop well-rounded students through academics, arts, athletics and career readiness.

• “Having kids coming out with these certifications in technology and the trades, absolutely becoming a member of the community right out of the bat and supporting themselves,” he said. “Always having the students number one and growing that way.”

Hinely said he approaches the work with the understanding that the district still has room to improve.

“We are not perfect,” he said. “I like it when the Superintendent says that. There’s always room for growth. That’s true everywhere. Growth is the key mindset.  Having the students as number one, and then being a good steward of the money and looking at the infrastructure and trying to take care of those things.”

On the election: Three of the board’s five seats are up for election this year.

In the District 3 race, Chairman Linda Evanchyk is seeking a third term and faces U.S. Army veteran Mitch Reed, who announced his bid in August.

In District 1, member Dr. Lamar White has announced he will not seek re-election. Former Okaloosa County Clerk of Courts JD Peacock announced his candidacy for the seat in January, followed by Jerry Buckman in early February. Cynthia West, a mental health professional who initially launched a campaign for District 3, shifted to District 1 in January.

No other candidates have filed for the District 5 seat as of this writing.