State Senate Proposes Mandatory School Concurrency

The Florida State Senate is considering a bill that would make school concurrency mandatory statewide.

Known as SB 360, the bill is a wide ranging amendment of the growth management laws first enacted in 1985.  One of the proposed amendments impacting schools would alter Florida Statute 163.3180 (1)(a) to include schools in the list of public facilities that come under statewide mandatory concurrency requirements.

At present, Florida law makes school concurrency a local option.  This means that each county must decide locally whether or not to impose a concurrency standard for public schools.

The effect of the change would be to require local governments to consider the impact of new residential developments on nearby public schools.  Development permits could be denied if there was insufficient capacity in nearby schools, or schools in neighboring areas, to absorb new students that would come into the school system from the new developments.  Local governments would no longer have the option to avoid these considerations.

Further updates on the fate of SB 360 and its effect on school concurency will be upcoming.

Please click on the following link to see the proposed changes in SB 360:

http://www.flsenate.gov/cgi-bin/view_page.pl?tab=session&Submenu=1&FT=D&File=session/2005/Senate/bills/amendments_com/html/sb0360am811680.html

To find the section concerning schools, do a find in page search using the search string "163.3180  concurrency".  Leave out the quotation marks and leave two spaces between 163.3180 and concurrency.

Pete Rebmann
Alachua County School Concurrency Project

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