School Concurrency Now Mandatory

With the passage of the growth management reform bill by the state legislature, school concurrency is now mandatory statewide.   Local governments will no longer have the option of ignoring the impact of new residential developments on public schools.  It is arguably the most significant change to Florida`s growth management laws in the past 20 years. 

In a historic victory for advocates of school concurrency, this new requirement reverses more than 20 years of acrimony and argument over the previous local option requirement.  It also represents a sea change in the views of the business and development communities on statewide school concurrency. 

Ever since concurrency requirements were added to the growth management laws in 1985, builders, realtors, and chambers of commerce have waged a fierce battle to keep school concurrency a local option.  Indeed, in the years following, they succeeded in increasing the requirements of local school concurrency to such an extent that in the intervening 20 years only one of the 67 counties in Florida was able to establish school concurrency within its boundaries. 

It now appears that opponents of statewide school concurrency have concluded that the local option represents a greater threat to their interests.  Perhaps the chief reason for this radical change of opinion was Orange County`s successful implementation of a local policy to deny approval of new developments based on overcrowded schools. 

Blessed by the state supreme court in a ruling known as the Mann decision, this new rival to school concurrency allowed local governments to create their own rules for controlling the impact of new developments on schools.  The opponents of statewide school concurrency apparently concluded that such a hodgepodge of local regulations was the worse than a more uniform statewide system. 

A preliminary analysis of the new regulations indicates the following substantial impacts: 

1) School districts and their local governments will have until December 2007 to complete adoption of school concurrency requirements.  Districts and governments that fail to comply by that deadline will face substantial penalties including loss of funding and loss of ability to approve new residential developments.

2) Concurrency requirements must implemented on a district wide basis for the first five years. 

3) Provides encouragement to developers to assume part of the costs of new school construction.

4) Provides new state funding for school construction projects but keeps the requirement of voter approval for new local taxes for such projects. 

Of these impacts, the second and fourth are most likely to create substantial local debate.  The requirement for district wide concurrency means that children living in new developments in high growth areas with overcrowded schools will have to be bussed to remote schools that have available capacity.  In Alachua County, this means that there will almost certainly be bussing of students from high growth areas in the west to schools in low growth areas in the east part of the county. 

This will inevitably create an outcry for new school construction in the high growth western areas but the inability of the school board to raise funds for that construction without voter approval will undoubtedly polarize the electorate when proposals for new school construction taxes come up on election ballots. 

The new regulations will also impact local supporters of school concurrency.  For the members of the Alachua County School Concurrency Project (ACSCP), the change from local option to statewide school concurrency comes as a great relief.  We no longer have to look forward to a grueling long-term battle to convince the school board and local governments to establish school concurrency locally. 

On the other hand, this change greatly increases the need for the ACSCP to continue efforts to educate residents of Alachua County about school concurrency.  Now that it is a looming reality rather than a remote possibility, the need for accurate information about school concurrency will be greater than ever before. 

Finally, the ACSCP may need to take on a new role in monitoring the detailed implementation of school concurrency in Alachua County.  The new regulations still leave significant aspects of this implementation, notably level of service standards, to be determined by the local school board and local governments.  The ACSCP can provide a significant venue for channeling citizen concerns to elected officials about these aspects of the local implementation of school concurrency. 

To learn more about school concurrency, please visit the Alachu County School Concurrency Project`s website at www.acscp.org.