Schools Are Not Too Crowded Yet, But County Thinks So

Park Hall Elementary students file into school Wednesday morning

Is there a shortage of school seats in St. Mary’s County school districts, or just a flawed county policy that inflates the school seat calculation years ahead of time?

A government affairs committee of the St. Mary’s Chamber of Commerce recently gave the St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners a presentation on the discrepancy between the capacity in county schools and county law that govern housing developments.

According to the county’s “adequate public facilities” (APF) laws, nearly 2/3 of the county is now off limits to further development because no more space exists in schools for students. Adhering to APF laws is required to assure public facilities exist for new developments, including schools, roads, water and sewer.

But, as John K. Parlett told commissioners, the school system needs more students, not a policy that freezes development and inhibits population growth.

It is true county schools are starting to exceed their rated capacity, but schools in a district need to be 50 percent over capacity before the state funding mechanism kicks in and provides a majority of funding for a new school.

The formula used under the county APF law assigns available school space to new developments as they go through the approval process.

During the Chamber’s presentation is was pointed out that as many as four years pass before those seats allocated to a development are actually filled by new students.

“This disconnect is the urgency that we are feeling,” Parlett told the Board. “It’s completely out of sync with the state funding mechanism, and that’s pretty important in that (the state) pays 71 percent of the bricks and mortar of that new school.”

Kim Howe, of the St. Mary’s Board of Education, pointed out that county projections point to a need for a new school on average three years before a school is actually needed.

“The APF ordinance creates the sense urgency that we need that school now, when in reality we need it in 2011,” Howe said, “which is when the district plans for the second new school to be build, and when state money will come.”

A district needs to get to 600 students over population before a new school can be funded by the state, Parlett said as an example. But when that level reaches 400 over population the county APF puts a freeze on development. That results in schools staying overpopulated longer because the flow of new students is slowed by the lack of new development.

“We are our own worst enemy sometimes,” Parlett said.

The Chamber did not have any recommendations to the Board for correcting the school space problem, but laid out goals for changing policy. They included creating a county-wide unified growth policy that sets a percentage figure on the desired amount of growth each year. The chamber would also like to see development approvals phased, so school seats can not be hoarded by one big development that takes years to build.

“We need to match our local ordinance to the state funding formula,” Commission President Thomas McKay said, and allow schools to exceed the 100 percent population as required by the state.

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