Buckhorn is already over capacity, with 924 students squeezed into a building meant to hold 799. But a county lawyer wouldn't even hear testimony about the school's crowded classrooms. Bush wants to force local governments to turn down rezonings that would add students to already crowded schools. The governor also wants local governments to calculate the cost of new development using a model that will be developed by the state. Both houses of the Legislature will be debating the governor's bills this week, and they stand a good chance of passing intact, according to Republican legislative leaders.
Developers oppose the denial concept.
It's unfair, they say, to place the whole burden for school overcrowding on the backs of builders. But school boards and school administrators say taking school overcrowding into account when making zoning decisions is an idea whose time has come. Nowhere is that more evident than in fast-growing Hillsborough County, which is adding 4,000 students a year. The Hillsborough school district is opening five new schools this fall, nine schools at the start of the 2002 school year, five in 2003, five in 2004, and five in 2005. Still, there are schools where portable classrooms will have to remain part of the mix.