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Leadership lacking in Hillsborough

Anyone trying to fathom why Hillsborough County struggles with crowded classrooms needs only to have caught last week's meeting between county and school district officials. County commissioners, reluctant to rein in the developers who finance their campaigns, stalled yet another attempt to ensure that schools would be in place before new housing is built. School officials painted a capacity crisis but urged the county to move with restraint. Developers fund School Board races, too - though the real culprit is not donations or growth but a lack of leadership across county government. And with no one stepping forward, Hillsborough families face a choice: Put their child on a bus or endure double sessions.

County and school officials have made planning more complex than it needs to be, in part because the legalese deflects public attention from the underlying problem - a leadership void. At issue is whether the county can deny new housing developments if schools lack the space to absorb new residents. Hillsborough already has been considering school capacity when weighing new housing developments, and a new growth-management law that Hillsborough was chosen to pioneer statewide will formalize what should be common sense. Even if the county had no history of taking school capacity into account, it should be working in the spirit of the growth-management law to ensure there are enough schools to handle new developments.

Having the two sides engage in a debate over "concurrency" - the concept of having public services in place - only hands the builders the legal tools to delay responsible decisionmaking for years. There is no reason the school district and the county cannot build on the working relationship that already calls for the two to "manage the timing of new development." The first step would be to have them agree on everything from the latest population projections to long-range growth and capital spending.

The commission made that job harder by voting Wednesday to kick the idea of new revenue to a study group. Hillsborough's school-impact fee, at $196, is the lowest of any urban county in the state. Five years' worth builds one elementary school. The commission does not need another study committee to drag the reality out any longer. It should raise the fee and move on to whether new taxes or growth-management plans are needed to curb the effects of sprawl.

The School Board should have taken the lead years ago. Only in recent weeks has the district appeared serious about building any support for raising money for construction. It did so in a backhanded way, threatening the prospect of double-sessions - a strategy that backfired because it made the district look unprepared. The district's building plan also looks bloated; officials have not outlined how assignment changes and other techniques could be used to attract students to existing vacancies. The board also needs to reconsider the logic of embracing big-box designs, when smaller schools might attract more community support and be cheaper to maintain.

Commission Chairman Jim Norman said the right things about moving beyond the blame-game and holding a joint meeting. Much will depend on how quickly the two sides come together and how hard the superintendent and county administrator push to depoliticize the process. If Norman stalls, or if the School Board fails to take a stronger stand, then this whole debate will be exposed as a charade.

For developers, that would be a good return on their campaign contributions.

[Last modified January 9, 2006, 14:30:18]