SC school district wants housing development input, even if county doesn’t ask
While Lexington County has moved away from questioning school districts about future development, one local school district is hoping to broadcast the information any way.
The Lexington-Richland 5 school board this week voted to regularly publish its attendance and capacity numbers to its website, as a response to a Lexington County Council decision last month to stop requesting the same information from school districts when it considers new development in the county.
“Lexington County has a concurrency ordinance to look at school, fire, ambulance,” said school board member Catherine Huddle at Monday’s meeting. “There used to be a form they sent to the school district, but they did away with it.... but they still kept ordinance.”
Huddle hopes that the county will still take the Chapin-Irmo school district’s capacity issues into consideration when approving development if it’s publicly available.
Lexington County Council has a comprehensive review process when considering new development, looking at how new homes and residents would affect a range of public services. But council members voted to stop soliciting information from school districts because, unlike other county agencies, Lexington County can’t require schools to make any changes to accommodate new growth.
The county council denied approval to the first project under concurrency rules in September, blocking 83 townhomes off Longs Pond Road at least in part because of concerns they would overwhelm nearby Lexington 1 schools.
Lexington is the first county to adopt such comprehensive concurrency standards as part of its review process, and new homes being built on the Richland County side of the school district wouldn’t face the same level of review before receiving county approval there.
Lexington County Councilwoman Charli Wessinger, who voted against dropping the requirement, urged the school board to adopt the move.
“It’s important for us to know,” Wessinger said of her council colleagues. “School districts are independent of local government, but they are affected by our land use decisions that can overburden local schools. Showing this information allows the county and community to operate on the same information.”
School districts are required to report their attendance numbers to the S.C. Department of Education at the 45-day and 145-day mark of the school year. Huddle argued those numbers could be displayed on the district’s website at the same time. Each school also has a maximum capacity that shouldn’t change without new construction on campus, which happens infrequently, she said.
“It won’t take much longer than what we’ve been doing,” Huddle said.
Other board members were skeptical county planners would take advantage of the posted numbers if they are no longer interested in asking for them, and that Lexington County could find the information from other sources if they wanted it. But the board ultimately adopted Huddle’s motion in hopes of keeping school capacity in the conversation.
“If we don’t show it, we can’t complain when they drop 300 homes next to Chapin Elementary,” Huddle said.
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