School overcrowding issues have Orange County leaders fighting each other.
The latest debacle came Tuesday when Orange County commissioners rejected the school districts plans for a relief school for Avalon Middle School.
“Frankly, they have taken a stance that’s very hostile towards public education,” said Orange County School Board Chair Bill Sublette.
In the past year, there have been three different battles between the district and the school board over proposed relief schools over zoning issues. It all started with a relief school for West Orange High School, which the county blocked for almost two years until a court ruling helped move it forward.
Then there was an elementary school in Wedgefield that divided local residents. Now it's a relief school for Avalon Park Middle School, now in limbo after commissioners unanimously rejected it because of flooding concerns and the size of the site.
“It’s very obvious to us sitting out in the county commission meetings that many times the county commissioners are considering these issues for the first time sitting up there, and that’s inexcusable,” said Sublette.
Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs criticized the school board for poor advanced planning and for selling the original site planned for an Avalon Middle School relief school, without replacing it.
“Not wait until we reach a point where the school is double the capacity, reaching a boiling point and you try and force a school where it won't fit," said Mayor Teresa Jacobs. “When they buy land making sure they buy land that has the right zoning or that they are getting the zoning in place immediately."
Sublette said the district has been planning and land banking for these relief schools for over a decade in some cases.
The school district has 15 relief schools planned to deal with growth projections that show an increase of about 40,000 students over the next 10 years. All the land for the schools have been bought, but the delays they have seen so far with the relief schools are ones they can’t afford to experience in the future.
“We need leadership at the county level to step up. We need the county to start telling us we don’t like this site, you need to move here, and more importantly identify the funding source,” said Sublette.
The county said they are working with the district to possibly approve a new school site ordinance that could change some restrictions now placed on school sites and prevent some of the issues we have seen in the past two years.
Sublette said they will be re-zoning to relieve overcrowding at Avalon Middle next year. They also plan to bring a new proposal to the board in the coming weeks with more acreage for the site where they want to build a relief school.