From the Publisher

If, however, you choose to buy a home in an established neighborhood, chances are that your child will attend a school in a building that’s decades old, poorly maintained and ill-equipped to meet the needs of today’s students.

The Supreme Court supposedly ended school segregation in its landmark Brown vs. The Board of Education decision. Chief Justice Earl Warren stated that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.”? Yet, we still have separate and not necessarily equal public education. Now, however, this discriminatory practice is not based on race, but on where you buy a home.

Buyers of newly built homes are assessed a school impact fee that varies from county to county, but runs the gamut from $7,000 in Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County to almost $10,000 in Osceola County. These fees are used to build new schools, presumably for new students who aren’t currently enrolled in another local school.?

The incorrect assumption is that virtually every new home equals a new Central Floridian and a new student. But plenty of new-home buyers aren’t relocators from out of the area; they’re families who already live here. In addition, youngsters from established neighborhoods and older schools routinely get transferred to these new facilities as a result of rezoning.

Still, even though many longtime residents benefit from and use new schools, it’s the new-home buyer—and only the new-home buyer—who foots the bill for their construction.
So, if you buy an existing home in an established neighborhood, you’ll pay no school impact fee even if your child will attend a new school. If that’s the case, consider yourself fortunate to have had newcomers pay your bill for you.?

But the other, more frequent scenario is that buyers in established neighborhoods will be zoned for run-down schools slated to be “remodeled” sometime between now and the turn of the next century.

However, due to the ineptitude of the Orlando" target="_blank">Orange County School Board, such projects are frequently delayed, cancelled or scaled back. That’s one reason why private schools in Central Florida often have waiting lists.

Our elected officials must stop putting the burden of funding new schools on developers and, ultimately, new-home buyers. Additionally, they must adequately fund renovating/rebuilding of existing schools. And everyone should be willing to pay their fair share.

—Mimi Briegel, Publisher
mimib@florida-homebuyer.com