School Concurrency

School Concurrency provides coordinated planning between the school district and local government agencies to ensure that school capacity is available at the time of impact of residential development.

Polk County’s local governments and the School Board hold public workshops on growth management issues related to schools.

Polk County’s accelerated growth has led to a growing demand for school facilities.The implementation of public school concurrency will result in a cooperative and financially feasible process permitting the School Board to address existing school crowding and to provide adequate capacity for projected new growth.

In order to implement school concurrency countywide, three steps must be taken:

1. The first step is to have all participating entities enter into an interlocal agreement, which would be with the county and the 17 local goverments.
2. The second step requires the county and the 17 participating local governments to have consistent Comprehensive Plan amendments.
3. The third step is to incorporate the Comprehensive Plan amendments into the land development code of each participating local government.
   The interlocal agreement indicates this step must be in place 90 days after the last municipal amendment becomes effective.

School concurrency has been in effect since March 2008.