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The Lee County School Board learned that there are many property constraints when looking to build additional schools in the Lehigh Acres community during a briefing meeting last week.

“Lee County is a changing place. In the past when we used to be able to buy land in large pieces it was good for us because we could build a prototype school in as much acreage as we needed,” Planning Growth & Capacity Director Kathie Ebaugh said at the Tuesday session. “Land is harder to come by in larger pieces.”

The district is looking at trying to identify where schools are today and where they need to be tomorrow in a more community focused way. The district does not want to locate schools on top of each other, but disperse them to meet the needs of the community.

In the 1980s, Lehigh Acres was finished being platted with a total of more than 123,000 platted lots that consisted of either half acre, or acre lots. There are a total of 60,000 acres, Ebaugh said, which consists of 130,000 platted lots, 85,000 of which are unbuilt and many with multiple ownerships.

“Many of these property owners are different. Some live in the country, some don’t. Some don’t even know they have this land,” Ebaugh said.

The problem as a school entity is when Lehigh Acres was platted the lots were not platted for anything other than residential. They sold for $10 down, $10 a month.

“There is no phasing here,” Ebaugh explained of the entitled lots and developments by the Florida Statue in the 1980s. “It granted permanent entitlement to the development of these properties. In Lehigh and Cape Coral they don’t have to do any of that. They go right to pulling building permits and the next thing they build a house.”

This causes a challenge for the district as there is no tracking of the phasing of a project and where it is taking place.

“In order to assemble land of any significant size we have to purchase a lot of land from a lot of different owners,” Ebaugh said. “To have a sense of when school needs to be built, we have to track the building and construction process because that is how we know a house is being built.”

For the district to build an elementary school they look to assemble at least 30 acres. In Lehigh that would mean 120 different properties.

“We have to think differently and consider the development envelope. We might have to build higher than out,” Ebaugh said. “The way we build our schools is going to change.” 

The lack of a transportation network in Lehigh is also a constraint, as the district does not have traditional transportation arterial system for busing.

“That is why we want schools in the center of Lehigh because transportation is so difficult to get around in Lehigh. The county and state don’t have right-of-way to expand roads to be what we would like them to be,” Ebaugh said.

The school board was shown a variety of maps that showed where schools were located, as well as areas of potential gaps and areas of non-necessary gaps. Elementary schools were broken down in a 2- mile radius, while middle and high school were 3.5-mile radius.

The district is seeing some transition from young families to more mature families, a unique shift in the northern portion of the district’s East Zone. Ebaugh said there is an extension of growth from the west to the east in Lehigh.

“What we are seeing is rural Lehigh doesn’t exist anymore. The development of the entire community is becoming more and more great,” Ebaugh said. “The county as a whole is growing and all parts is growing.”

Dan O’Berski with TCG, said part of their role and responsibility is trying to have regular conversations with all major developers to see what they are planning and seeking larger scale acquisition.

“Every residential development that comes through any municipal government comes through our office as well,” Ebaugh said, adding that they have the capacity to chime in on the development being proposed.

Board member Gwyn Gittens said they need to catch up on the demand of schools in the East Zone, so as growth continues, they will not always be behind the eight ball.

“Those schools are all well overcrowded,” she said.

Ebaugh said if they put schools in the right locations and put them not in the immediate spot where they are today, but are coming, they are able to accomplish both.

“We will be able to, through the proximity plan, to redistribute where students are coming from and where to go to school. Ideally it addresses the current demands while providing for the future growth needs,” she said.