Public Schools Planning Overview

The public school system in Pinellas County is based on a countywide district, encompassing all of the municipalities within the County and the unincorporated area.

In 2005, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 360, mandating that concurrency be established for public school facilities not granted an exemption. School concurrency requires that a community's adopted level of service standard for public schools is met, or a developer executes a legally binding commitment to provide mitigation proportionate to the demand created by the proposed development, before development orders are issued. The Florida Statutes require that local govenments that have exceeded a certain minimum level of growth over the past five years, develop and adopt a Public School Facilities Element (PSFE), which forms the basis for implementing school concurrency and other subjects addressed in the updated Public Schools Interlocal Agreement that was entered into between the School Board, twelve municipalities and Pinellas County.

In response to this mandate, Pinellas County, together with the School District and all municipalities served by the Pinellas County School District that are required to implement school concurrency, began the process of creating a PSFE. A School Planning Workgroup was formed in January 2006 to address this new requirement, and included staff from each affected local government, the School District, and the Pinellas Planning Council. The Pinellas Schools Collaborative was formed from the 1906 Committee that prepared the original Public Schools Interlocal Agreement, which was executed in April 2003. The Collaborative consists of elected officials from Pinellas County, twelve municipalities, and the School Board. Together, the Workgroup and the Collaborative developed the updated Public Schools Interlocal Agreement, agreeing to create one PSFE that each local government would be able to adopt. This use of a single PSFE would ensure that there was consistency throughout the local governments and that development could be tracked countywide, further ensuring that public school facilities would not be adversely affected by additional development and redevelopment. The Workgroup and the Collaborative met numerous times to develop the updated Interlocal Agreement, and later the Element itself. The Workgroup and the Collaborative continue to meet to develop the development tracking system that will serve to implement and monitor school concurrency on a countywide basis

Public Schools Planning Webpages

Pinellas Schools Collaborative

School Planning Workgroup

Resources and Documents

School Concurrency