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Comprehensive Plan Public School Facilities Element ANALYSIS With the data collected from the School District, the County and the municipalities, an analysis was performed to determine the short-term and long-term future conditions that will impact public schools. As part of this analysis, the current inventory of public schools and planned school capital improvements was reviewed in light of the projected student growth and available revenue to finance the planned capital improvements. Generally, the analysis focuses on whether existing and planned school capacity can support residential development at the adopted level of service standard. Specific outputs from this analysis include school capacity figures, a financially feasible adopted level of service, and goals, objectives and policies for the school concurrency program. School Service Area Boundaries A fundamental requirement of school concurrency is the establishment of geographic school service area boundaries (SSABs) to which school concurrency is applied when reviewing the impact of new residential development on public schools. The SSABs are used to determine whether adequate capacity is available to accommodate new students generated from residential development. There are two alternatives for establishing SSABs. One alternative is to establish a district -wide SSAB for each school type. This method calculates the utilization of all schools of the same school type. For example, the utilization for the elementary schools in school year 2007/08, as identified in Table 12.8, is 96%. This rate is calculated by taking the average of the utilization rates for all of the elementary schools. By measuring capacity in this manner, the School District is currently operating at a level of service lower than 100%, even though six individual schools are operating at a level of service greater than 100%. This alternative would allow development to continue without mitigation where there is no capacity at the elementary school level because capacity is available on a district -wide basis. The other alternative is to establish less than district -wide SSABs. With this alternative, SSABs would be established using geographic areas based on streets, natural boundaries or existing school attendance zones. Less than district -wide SSABs allow school capacity determinations to be made at a local level. By using a school attendance zone for the SSAB, capacity determinations directly measure the impacts of residential development at the schools, which the developments will impact. Using school attendance zones as the service areas, the School District can more accurately project which schools are most likely to be impacted by new residential development. In conjunction with the School District and the municipalities of the County, Indian River County has determined that the SSABs will be applied on a less than district -wide basis. Figures 12.3, 12.4 and 12.5 detail the school service area boundaries for the elementary, middle, and high school grade levels, respectively. Community Development Department Indian River County 23