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Comprehensive Plan Public School Facilities Element School Level of Service Essentially, level of service (LOS) is the relationship between supply and demand. For schools, LOS is expressed as a ratio of enrollment and capacity, with capacity being number of student stations. To establish an acceptable level of service, the school district and the local governments must project future demand, identify needed capacity, and determine the level of financial resources available to construct additional capacity. These factors are then used as a basis to establish a school LOS standard. The level of service standard controls the maximum utilization of schools. Florida law requires that the public school facilities element of a local government comprehensive plan address how the level of service standards will be achieved and maintained. The ability to achieve and maintain the adopted level of service must be based on a financially feasible Five -Year Capital Facilities Plan. Furthermore, the law requires that the public school level of service standards be adopted into local government capital improvement element, and must apply to all schools of the same type (elementary, middle, and high). Initial shortfalls in capacity over the five-year period following adoption may be addressed by adopting a tiered level of service standard along with a concurrency management system. Prior to establishing a level of service standard, the School District must determine the maximum capacity of the public schools. Tables 12.8-12.11 identify the capacity of all public schools and their enrollment and utilization through school year 2012/13. The current enrollment and capacity for each school are critical in developing a school concurrency system. Public school concurrency should ensure that the capacity of schools is sufficient to support current enrollment and the projected students from future residential development. Current enrollment and school capacity data provide a baseline for developing a financially feasible level of service standard for public schools. As adopted, the public school level of service standard should maximize the efficiency of each school facility for educating students. Based on this ideal, the preferred level of service standard in Indian River County is 100% of permanent FISH capacity. Needs Assessment To determine the capacity for each school, the School District uses FISH capacity. The FISH capacity is the number of students that may be housed in a facility (school) at any given time based on a utilization percentage of the number of existing satisfactory student stations. FISH capacity is a product of the number of classrooms at a school and the student stations assigned to each room type. No capacity is assigned to small instructional spaces and the specialized classrooms (labs), including art, music, etc. Since the number of student stations at a school is used to calculate the school's capacity, the data detailed in Tables 12.8 — 12.11 are presented at the student station level. A Community Development Department 27