Brainpower is one of three essential elements for Competitive Communities. To state the obvious, pre-K through 12 education plays a significant role in building community brainpower. Less obvious and less understood is the role pre-K to 12 education plays in the success of quality place and innovation strategies.

Families choose where to live, in part, based on school attendance zones. It is also predictable that low performing schools will have greater numbers of students living in poverty. These phenomena contribute to neighborhood deterioration and accelerate low-density sprawl development. Little attention is usually paid to the impact of school board decisions on community growth and economic development. Schools have mirrored trends in retail growth by abandoning poverty, chasing outward migrating wealth and consolidating to gain economies of scale.

On the surface, it seems to make since to build new schools where population is growing and close schools in inner areas that are victims of abandonment and disinvestments. However, this tactic is evidence of disconnected planning and lack of effective community growth management. Continuing this trend contributes to an unaffordable public infrastructure and hinders community efforts to gain a competitive position in the knowledge economy. Competitive Communities are recognizing the importance of comprehensive planning that combines strategies for brainpower, quality place and innovation. The results will better connect schools to communities. Concepts for “Community schools” and more completely understanding the economics of small schools (e.g., higher capital costs per student and lower cost per high school graduate) are among trends that begin to bridge gaps between education goals and community goals. Competitive Communities are recognizing that reinvestment in existing school sites can, when part of comprehensive plans, be part of redeveloping neighborhoods at greater public benefit than current “sprawl schools”.

The March 2004 issue of Governing cover story, “Edge-ucation: What compels communities to build schools in the middle of nowhere?” by Bob Gurwitt, reports on the growing discussion of the important role of schools in managing community growth. Following are several quotes from the article:

“…School districts often make the argument that, given their financial pressures, they can offer the full range of educational opportunities to students only if they can build large schools on large parcels in order to reap the benefits of economies of scale. This is one of the reasons it’s not unusual to find high schools and even middle schools — such as the one containing 4,000 7th- and 8th-graders that recently opened in Cicero, Illinois — that are larger than many colleges.

…Just as schools going up on the periphery of a community can promote sprawl, so a decision to build or renovate in the central city can generate revitalization.

…School building decisions have an impact that stretches far beyond the education of a community’s students. Which is why those concerned about stemming school sprawl are beginning to focus on one key consideration: Not HOW decisions get made, but WHO makes them. They’re questioning the freedom that school boards and administrators have had to weigh their own criteria separately from the wishes of other public bodies.”

…A bill in this year’s (South Carolina) legislative session by…Republican Ben Hagood…would require contiguous municipalities, local transportation authorities and school districts to coordinate their land-use planning. “Growth is happening, and I’m not anti-growth,” says Hagood. “But I’m for better planning of the growth. The idea is to plan where you build and build where you plan.”

…Elsewhere, getting school districts to play ball with other public agencies is likely to be difficult. The attitude of many state school board associations is pretty well summed up by Ed Dunlap, who runs the North Carolina School Board Association. “Our position is very clear,” he says. “It is the responsibility of the local board of education to make decisions about where schools are sited. Period.”