OCALA, FL (352today.com) – Marion County Public Schools, Marion County and the county’s municipalities held a workshop regarding a tentative education facilities plan and update, including the interlocal agreement on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, at the Southeastern Livestock Pavilion,

The purpose of the project is to strengthen the collaboration between public schools and local governments, to support data-driven planning for school capacity and growth, said Stephen Ayres, Marion County Public Schools director of student assignment and records and the Technical Working Group’s vice chair.

The objectives are to support data-driven decisions on school locations and site planning and establish annual school facilities and priorities, said Ayres. The project was developed in partnership with local jurisdictions and would’ve not have been made possible without the strong collaboration of technical working groups, particularly the technical working group subcommittee.

Ayres recognized Jeff Shrum, the City of Ocala’s growth management director, who served as the chair of the TWG subcommittee, with the subcommittee collecting data and looking at the data from the different jurisdictions and making certain that the data was consistent. The TWG committee has met five times since Sept. 2024, and the subcommittee has met more than 30 times, in addition to extensive email coordination. Their collaborative efforts provided the data and the analysis presented at the interlocal agreement.

Ayres thanked staff and all of those who participated from the jurisdictions for their diligent work for collecting and verifying the development data. This collaboration has established a strong foundation for ongoing efforts that will support the district in delivering efficient and high-quality education to the students of Marion County.

Throughout this project it has been an ongoing effort of researching, researching data that they had, requesting new data, verifying the data, with each of the local planners, said Kathy Ebaugh JBPro planning director.

“We would do information, we would share information, they would give us feedback, we would read through the information, share the new information and get feedback,” said Ebaugh. “It was constant analyzing, reviewing until we got to where we are today, which is a new baseline of data, which is something that Marion County didn’t have 18 months ago.”

The three levels of information that they were looking at were future land use, development approvals and permitting, said Ebaugh. This was in order for them to understand what the maximum potential buildout of residential units as they are today, identify on a future land use map what development approvals are existing in the pipeline and can be constructed, and then the permitted ones that are actually going through the construction process.

“The future land use information was reported for us because it established a ceiling of maximum residential,” said Ebaugh. “I want to stress this is residential, as this process continues and future land use changes are made to move from one category into residential, there will be updates that will be made through the process.”

The reason that this was important was that it gave us an understanding of what could happen in the future. and understanding where currently the residential units are most available in the county, said Ebaugh.

They looked at future land use by each of the municipalities in the county and then looked at it as an aggregate.

The future land use methodology that was used was gathering and vetting Florida Department of Revenue Codes, the FDOR land use codes identified vacant parcels that allow residential development. They then calculated the maximum dwelling units using the future land use density limits and multiplied vacant acreage by the maximum density allowed in the future land use category.

The outcome saw the establishment of a policy-based ceiling for residential growth, identified where the housing growth can occur over the long-term and provided the outer boundary for potential future enrollment growth.

Development approval was also looked at closely as it is where approvals advance to the permitting stage, representing a commitment to investment and is used as an indicator of future growth. Permitting is the units with an issued or active building permit. It serves as the best indicator of imminent growth and near-term enrollment pressure.

“When we reviewed the interlocal, we looked to reset the timeframe,” said Ebaugh. “The original interlocal had the timeframes in very different places, in relationship to when the analysis of when the county’s development was happening. You would have development being evaluated at one time of the year, with the school district numbers coming from a different time of the year, and they weren’t in alignment, which is not a best practice for school planning. Through your new interlocal agreement, and the development that we show today, is all development that occurred through Sept. 30, which aligns with the October FTE (fulltime enrollment) count, which is the number that we’re looking at for the school district.”

The development approval summary:

Maximum Units Possible

  • Belleview, 1579
  • Dunnellon, see unincorporated
  • McIntosh, see unincorporated
  • Ocala, 16,790
  • Reddick, see unincorporated
  • Unincorporated, 47,583
  • Total, 65,952

The data will be used to proactively plan for the future of schools. How will this development path impact school growth and school planning. With school growth and planning, Ayres is charged with doing a projection for next year, so he needs to know how many teachers and how many textbooks that the school district has to have for next year. With the data, the school district is trying to tell a story.

“I need to know what’s going on in five years, do we need to build a wing, do we need to build relocatable portable classrooms, and 20 years down the road, do we need to buy land to build new schools,” said Ayres.

Base Data Application

The current residential summary: single-family homes, 139,348; multi-family, 22,058, mobile home, 28,221, total 189,627.

Overall, the utilization of schools in Marion County is at 93 percent, with the traditional elementary schools sitting at about 90 percent capacity.

What the story is telling Ayres as a school planner is where the potential current growth is and where the potential growth would go, so when schools are planned, the school district knows where they need to be located and how to plan effectively. The data tells where the development is, and where the current schools are. Much of the growth is in the southwest quadrant of the county.

The current middle school capacity is sitting at about 82 percent. The current capacity for traditional high schools, and this was prior to South Marion High School opening up, which will open this August, so the October enrollment data doesn’t reflect South Marion High School. The enrollment data will be updated when South Marion High School opens.