- June 21, 2025
Volusia County Schools is due for an impact fee study in 2026, and district staff is expecting the study will show that there are more students today living in multifamily units and mobile homes compared to 10 years ago.
During a workshop on planning for student growth and the school concurrency process on Tuesday, May 13, district staff reported that the number of students living in multifamily units was up 31% in 2022 from 2013, based on the previous impact fee study's student generation rate, which calculates how many students would likely be generated per 100 dwelling units. Students living in mobile homes units were also up 44% from 2013.
At the same time, the 2022 study found that the number of students in single-family homes was down 15% from 2013.
"Over the past few years of this impact fee study, [the student generation rate] has changed as the demographics have changed," said James Roberts, Planning and GIS specialist for VCS.
In years prior, multifamily developments in Volusia County traditionally didn't generate many students, but that has significantly changed, Roberts said, adding that impact fee studies can only capture what is happening at the moment.
"They can't predict what's going to happen in the future, so we can only adjust with those impact fee studies based on what's come before," he said.
VCS adopted its current impact fees in January 2023, and they went into effect on April 24, 2024. They are:
When compared to other school districts,VCS' impact fees for single-family homes are somewhere in the "middle of the road," Roberts said.
On the higher end, Osceola County Schools' impact fees are $12,923 for single-family. On the lower end, Marion County Public Schools' is $4,307. Neighboring Flagler Schools' impact fees are $5,450.
The district's consultant for the 2022 study recommended higher impact fees — over $8,000 for single-family, over $4,000 for multi-family and over $1,600 for mobile homes.
The Volusia County School Board opted to adopt lower fees.
"It was a tough subject," said Chair Jamie Haynes, who along with Board member Ruben Colon, are the only ones still in office. "But I still think that we did the right thing at that point, because based on the data that we had, we needed single-family homes."
Haynes said she believed the shift to multifamily and mobile homes is due to the lack of affordable housing. In the last few years, several new apartment developments have been constructed in the county, and most notably, along LPGA and Williamson Boulevard.
"I'm running into a lot of families that that's what they're doing, and/or they relocated to Florida, and that's what they were used to doing from one of the large cities where they lived — was renting apartments," she said. "So I think it's going to continue to change."
Haynes also noted, however, that there are several single-family home communities in the works, particularly in the Ormond Beach area.
These include Ormond Crossings, Avalon Park and Ormond Station, an upcoming development within the Flagler County portion of Hunter's Ridge, whose students will be allowed to attend Volusia schools, per a recently approved interlocal agreement.
The school district plans to form a committee and hire a consultant by winter 2025.
