Pinellas County, Fla. may nix schools for affordable housing projects

So down that the school board told School Superintendent Dr. Clayton Wilcox, left, to pick the schools he would close to reorganize the system. Wilcox said he would focus on schools that are older, have low enrollment or lie in flood-prone areas of the county.

Last month Wilcox named nine target facilities---Riviera Middle School, which boasts a sprawling 23-acre campus, and eight elementary schools. Pinellas runs 27 middle schools and 86 elementary facilities.

That gave St. Petersburg city council member Bill Foster, right, an idea: why not turn a surplus 26-acre school site into an affordable housing community that could accommodate a couple hundred families? Fox-TV Channel 13 reported Foster's 'trial balloon' yesterday. It took about two minutes for school board member Linda Lerner, right, to try to super-nanny the idea. Speaking for one of the largest land owners in Pinellas Co., Lerner sounds like an old world land baron herself: 

"When you're out of land you're out of land, right?  We don't have that much," said Lerner.

Lerner thinks the school system should land bank properties for future needs.

Foster, an attorney by trade, probably got the idea from Don Shea, left, CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, who last week proposed converting the former Euclid Elementary School in St. Petersburg into condominiums and town homes teachers can afford to buy. School supe Wilcox reportedly liked that idea. But then, no one asked the school board's resident greedy land baron. Yet.

Pinellas Co. Schools don't mind charging home builders a whopper impact fee for building new homes. Those impact fees are one reason Pinellas suffers its affordable housing crisis---its own teachers are leaving Pinellas for more affordable areas.

Lerner's 'land baron' response seems not only thoughtless but callous. She might reconsider her position for the good of Pinellas Co. schools, not to mention Pinellas Co. families.