ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — The Orange County School Board paid millions for a large piece of land in Windermere that it currently can't built on. The district wanted to build a new high school on 68 acres near SR-535, but the land is not zoned for a school and may never be.
The Orange County School District paid $7 million for the land along SR-535 in west Windermere so it could build a relief high school for West Orange High School. However, if county commissioners don't approve the zoning change, the district will be stuck with the land.
"It just makes me sick. They overpaid for this land and it's just the wrong location," resident June Cole said.
The proposed high school site is in Cole's neighborhood. She moved there because her home is surrounded by the west Windermere rural settlement and she thought she was protected from big development.
County commissioners denied the district's zoning request to build a new Evans High School in a rural settlement in Ocoee in 2008.
"We are expecting them to do the same thing for us right here, because there is no difference," Cole said.
The district paid $5 million for the Evans land and there are no plans to sell it.
"What could that money do for our kids, our teachers, instead of sitting here as vacant land," Cole said.
If Commissioner Scott Boyd has his way, the $7 million parcel in Windermere will be added to surplus too.
"I am strongly against a high school going into rural settlement," Boyd said.
School board member Vicky Bell says the district is being wasteful.
"I think they wasted taxpayer money by not putting condition of rezoning in the contract," Bell said.
According to the property appraiser, the value of the land has dropped by 30 percent. Still, some neighbors hope the district will be forced to sell it and build the new school somewhere else where students can walk to school without crossing a four-lane road.
The neighbors told WFTV they want the school in a subdivision where kids can walk to class. The district's planning director told WFTV part of the land was taken by eminent domain, so there was no way to make its purchase contingent on zoning approval.
County commissioners will have the final say on zoning approval.