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📊 Most public schools in Okaloosa County are over 40 years old, aligning with the national average of 49 years.
🏫 Replacing all schools over 60 years old would cost more than $75 million, while replacing all over 40 years old would cost about $684 million.
💰 A future tax increase—such as another half-cent sales tax—may be required to replace aging school infrastructure.
I was walking back with a slice of pizza from Brozinni’s by Ruckel and Niceville and was thinking about how old our schools are – and how they are always described as old. “Well,” I thought, “compared to what?” I wanted to know – here’s what I found out.
We had to find a baseline to compare our schools to other schools around the country – because if all of the schools are falling apart – maybe we’re not as bad off as we think.
A plurality of schools in America were built to accommodate the baby boom. Once those kids were out into the workforce – they decided that they didn’t need more schools – and the construction of new schools slowed down – especially after 1980.
According to the building design and construction network, the average age of an American school building is 49 years old – built in 1976 – just in time for America’s bicentennial and the height of the number of baby boomers in schools.
Since then, the number of kids has only increased. In 1976, about 35 million school-aged children between six and seventeen lived in the United States. In 2024, childstats dot gov says there are almost 50 million school-aged children in the United States.
The National Center for Education Statistics, a government agency, says after 40 years, “a school building begins rapid deterioration – and after sixty years, most schools are abandoned.”
The bottom line is that there are a lot more kids in the US that need to go to school – there are fewer schools per child to educate them – and the average age of schools is much older – simply cause we haven’t built many.
So – how old are our schools in Okaloosa County?
Well, if you go on the Okaloosa Property Appraisers website, there are two ages for each piece of property listed – the year built and the effective year built.
The year built is simple enough – it’s the year that they built the initial structures on campus.
According to the Broward County Property Appraiser, the effective year built is when the “property was significantly renovated or remodeled.”
We’re using the effective year-built dates to calculate our data – as we can all probably agree that the white house – built more than two centuries ago – is still in pretty good shape, thanks to updates and renovations.
The average school site effective age for the schools we could find was 49.7 years old. Some schools, most notably the special needs schools, did not have independent, effective year-built dates on record. The area with the youngest schools is Destin. On average, the two county-owned schools are 38.5 years old. Fort Walton Beach has the oldest schools – and the most schools. Their 14 facilities are, on average, almost 54 years old.
There isn’t a ton of variation in the ages of school based on location: FWB 53.86, Crestview 43.63, Niceville 47.86, Destin 38.5, North County (Laurel Hill and Baker), 51.5 years old. You can see our data set for Okaloosa County Schools here:
Okaloosa County Schools tend to keep pace with the average age of America’s schools.
With the benchmark that we should begin to think about replacing schools when they are 40 and that they bottom out in terms of their usability by 60 at the latest – we have some decent metrics to use.
71% of our schools in Okaloosa County are older than 40 years old. According to the US Department of Education, about one in five are older than sixty – or ‘abandonment time.’
So what does it cost to replace a school? The answer is that it’s complicated – but I can give you an idea.
The Florida Department of Education released data from 2022 that gives us these three averages. Each number is the cost of a school building split among every student it houses.
The data gives us a basic idea of what it would cost to replace a school that fits the number of students at that school.
What is the total cost of replacing Okaloosa schools over the age of 60 with this metric? $75 Million plus the expenses of Silver Sands and Richbourg, the schools for special needs students.
What is the cost of replacing all of the schools over 40? $684 Million. For an idea of scale – The Okaloosa County School District’s half-cent sales tax was projected to raise about $250 Million over ten years.
The short answer is – anything’s possible with enough tax dollars.
In 2020, voters passed a half-cent sales tax – that I mentioned earlier – to help repair and possibly build new schools in the district.
As of this video – they’ve reroofed schools, updated air conditioners, built cafetoriums and multipurpose gymnasiums – and more.
The district even announced the construction of a new school in Crestview – Pineview.
If they want to replace the number of schools in the later stages of middle age – they may need to consider additional property tax or another optional sales tax.
Doubling the revenue for the half-cent would get us 2/3 of the way to replacing all schools over the age of forty.
But, if we were to vote tomorrow on another half-cent sales tax – by the time we got to 2035, all but four schools would be 40 years old.
Don’t forget that more people are moving here all the time. Since 1980 – the population has more than doubled, while we’ve gone from 25 to 34 schools, roughly a 36% increase.
So – we’ve got a lot more kids here, learning in older schools that will need to be replaced.
It sounds like a priorities issue. One that we will have to face sooner rather than later.
At a recent meeting with superintendent chambers about the issue – I asked him if he’d be willing to call for a property tax increase or an additional half-penny sales tax. He told me he would leave that decision to initiate those increases to the voters to lead.
