Darren Glaude, Seminole County Watch columnist

Despite what the next few years may bring, it is very gratifying at the moment not to have children enrolled in Seminole County public schools.  The hope is that by the time they get there, things can be put back into a little bit of order.  The thought that things may stay as they are now is not very comforting.

Beyond regard to the quality of education available within our public schools, which until recently has never been much of a question, there have been too many other issues in the news this year to make me eagerly anticipate my children attending school here in Seminole, as they will do within several years.

The pressures of growth are placing unbearable stresses and strains on the social infrastructure of our county.  As the infrastructure bends, buckles and twists under those pressures, the strain is felt as much by parents and children in the public schools as by anyone.

The growth we have created has itself created the need for more schools, such as the new Hagerty High School in Oviedo, which coincidentally is as the center of two controversies that have caused angst for parents and students.

The new Hagerty High School will open this next school year, and, although future growth will fill it beyond capacity, the students are not yet there in the numbers that will eventually come.

To fill the school, students had to be rippled in from across the county, through rezoning, in a domino effect starting in Longwood and working its way east.  Some students are being rezoned from Lake Brantley to Lyman, others from Lyman to Winter Springs, others from Winter Springs to Oviedo, and yet others from Oviedo to Hagerty, all of them being passed along from one school to the next to eventually provide a student population for Hagerty.

Although the desired end result is achieved, the manner in which it is done is ripping at the heart of some people's lives.  Not many, when considered in the overall context of Seminole's total population, which makes it easy to excuse.  Unless you are among the "not many" who are affected, such as the Longwood parents who suddenly found themselves filig a lawsuit in an effort to modify the rezoning as developed by the School Board, seeking to protect yourself against the impact it will inflict upon your family's life.

So you have families in Longwood whose daily lives are consumed and transfixed on attempting to find more palatable solutions to what has suddenly become their problem.

The problem is the runaway development of Seminole County, approved bu county and city commissioners whose lives are not touched bybthir decisions as are those who really must pay the price.

As the developers build more homes than the infrastructure can bear and the retailers build yet more shopping centers, the schools are one example of the infrastructure buckling from the effects.  Sadly, those who benefit are mainly out-of-county interests largely profitting from the growth they engender while not bearing the consequences. 

The city and county officials who are supposed to represent the interests of their constituents instead pay service to agendas of their own, which are usually somehow tied back to the notion that all growth is "good" and necessary.

Perhaps this really is their idea of "progress," the word that so often gets thrown around with little respect to its true meaning.  But for it to truly be progress, it must improve the quality of life for the residents who feel the impact.

Right now, there is no evidence that it is doing any of that.  Continued development crowds the roads, crowds the schools, and fills the air with rhetoric from our leaders that it must continue if our towns and county are to prosper.

Yet the more we develop, the more we hear of its costs, and that we cannot afford it.  County and city commissions cite the budget as reasons for not being able to provide services, and the School Board cites the budget as reasons we can no longer do just about anything necessary for education.  And the budget is being stressed by all the demands that are the cost of growth, the very growth we were told we could not afford to live without.

So the price gets paid in other ways, by people who bought into the dream that was sold by the commissioners, developers and merchandisers, such as the families of Longwood whose students are now being split apart in a way that tears the fabric of their community.

In a way, perhaps, it is their own fault for having believed in the fantasies and fables, such as the ones whose moral assert that "growth will pay its own way."

Even if the adults are at fault, however, it is a shame that those paying the ultimate price are our children, because it seems everything we have done, and the mess we have made, is being placed squarely upon them. 

Having come to see the light means paying much more attention to the monster we have created.  That means paying much more attention in the future to who is running for office and how I cast my vote.  This cannot go on as it has, and we need to start making that clear to our elected officials.  The only question is if others are also starting to see it the same, or if mine really is a different view.

Email Darren at darrenglaude@seminolecountywatch.com