In lawsuit, former Polk schools employee says district is letting developers off the hook

The Ledger | By Paul Nutcher | May 29, 2025

A lawsuit has been filed by a whistleblower and former employee of the Polk County School Board who had worked for its building department.

The lawsuit claims the district withheld information about the available student stations in state-mandated school concurrency letters to Polk County and its municipalities.

The letters, which a local government must have before the governing body can approve a housing development, usually include the number of seats available in classrooms at existing schools in proximity to the development.

The lawsuit, filed May 23 in Florida’s 10th Judicial Circuit, which includes Polk, Hardee and Highlands counties, was brought by Pam Luce and the Citizens Defending Freedom. The complaint is against the Polk County School Board, which issues the letters as part of the process to determine whether a new development will comply with state school concurrency laws.

Further, the process of cooperation between the district and the local governments within its boundaries are enshrined in a 2014 interlocal agreement. The School Board signed the first such agreement in 2008. Luce said she helped draft the earlier agreement, which was updated in 2014.

What is school concurrency?

The reason for school concurrency is explained on the Polk County Public Schools website.

“School concurrency provides coordinated planning among local government entities and the school district to ensure that school capacity keeps pace with residential development,” the district said.

Land is cleared for a new subdivision near the new Scenic Terrace school in Haines City in 2023. A lawsuit has been filed against Polk County Public Schools alleging the district hasn’t followed state law with school concurrency letters, which are issued as part of the process that local governments follow when considering new housing developments.

In the context of growth and development, the term school concurrency refers to a Florida mandate that there is sufficient school capacity available to serve the families moving into new subdivisions with school-age children. Or there must be mitigation measures in place with developers to address the increased demand for the education of new students entering the county’s school system.

Without sufficient capacity or a mitigation agreement, housing developments cannot gain approvals under Florida statute.

Whistleblower allegations

According to the lawsuit, Luce told her supervisors at the district office about the missing information on the letters and filed a whistleblower complaint that was ignored by the superintendent at the time, who was Superintendent Frederick Heid. The employee who compiled such letters quit, and so did Angela Usher, the district’s former assistant superintendent of facilities and operations.

A resident of Polk County, Luce worked for Polk Schools for more than 20 years, with her final position being senior coordinator of facilities planning with the district’s Facilities and Operations Division, the lawsuit said. She left the district in late 2021.

While neither Usher nor Heid are named in the lawsuit, the complaint does say an assistant superintendent told Luce to issue the letters with incomplete information. Luce said she parted from her employer soon after.

She then went public, speaking at School Board and County Commission meetings on the topic of school concurrency and how it was resulting in the district losing money to build and improve schools in high growth areas of the county and shifting the financial burden onto taxpayers.

Her allegations caught the attention of the Citizens Defending Freedom, a nonprofit group that states it seeks to promote transparency and accountability in local government for its members in Polk County. The conservative group has also sued Polk County Public Schools over the district’s handling of citizen challenges to books on school library shelves.

In the concurrency lawsuit, Luce seeks enforcement of Florida laws, including statutes covering public school concurrency and open government laws, which should be followed for approvals of school sites and capital improvements to district schools, court records show.

“The Polk County School Board has ignored Florida’s long-established concurrency planning laws, found in its interlocal agreements on concurrency planning in violation of Florida statute 163.3180,” the lawsuit said.

In an email statement on May 27, the plaintiffs’ attorney, Gavin Rollins with the Sabatini Law Firm, said, “On Friday Citizens Defending Freedom and local taxpayer advocate Pam Luce, filed a lawsuit in Circuit Court against the Polk County School Board, alleging violations of Florida’s school concurrency and open-government laws.”

“Pam Luce worked in the school concurrency for the district and repeatedly raised concerns about these violations to leadership but they were ignored,” Rollins wrote. “The suit seeks court intervention to compel the District to follow lawful procedures that are designed to ensure transparency, fiscal responsibility, and proper infrastructure planning for Polk County’s rapidly growing student population.”

The lawsuit said that from 2008 to 2020, concurrency letters were showing both available and reserved student stations and no mitigation agreements were in place during that time period.

Luce alleges that in 2020, an assistant superintendent began directing staff to omit reserved capacity information from the concurrency letters.

“Cities unknowingly approved dozens of subdivisions without PSMAs, creating a widening funding gap,” the lawsuit said. “And, from 2021 through 2023, incomplete letters continued; multiple projects advanced with no proportionate share payments, undermining the growth-and-infrastructure balance.”

What’s at stake?

In a follow up call with Rollins on May 28, he said mitigation agreements could be in the millions of dollars that developers should have paid going back several years in Polk County.

“Why the district is doing this, I cannot speculate,” Rollins said of the incomplete school concurrency letters and lack of public meetings about new schools, such as site-selection committee meetings.

Polk County’s land development division hosted one site selection committee meeting in 2024, after mounting pressure at public meetings from Luce and the CDF.

“The goal is not to stop all growth but for developers to pay their fair share,” Rollins said. “When developers are not paying their fair share, taxpayers are paying more.”

The first hearing on the complaint could come about a month after the school district has officially been served, Rollins said. On May 28, the lawsuit was available to be viewed at the Clerk of Court’s Office, and Chief Judge James Yancey was assigned to the case.

School district spokesperson Kyle Kennedy said in an email that the district does not generally comment on pending litigation.

A list of demands

The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages for the plaintiffs. Instead it demands the district begin to comply with the process mandated by state law and the interlocal agreement.

The lawsuit asks the court to:

• Declare that “the challenged approvals and the Five-Year Facilities Work Plan are null and void.”
• Stop the School District from acquiring any further school sites, design or construction activities until it fully complies with applicable statutory and interlocal agreement requirements.
• Pay attorney fees and “any other relief the Circuit Court deems just and proper.”

Plaintiff also requests the court issue an order directing the School District to:

• Refrain from issuing any capacity determination letters unless they include both available and reserved seat counts.
• Require a proportionate share mitigation agreement whenever adopted level-of-service standards are not met.
• Conduct an audit of all capacity letters issued since 2020, identify projects that improperly bypassed mitigation requirements and collect retroactive payments where applicable.
• Amend its Five-Year Facilities Work Plan and collaborate with local governments to revise their capital improvement elements to ensure necessary capacity is funded within five years.
• Renegotiate and adopt a fully compliant interlocal agreement within six months.
• Submit quarterly compliance reports to the court for a period of three years.

“Every citizen, principal, teacher, school staff, and parent should be very angry about the fact that school concurrency has been disregarded by the school district,” Luce said in an emailed statement to The Ledger on May 29. “Growth management laws were put in place for a good reason. It was not to stop development but to ensure that infrastructure is in place when needed by the new housing. That has not been done. All you have to do is take a look at the schools and the number of portables and overcrowding to know this has not been done as required in law and the Interlocal Agreement for School Concurrency signed by the school board and all municipalities with schools in the County.”