GREEN COVE SPRINGS – As Clay County expands and new housing developments come online, the county inevitably has to build new schools to accommodate the influx of new students.

But how a school district goes from soil to new school house is often shrouded in mystery to outsiders, and mired in red tape, studies, maps and projection upon projection for insiders.

That’s where James Fossa comes in.

Fossa, referred to colloquially as Jim, is the Clay County School District’s planning and intergovernmental affairs coordinator.

His position represents an imperceptible and often underappreciated aspect of the district that connects the school system to county, state and federal governments.

Fossa’s position also ropes him in as an intermediary between builders, which makes his role indispensable for the district. He has to track up-to-date school occupancy numbers and prevent a long-held desire to place students in portable classrooms.

And for two years his chair sat empty.

Development slowed following the Great Recession, and according to Fossa, his position took a sideline. In those two years, his position was filled by other employees who undertook his role in roles split across district staff.

The school district decided to refill the position after former Superintendent Charlie Van Zant Jr. was defeated in last year’s elections. Fossa said his role has to be aware of the past while looking to the future.

“We want to be better prepared,” Fossa said. “I think in the past the way we’ve been doing things is moving portables around, that’s been sort of our way of doing things, and I think we want to get away from being in the business of moving portables. We want to have more of a permanent fixture in some areas. It’s a better way of doing business I think.”

Fossa tracks state, federal and local housing development plans to guide him in decision making. For example, Green Cove Springs and Lake Asbury are expected to explode in population over the decade. This increase in density will require new schools be built.

The boom is expected in part from the construction of the First Coast Expressway. However, before the February announcement that the district would build a new school in Oakleaf, named Elementary School ‘Y,’ it had been 10 years since the district had built a new school.

Currently, Fossa said, Clay County boasts the dubious title as having the fourth highest number of portable classrooms in the state. Clay currently operates 942 portables of which 780 are more than 20 years old.

‘School Y’ is proposed to meet the current needs for growth in the area without the need for portables. Fossa said proper planning helps insure that, as the county grows, it can do so without as much future reliance on portable classrooms.

His school district job requires Fossa to sit on county government’s Development Review Committee where he gets to see neighborhoods when they are mere ideas on a piece of paper. The district uses a projection formula that supposes there will be 23 children per 100 homes built. The formula allows the district to plan more accurately when the need for a new school will present itself.

The district is currently examining properties for school construction on Tynes Boulevard and another on Magnolia West that he expects will be hotspots of growth within the next seven years.

“His role is critical in the planning aspect and making sure that we’re looking at the right properties,” said Michael Kemp, assistant superintendent of operations for the Clay County School District. “Picking a property, it’s not like throwing a dart at a map. It’s not a guess.”

“It’s about making sure our schools stay as balanced as we can…as schools start getting more students we start addressing them as needed,” Kemp said.

When those properties are identified and the area matures to meet the need of a new school, Fossa’s work truly begins.

To build a school, the district must first prove a need exists in the community. Fossa acts as the emissary in this conversation. The state will want what’s known as a spot study, a report with data that proves there is capacity based on population projections and a throng of other data sets.

For example, if an area expected a growth of 1,000 housing units, the school district can assume that there will be 26 children per 100 homes. In this example, the officials could expect an additional 260 students.

Using that data, and other projections like it, the district can help make its case to the state that a new school is needed.

Fossa calls the process “legal gymnastics” that help ensure school boards are good stewards of taxpayer money.

But there are times when expectations don’t meet up to reality. For example, Shadowlawn Elementary was built on County Road 218 with the expectation that housing developments would pop up around it.

The Great Recession hit shortly thereafter, and those developments never came. With the recovery of the economy has come the resurgence of possibility that the school will be more utilized.

With an average of 67 new homebuilding permits being issued per month, the school district is more vigilant than it has been in 10 years in terms of watching out for the need to build new schools.