SilverLeaf High Could Be Built Without Borrowing. Then Came Nearly 15,000 New Homes.

St. Johns County's next high school, planned for the SilverLeaf development, is close to being built without the school district borrowing significant money for it, Superintendent Brennan Asplen told county commissioners Wednesday. The school is estimated at roughly $100 million. It got that close only because the district put a middle school, an elementary school and a K-8 on hold and shifted those dollars to the high school.

The board has already cleared the district to move ahead on design and architecture, and a workshop is being prepared to walk through the full scope of the project. Construction is expected to take about three years. Asplen said the price could climb toward $120 million as the design gets refined, which is normal for a project this size.

Then there is the part that could change everything.

What happened at the same meeting

Asplen turned up at the commission's special meeting on his own, not to speak on a district item, but to watch commissioners take up the first Agricultural Enclave Certification applications filed in St. Johns County under Florida Senate Bill 686. The law took effect July 1, 2026. It lets owners of qualifying farmland that is surrounded by or adjacent to existing development get that land certified for residential use, cutting out much of the local approval process that big projects normally go through.

Commissioners approved two of them in back-to-back 3-2 votes: Heritage East and Heritage West, on either side of Interstate 95 near State Road 207 in the southwest part of the county. Together the two tracts run about 1,165 acres. At the densities allowed, they could yield close to 15,000 homes.

A third and much larger application was continued. It covers 4,462 acres north of Nocatee, running up to the Intracoastal Waterway and the Duval County line, and comes from the family and development group behind Nocatee itself. Commissioners held it so staff could verify the northern boundary. It returns at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1.

Application	Acres	Status
Heritage East	615	Certified Aug. 19
Heritage West	550	Certified Aug. 19
North of Nocatee	4,462	Vote Sept. 1

Chairman Clay Murphy said plainly that he does not like the state law, but that his own feelings were not the test. The test was what the statute requires. Commissioners Krista Joseph and Ann Taylor voted no on both certifications. Commissioners Murphy, Whitehurst and Sarah Arnold voted yes. The county has separately been weighing its legal options on the law.

Why the district is watching the calendar, not the acreage

For the school district, the number of homes matters less than the speed. Asplen said the district's ability to pay cash depends on how quickly the houses go up and how quickly families move in. If it happens at the pace Nocatee filled in, he said, the district would be building several schools at once and would have to borrow, with no time to save first. Slower absorption means more years to bank capital dollars and less debt.

That is the same dynamic that produced the current backlog. The district paused the middle school, elementary and K-8 because growth had eased. Two K-8 schools remain under construction, one on Parcel 29C inside SilverLeaf and one in the Seabrook area of Nocatee.

One detail from Wednesday is worth holding onto. Under SB 686, once land is certified, the development plans still get reviewed by county staff, including school concurrency and impacts on natural resources. But they do not come back to the County Commission, and they do not come back to the public.

What to watch next

The Sept. 1 decision on the 4,462 acres north of Nocatee is the bigger one for northern St. Johns County families, since that land sits closest to schools already absorbing Nocatee's growth. Meetings are held at the St. Johns County Auditorium, 500 San Sebastian View in St. Augustine, and are livestreamed on the county's platforms. The school board workshop on the SilverLeaf high school has not been scheduled publicly yet. No opening year for the school has been announced. Details on the county's process are posted at sjcfl.us.

We will keep following both the Sept. 1 vote and the district's design timeline. For more coverage, visit St. Johns Community Website, follow us on Facebook, and tell us what you are hearing in your neighborhood by joining the conversation in our Community Forum. You can read more education stories and more government and politics stories from around the county.

---