ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. – St. Johns County School District is closer than ever to building Silverleaf High School without borrowing a dime — but a new state law opening the door to thousands of new homes could quickly change that math.
Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen showed up to Wednesday’s St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners Special Meeting on his own, wanting to understand firsthand what Florida Senate Bill 686 could mean for a district that has spent years trying to build its way out of a growth problem it didn’t create.
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“I just wanted to come today to see it and understand it and try to get out in front of the conversation,” Dr. Brennan Asplen, superintendent of St. Johns County School District said.
SilverLeaf High School finally within reach
For the first time in recent memory, the St. Johns County School District believes it may be able to build a new high school without taking on significant debt. Silverleaf High School — estimated at roughly $100 million — has been in the pipeline for years, and the district is finally in a position to make it happen.
Getting here wasn’t easy. The district pulled back on other planned construction — including a middle school, elementary school and K-8 — freeing up dollars to put toward the high school.
“We kind of pulled back on that a little bit based on the growth has slowed a little bit. Okay. So we’ll just see if to have to see where that goes. We have those on hold right now, but that did help us to put some of those dollars toward the high school which hopefully we won’t have to borrow for the high school which would be amazing and if we do it would just be a very small amount,” Asplen said.
Dr. Asplen says the board has approved the district to move forward on the design and architecture, and the district is preparing a board workshop to walk through the full scope of the project. Construction is expected to take approximately three years.
“Right now it’s around a hundred million dollars,” Asplen said. “But you know how that goes; it could grow to 120 million dollars depending on you know where we are as we go through this design process.”
What SB 686 means for schools
Under Senate Bill 686, which took effect July 1, 2026, developers can seek certification of undeveloped agricultural land for residential development — bypassing much of the traditional local approval process. The board approved two certifications Wednesday that could bring an estimated 15,000 new homes to the area. A third application covering more than 4,400 acres north of Nocatee was continued to Sept. 1.
For the school district, the question isn’t whether growth is coming — it’s how fast.
“It all depends, I think, on how quickly it’s built and how quickly people move in,” Asplen said. “So if it’s as quick as Nocatee occurred, then yes, it would be multiple schools being built at the same time, which would require us to borrow and not have time to save. You know, if there’s a longer time frame and the growth is slow, even though it might still be that many. We’ll be able to save more dollars and borrow less, but I think with that number of homes and those number of families coming in, in St. John’s County, we’ll just continue to be building our schools, yes.”
Planning ahead
Asplen said he plans to take what he learned Wednesday back to his team immediately, but acknowledged key questions around impact fees, proportionate share and infrastructure timelines remain unanswered.
“Yeah, so I’ll take this information back to our team today and discuss about what we know at this point in time, but as you heard today, each of the attorneys said, you know, today is just to approve that it’s going to happen, and then once we can understand what that means for us as far as infrastructure. And impact fees and proportionate share and all those questions that need to be answered, then we’ll get deeper into it to see what we need, when we need it, and then how we can plan that over the next 10 years,” Asplen said.
The comparison to Nocatee came up repeatedly. If the new developments build out at a similar pace, the district would have to adjust.
“This plan sounds like it would be, you know over a 10-year period of time we have growth coming in sort of like Nocatee when Nocatee was built or even the SilverLeaf as it moves forward as it continues to grow,” Asplen said.
“At the end of the day, you know, if we need to build the schools, we need to build schools. And if we need to borrow, we to need to borrow because we’re going to make sure that our students have a student station,” Asplen said.