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Finally, it is worth noting that whereas private corporations receive state and <br />federal tax incentives for rehabilitating historic buildings, public agencies such as school <br />districts receive no such incentives for renovating historic schools. <br />Conflicts between community planning and school planning <br />Local governments typically use planning, zoning, and other growth management <br />laws to protect their community's quality of life. Through these laws, municipalities can <br />preserve or create close-knit neighborhoods that permit kids to walk to school. These <br />laws can also help make sure that taxpayer funds are not squandered, but rather used to <br />maintain public assets, including those important to young people, like schools, libraries, <br />parks and recreation centers. _ <br />At the same time, construction of new schools in outlying areas can greatly alter a <br />community's future growth patterns. Often such schools establish beachheads for <br />residential sprawl. New school sites selected by local school systems can force a <br />municipality to speed up the construction of new roads, water mains, and sewer lines. <br />Research into local planning and development activities in Lincoln, Nebr., <br />prompted W. Cecil Steward, dean of the College of Architecture at the University of <br />Nebraska, to conclude that "the public school system...is the most influential planning <br />entity, either public or private, promoting the prototypical sprawl pattern of American <br />cities" He refers to public school systems as "advance scouts for urban sprawl." 20 <br />In same states, school districts are exempt from local planning and zoning laws or <br />they simply ignore them. In Georgia, for example, a local court held that the Bibb <br />County School District did not have to comply with caning regulations after the local <br />planning commission tried to require the district to address the adverse effects of a school <br />stadium on the surrounding neighborhood.2 r <br />School superintendents and school boards "have regularly ignored or bypassed <br />local master plans, capital improvement plans, and even zoning in the siting and <br />operations of their facilities," writes a Massachusetts planner. "It is as if they were <br />above planning." <br />Under California law, public schools can be.located with little regard to local <br />plans intended to promote orderly, well-planned growth. New schools are often built on <br />19 <br />