A private school that rents space at St. Alban's Anglican Cathedral on State Road 426 in Oviedo wants to start teaching middle and high school students, and Seminole County commissioners are scheduled to decide Tuesday whether to allow it.
The Ecclesial School, which serves about 190 students in kindergarten through fifth grade on the 9.64-acre church campus east of State Road 417, is asking for a special exception to add grades six through 12 and bring in three more portable classrooms, for nine in all. The county's agriculture zoning on the site allows elementary grades but requires a special exception for the upper grades.
Enrollment would be capped at 250 students.
The request also covers the church itself. St. Alban's has operated at 3348 W. State Road 426 since 1983, and a 2024 rewrite of the county's land development code now requires a special exception for houses of worship of its size, which seats up to 180 people. No added seating is proposed.
Traffic and noise conditions
County planners recommend approval. A traffic statement based on counts taken at the church driveways found that, even after adding 31% to account for more students, peak-hour trips would stay under the 50-trip level that would trigger a full traffic study, according to the staff report.
To reduce the effect on State Road 426, the school agreed to conditions that stagger drop-off times by 30 minutes and bar students from driving to school.
Other proposed conditions would limit school hours to 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., ban lighting on the recreation field, restrict outdoor speakers to emergencies and require a special event permit for any event on the property. Planners say the new portables would sit near the highway and away from the single-family home to the north and the Mystic Cove apartments to the west.
