An estimated 25 percent of Oregon's school districts plan to use a new law allowing them to tax new residential and industrial development, according to schools watchers.

"Within six months, we will probably have close to 50 districts that have enacted this," said David Williams, the legislative coordinator for the Oregon School Boards Association, one of the groups that pushed for the law. "This is the first new taxing authority we have given the districts for 50 years. You give them a chance, districts are not going to say no."

The law allows districts to impose a "construction excise tax" of $1 per square foot on new homes and 50 cents per square foot on new commercial or industrial buildings. The money can be used for anything from buying land to architectural design to construction.

High-growth districts that grew tired of holding classes in hallways, auditoriums or makeshift trailers advocated such a law for years.

But they met with limited success, often bumping up against concerns that taxing new development would limit affordable housing. But in the 2007 session their efforts paid off, the powerful homebuilders lobby signed on to the effort, after pushing to include commercial and industrial development.

"With all the construction going on in our area, we want to be safe and protect the investments, and make sure that we are ready for the next group of children," said Jim McBride, superintendent of the Salem-area Cascade school district.

He said the district hopes to generate about $100,000 a year with the new fee, which would be collected by cities and counties when building permits are issued, then transferred to the school districts. Early plans call for letting the money accrue for a few years, then using it to build high school classrooms, McBride said.

Levying the tax does have some potential pitfalls.

The Bend-La Pine school district is one of the fastest growing in the state, but its board members are moving cautiously on the construction tax, said chairman Nathan Hovekamp. Bend-area voters just passed a $119 million capital construction bond, Hovekamp said, and might look askance if the district piles the new construction fee on top.

On the other hand, he said, "There is the argument out there that high-growth districts that walk away from this opportunity are basically leaving money on the table."

Interest is high in the new law not only in areas with high growth, like the Portland suburbs and Central Oregon, but also in some more unlikely corners of the state, too. Williams said school boards are discussing the measure in Baker City, La Grande, Ontario and coastal Lincoln County.

"It's primarily districts that are thinking about going out for a local capital construction bond in the next four years, and they want to be able to tell their voters that they have leveraged all opportunities available for them," Williams said.

But districts also have to take care that voters don't assume that just because the construction tax is in place, all of a school district's facilities needs are taken care of, Williams and Hovekamp both said. For most districts, the development fee would bring in a steady, but relatively minor, stream of revenue that would be far from covering the cost of major new construction.

In November 2006, voters in 23 of 41 school districts rejected proposed capital construction bonds.