MOUNT PLEASANT - Calling it "a whole lot of common sense," Gov. Mark Sanford signed a neighborhood schools bill Wednesday that he said could help put the brakes on suburban sprawl and get parents more involved in education.

"We can no longer afford, as a state, the old paradigm where you mandated schools out at the edge of town in which you basically push sprawl," Sanford said.

The law eliminates state rules requiring minimum acreage for new schools and makes it easier to renovate existing buildings for schools. The old rules mandated new high schools be built on 30-acre sites with an additional acre for every 100 students.

Neighborhood schools can help get parents more involved in education, Sanford said.

"If you want a good educational output, you need to have a sense of community," he said.

Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum supported the bill in the General Assembly, seeing it as "a way to help protect historic buildings and preserve communities," said Jim Foster, a spokesman for the state Department of Education.

The new law "lets districts avoid the whole rigamarole of applying for a waiver that would be granted anyway," Foster said.

"Thirty years ago, South Carolina began to turn away from a heritage of small schools within communities ... and it was very devastating to our cities and towns," said Dana Beach, the director of the S.C. Coastal Conservation League.

Requirements for larger campuses damaged the environment and increased transportation costs for both schools and families, he said.

Sanford opposes - and wrote a letter to that effect to The Beaufort Gazette in January 2002 - a proposal to build a new, large high school north of the Whale Branch River in Beaufort County near where he and members of his family own property.

The neighborhood school issue "is something that has been made more real to me because I grew up down that way," said the governor, who said the Beaufort proposal will cost taxpayers because most students would live miles away.

But Sanford said the driving force behind the new law was a recommendation of the Quality of Life Task Force he appointed last year after his election.

"This is something that impacts the entire state," Sanford said, noting the task force suggested "this is one of the most significant things we can do in terms of education flexibility for the quality of life in South Carolina."