Nearly 1,900 U.S. public schools are within a mile of a data center

Arnco-Sargent Elementary School sits in a wooded area on a two-lane road about 50 miles south of Atlanta. Across the street is a child care center. A Baptist church is less than a mile away. But if developers get their way, the school’s newest neighbor could be a sprawling data center campus housing the networking infrastructure needed to help power Americans’ reliance on the internet and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. Families, some who have lived in the area for generation...