Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) is the publicschool district for Orange County, Florida. It is based in the Ronald Blocker Educational Leadership Center in downtownOrlando.[2] OCPS is the eighth-largest school district in the United States and the fourth-largest in Florida.[3] The district serves about 209,000 students at 210 schools and is one of the largest employers in Central Florida with more than 25,000 team members.[3]
School board
The superintendent of Orange County Public Schools is Maria Vazquez. The position of superintendent is appointed by the school board. The district is overseen by the Orange County School Board, a body of seven elected officers, each board member sitting for a particular geographic district. School board districts are not analogous in any way with city or county commission districts. As of 2022, the current school board members, in order of district number, are Angie Gallo, Maria Salamanca, Alicia Farrant, Pam Gould, Vicki-Elaine Felder, Karen Castor Dentel, and Melissa Byrd.[4]
Board members are elected every four years with 8-year term limits[5] as of July 1, 2023, with Districts 1 through 3 elected during midterm election cycles (next in 2026) and Districts 4 through 7 elected during presidential cycles (next in 2024). All school board elections in Florida are currently non-partisan.[4]
A county-wide public vote in 2009 created the elected position of school board chair. Bill Sublette was subsequently elected to this position in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014. Teresa Jacobs was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.[6]
Schools
OCPS has used an attendance model of kindergarten through grade 5 for elementary schools, grades 6–8 for middle schools, and grades 9–12 for high schools since July 1987.[7] Before then, grade 6 was part of elementary school and grade 9 was part of middle school ("junior high" in OCPS prior to July 1987). As now required by Florida law, virtually all elementary schools have pre-kindergarten programs.
OCPS has 210 regular-attendance schools as of the 2023-24 school year: 132 elementary, 10 K–8, 40 middle, 22 high, and six exceptional student education centers. The district also has an adult education system with six dedicated campuses and night classes at most high schools, four dedicated special education schools as well as a hospital/homebound program, and dozens of alternative education centers, including charter schools.[8] Six of the high schools in OCPS have separate ninth-grade centers, three of them off-site of the main campus, built after the shift from K–6/7–9/10–12 to K–5/6–8/9–12.
Some elementary middle and high schools include magnet programs that allow students to specialize in particular subject areas. Students must apply to magnet schools in order to take advantage of this specialization. Some magnet programs offered by OCPS are agriscience, aviation and aerospace, Cambridge AICE, criminal justice, culinary arts, digital media & gaming, education, entertainment production, entrepreneurship, finance, fine arts, first responders, foreign languages / dual languages, gifted academy, International Baccalaureate, international studies, healthcare, hospitality, laser photonics, law, leadership, medicine, nursing, performing arts, STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), veterinary animal science, and visual arts.
As of July 2023, the schools of OCPS are divided into seven groups called school cadres: Elementary, Middle/K-8, High, School Transformation, Exceptional Student Education, Career and Technical Education, and School Choice.[9] In order to provide more direct support to schools from the district, schools are now grouped primarily by grade level instead of by geographic learning communities which were in place for over 20 years.[9]
The district is in an aggressive expansion and school improvement project being fueled by a 0.5% sales tax option passed by the voters of Orange County in 2002.[10] Skyrocketing land and materials costs, however, have outpaced faster-than-expected sales tax revenue increases and slowed progress. Many projects had been pushed back, and some had been cancelled altogether. An extension of the half-penny sales tax was passed in 2014 for another ten years. Since 2003, OCPS has opened 64 new schools and renovated or replaced 132 schools.[3]
Most paperwork distributed to students and parents by OCPS is available in both English and Spanish. Many such documents are also available in Portuguese, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Arabic, and Filipino due to the significant populations in Orange County that speak each language.
In 1952, Orlando High was split into what became Edgewater High School and William R. Boone High School. Originally to be named "Orlando North" and "Orlando South", respectively, Orlando South took its modern name after its principal, William R. Boone, died before it opened. Orlando North took the name of the road it was built on, Edgewater Drive. The former Orlando High campus became Howard Middle School. Jones High moved to its present location in 1952, which was reconstructed in 2004.
In 1975, Ocoee High School and Lakeview High School were closed (their old campuses then housed Junior High schools of the same names) and their students went to the new West Orange High School. 30 years later, a new Ocoee High School was built and opened in 2005.
Robert F. Hungerford High School, founded in 1897 as the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School in the historically black community of Eatonville, was renamed Wymore Tech and Wymore Career Education Center in the 1960's until it became the Hungerford Preparatory School in the late 1990's and operated as a district-wide magnet school without a specific geographic attendance zone. OCPS closed Hungerford Prep in 2009.
Twelve of the district's high schools were opened after 1990, not including reconstructed campuses for existing schools.
^Durrance ES [11] was permanently closed after the 2017-2018 school year and merged into Cypress Park ES as a combined campus known as Sally Ride ES, opening in August 2018.[12][13] The former Durrance ES campus has now been repurposed as the Orange County Public School District Food & Nutrition Services building as of the 2021-22 school year.[14]
