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ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Orange County Public School board members will approve the budget for the 2025-2026 school year Tuesday evening.
It’s been a tumultuous last couple of months as the district works to adjust its funding following a dip in student enrollment and state funding.
Last month, OCPS Chief Communications Officer Scott Howat said there are two major challenges the district faces.
First, OCPS is simply not keeping up with inflationary costs.
Howat says per-student funding has increased by 1.5% while inflation has gone up by 3%, which could affect various factors like teachers’ salaries and services offered in the classroom.
The second challenge deals with student enrollment.
For the past several months, the district has projected a decline of 3,023 students, which could lead to a loss of more than $28 million in funding from the state.
Howat says declining birth rates and school vouchers have exacerbated the drop in enrollment.
The proposed adopted budget outlines that “while general revenue funding for traditional public and charter schools declined, appropriations for private school vouchers, under the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program, increased by nearly $1.1 billion highlighting a clear shift in funding priorities.”
Last month, Howat said that the district can deal with the loss through staffing level changes, referring to a $1 million property tax levied by Orange County taxpayers.
Even though this system has helped them stay afloat in the past, overall, the district is dealing with shortfalls.
Meanwhile, Orange County Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Maria Vazquez told reporters last month on the first day of school that the district still has a lot to offer.
“Once our families are with us, we’re able to retain the vast, vast majority of them and some of the lower enrollments are for incoming kindergarteners and individuals that have not been to OCPS and what I would say is go to your local public school, ask for a tour, look at all the programs that are available,” she says.
Another big drop in enrolment expected
A spokesperson with OCPS said the 10-day attendance count, which occurs right after school starts, rendered an additional 3,604 students missing from the classrooms.
This means the district could be looking at a drop of nearly 7,000 students this school year.
Although the district is still figuring out why there is a significant drop in enrollment, they have reason to believe that immigrant families fearful of sending their kids to school could be fueling the decline.
OCPS officials say that last February, the district noted a decline of 3,000 migrant and immigrant students, which makes up 45% of the total 6,627 students.
Even though it is too early to tell what the financial losses will look like at the state level, the district says it will look into adjusting teachers’ positions based on enrollment and need through what they call “leveling.”
Meaning, teachers may be transferred to other schools in the district that need a position filled.
School officials also said that “in an effort to make sure that all current employees affected are placed in positions within the district,” there will be a pause on the hiring of “new” instructional staff for now.
This hiring freeze will not affect classified, administrative, or transportation positions.
In April, OCPS partnered with Caissa Public Strategy LLC, a recruitment firm, to try to get students who left the district to return to the schools.
OCPS says before understanding what those figures look like, students need to be registered and in attendance for 30 days before the contract can consider them “returned,” which is expected to occur at some point in October.
The next student headcount is set to take place in October. The district expects more students to enroll and/or return to school after Labor Day, which is what they say, “traditionally happens.”
Board members will reconvene on Tuesday for the final public budget hearing at the Orange County Public School building, beginning at 5 p.m.
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Sasha Teman
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