The Orange County School Board will vote next week on whether to convert one of its elementary school campuses into a K-8 charter school, a move that some school leaders say would expand resources for children living in the surrounding low-income neighborhoods.

Orange Center Elementary School’s conversion to a charter school would be in partnership with Lift Orlando, a nonprofit working to revitalize the neighborhoods near Camping World Stadium.

Since 2013, Lift Orlando has raised more than $100 million to convert decrepit and underutilized properties into an early learning center, a Boys & Girls Club as well as housing and healthcare facilities. It currently helps pay for teacher professional development and a pre-kindergarten program at Orange Center.

Under the new plans, Orange Center would become a so-called STEM academy, focused on science, technology, engineering and math. It would add one middle school grade a year starting in August 2027, eventually enrolling about 300 more students on a campus that now has about 440.

Superintendent Maria Vazquez praised Lift Orlando at an Oct. 14 meeting, crediting it with helping to boost enrollment at Orange Center even as most OCPS elementary schools lost students this year.

“What I’ve seen is just miraculous. The community really has been transformed,” Vazquez said.

Orange Center enrolled 90 more students this fall than it did last school year, she said. OCPS’ overall enrollment dropped about 6,500 students this year, with most of that loss in its elementary schools.

Lift Orlando said its work with Orange Center would be a “first of its kind public-private partnership,” making use of the flexibility granted to charter schools — public schools mostly run by private groups and freed from some state school rules — and public school funding.

“Together with parents, OCPS, and community partners, we are working to ensure that every child has access to a high-quality education and the opportunity to thrive right here in our neighborhood,” the organization wrote on its website.

Lift Orlando works in the historically Black neighborhoods between Orange Blossom Trail and John Young Parkway, Colonial Drive and Gore Street, including Lake Lorna Doone, Rock Lake and Lake Sunset. As part of its school plan, it would help launch an independent, parent-led nonprofit called Neighborhood Schools Initiative, Inc. to run the charter school, according to the draft memorandum of agreement.

OCPS would pay to expand Orange Center’s campus to accommodate the increased enrollment, but specifics weren’t immediately available.

Though Orange school leaders seem excited by the Lift Orlando partnership, they are troubled, like colleagues across the state, by other charter operators’ recent efforts to move rent-free into public schools that are under enrolled or to move nearby and try to siphon away students.  One OCPS elementary school has been targeted by a company that wants to occupy some of its campus, and five could lose students to another charter school, which plans to open nearby.

But school board member Vicki-Elaine Felder, whose district includes Orange Center, called the agreement with Lift Orlando a “beautiful partnership” that would also help the district “control the narrative” and guide the school’s future.

“We are still the people in charge of education. We do public education. We do it, and we do it well. And from my understanding and the many conversations I’ve had with Lift, they are in agreement with that,” Felder said.

The board is to vote on the agreement at its Oct. 28 meeting.