The Orange County School Board agreed this week that seven underenrolled schools need to be closed to save money as the once fast-growing system has lost thousands of students.
Superintendent Maria Vazquez recommended the closures and the eight-member board, though it did not take a vote during its 6-hour meeting Tuesday, indicated support.
“We have now come to the point where we can no longer continue to subsidize the dollars needed at these schools that are significantly underenrolled,” Vazquez said.
The board will take a vote on the closures at a later meeting, but Vazquez’s staff will now work on plans to shutter the seven campuses at the end of the current school year and then re-assign students and staff to other schools. The closures will impact about 3,200 students and 270 teachers.
Union Park Middle School and Bonneville, Chickasaw, Eccleston, Meadow Woods, McCoy and Orlo Vista elementary schools are the campuses to close. District staff said the seven schools were picked because of their low enrollment, projections that show they’ll lose more students in the next 10 years, and their proximity to other schools that have room for more students.
Despite agreeing with Vazquez’s assessment, board members were visibly upset about closing campuses.
Board member Angie Gallo said she was “sick to her stomach.”
“All of these schools are worth saving … It’s just we’re at a point where families aren’t choosing brick and mortar schools anymore,” Gallo said.
Orange County school board chair Teresa Jacobs comments, with board members Anne Douglas, left, and Maria Salamanca, right, listening during a 6-hour board meeting, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. Superintendent Maria Vazquez recommended the closure of seven under-enrolled schools, including Union Park Middle School and Bonneville, Chickasaw, Eccleston, Meadow Woods, McCoy and Orlo Vista elementary. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)
Maria Salamanca, the board’s vice chair, criticized the district for failing to publicly discuss enrollment declines earlier. She said OCPS could have done more to warn parents that school closure was a possibility since declining enrollment trends date back more than three years.
“What better leverage do we have as a district than our own parents and families who love their schools and right now feel like they did not have a chance to defend them,” she said.
Some parents, upset by the news the district was considering campus closures, have started petitions to save their children’s schools. A sign now hangs on a pedestrian bridge over South Semoran Boulevard near McCoy Elementary that reads “Save McCoy.”
But Tuesday’s meeting had no time allocated for public comment, and few parents attended.
Ryan Gillespie
A homemade “Save McCoy”sign hangs on a pedestrian bridge over South Semoran Blvd near McCoy Elementary School on Saturday, December 13, 2025. McCoy is one of seven schools the district plans to close starting in the 2026-27 school year because of declining enrollment. (Ryan Gillespie/Orlando Sentinel)
Salamanca said the district needs to be more creative in its educational offerings as Florida’s educational landscape becomes more competitive because of state-funded vouchers for private and homeschool education, which now cover more than 440,000 students statewide.
OCPS is “bleeding” students and funds, and if things go on as they have, she isn’t sure they can “turn the ship around,” she said. “It is clear that systematically, this is not a fair, equal playing ground.”
The district has lost almost 9,000 students in the last three years, largely due to vouchers and declining birthrates, school officials said. Population shifts also mean fewer school-age children in the older neighborhoods where the seven schools sit.
OCPS lost almost 5,600 students this year alone, and the district also blamed the decline on the federal cancellation of temporary protected status for some immigrant communities, noting it lost about 1,200 Venezuelan students.
Each of the seven schools slated to close currently enrolls only about half the students it has room for, as of the Dec. 15 enrollment counts. Union Park Middle, the emptiest one on the list, enrolls about 560 students on a campus meant for more than 1,400.
Public schools in Florida are funded on a per-student basis, and schools that operate at about half capacity or less typically do not generate enough money to be self-supporting, instead draining the district’s budget.
Harold Border, the district’s chief of strategy, said it costs OCPS about $1.3 million annually to run an elementary school.
For an average OCPS elementary school to “break even” on costs, he said, the school needs 680 students.
About 80% of district elementary schools now enroll fewer than 680 youngsters, according to enrollment data.
It’s not yet clear what will happen to the 270 teachers and dozens of other support staff now working at the seven schools. But a draft agreement sent to the district by Orange’s teachers union says impacted teachers would get first pick at new teaching positions and also could pick three schools where they would prefer to be placed.
Vazquez said the district would work “hand in hand” with the unions to make sure “this difficult process is not made more difficult.”
Border said OCPS has plans for each property after they close, but he did not say what those plans were. Vazquez said the district was not looking to sell any of the seven school buildings, and some board members proposed renting the space to keep some revenue coming in.
The district’s decision to shutter campuses also comes as “schools of hope” charter schools have made pitches to move, rent free, into traditional public schools that aren’t filled with students. Such moves are allowed under a new state law, and OCPS this fall received 53 requests.
Bonneville Elementary School in east Orange County, with 380 students on a campus built for 938, is one school the charter companies want to occupy. It is now slated for closure.
If a charter school moved into an OCPS building, the school district could not charge for the space and would have to pick up the bill for food, custodians and transportation. Critics have called the effort a “land grab” by charter schools that would siphon resources from traditional public schools.
John Palmerini, the board’s attorney, said that if the board closed the schools and kept them vacant, state law would require them to open it to charter schools if they want it.
“If we have an unused vacant building, we have to offer it up,” he said.