Orange County Public Schools plans to renovate a century-old downtown Orlando campus and turn it into an arts and technology high school focused on cinematic arts, sound design and emerging media.
The School of Arts & Entertainment at Cherokee will be housed at the old Cherokee School and serve about 650 students. OCPS hopes to open it for the 2028-29 school year
The goal is a magnet school — open to any student in the county — focused on jobs in the local entertainment industry and offering classes in animation, visual effects, audio engineering and digital arts, among others. Administrators said its unique focus would make it a first-in-the nation offering, and students would benefit from a location just a mile from the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.
“Students will be prepared with the skills and certifications to continue fueling Orlando’s fastest growing industries and keeping those high-paying creative jobs in our economic region,” said Harold Border, the district’s chief strategy officer, during an Orange County School Board meeting last week.
The total cost to open the school is projected at $92 million, but the district hopes private donations will cover about $25 million of the tab.
Superintendent Maria Vazquez said the school would help keep OCPS competitive during a time when parents are looking for school choices. This year, OCPS’ enrollment dropped by about 6,500 students in part, officials said, because more families were using the state’s voucher program to get scholarships for private schools or payment for homeschooling services.
School board member Stephanie Vanos, whose district includes the Cherokee property, agreed.
“Public school parents and public school students like public school choices. This is yet another example of how our public school system is being responsive to what our families and our students are looking for,” she said.
The Cherokee School was built in 1926 as a junior high school, but was most recently used as a center for students with disabilities. It was closed at the end of the 2020-21 school year.
Students would participate in an audition as part of the application to enroll at the new school, Border said, but details on the entry process are not yet finalized.
The school would offer the arts classes on campus, but students would take core-curriculum classes, including math and English, online.
The Foundation for Orange County Public Schools, the school district’s charitable arm, is working to raise money for part of the construction costs and for a school endowment, seeking help from local entertain giants Universal Orlando and Walt Disney World and others. The endowment would help fund visiting instructors and pay for additional technology such as software, cameras and studio equipment.
Renderings of the new school show live theatre and film screening spaces, art galleries and outdoor courtyards that “blur the line between campus and community.”