ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 The Orange County Public School board met again on Jan. 27 after a series of consolidation meetings that were held to discuss the potential consolidation of seven schools amid declining student enrollment.<\/p>\n
Officials took no action during Tuesday’s work session, but discussed possible next steps and reviewed the feedback they received from the community.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
OCPS leaders hold work session to discuss next steps and review community feedback
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This follows a week\u2019s worth of consolidation meetings held at each one of the seven schools facing potential closure to gain parents and community input
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District 1 School Board Member Angie Gallo says the board will review zoning maps and survey results during work session
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The public is invited to share their input with the board during a Rule Development Workshop on Feb. 3\u00a0before officials hold a final Public Hearing on March 10<\/p>\n
The Orange County School Board\u2019s plan to close seven schools with low attendance just got more complex. The district plans to move students from the schools that would close and some students from several additional schools to make it all work.<\/p>\n
District staff says that moving a larger group of students would clean up feeder patterns to nearby high schools and boost enrollment at the receiving schools, but moving almost 500 more students from additional schools will shake up more families\u2019 routines.<\/p>\n
The district says enrollment is down by 5,600 students and $41 million in funding for the current school year.<\/p>\n
As a result, the school board plans to close Union Park Middle School and Bonneville, Chickasaw, Orlo Vista, Eccleston, Meadow Woods and McCoy Elementary Schools. Those students would go to 17 different schools.<\/p>\n
The plan also brings other schools into the moving mix, 186 students would move from East Lake Elementary to Columbia Elementary, 104 Legacy Middle School students would move to Discovery Middle School, and 199 Odyssey Middle School students would move to Legacy Middle School.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
School Board Member Angie Gallo represents Bonneville Elementary and Union Park Middle School in District One.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith Union Park, there\u2019s a lot of moving parts. So, there\u2019s a lot of schools like Legacy and Odyssey that are affected that will be losing students and being transferred,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Orange County School Board Chair Teresa Jacobs says the changes will impact more than 3,000 families, but there is good news for schools receiving students.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many cases, it\u2019s good news to know that those empty seats in your school are going to be filled with new kids coming in,\u201d Jacobs said.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Maria Vazquez says the district will have to monitor attendance numbers again next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are projected another 5,000 fewer students next year, and while I wish I could sit up here and say this is the last of our consolidations, I am afraid that would be an untrue statement,\u201d Vazquez said.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, there will be a Rule Development Workshop to allow the public to share their input with the board a final time before officials hold a final public hearing on March 10 to vote on the matter.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 The Orange County Public School board met again on Jan. 27 after a series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[767,4996,9995,274,770,113,1337,115,1335,139,141,140,3139,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-134620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-community","9":"tag-app-education","10":"tag-app-latest-education-stories","11":"tag-app-top-stories","12":"tag-community-news","13":"tag-education","14":"tag-keith-landry","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-orange-county","17":"tag-orlando","18":"tag-orlando-headlines","19":"tag-orlando-news","20":"tag-sasha-teman","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}