{"id":135694,"date":"2026-01-29T00:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T00:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/135694\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T00:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T00:25:08","slug":"ocps-leaders-call-for-more-state-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/135694\/","title":{"rendered":"OCPS leaders call for more state funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0On Wednesday, Orange County School Board members went to the state capitol to urge lawmakers to increase funding for public schools. It comes as the school district is moving forward with a\u00a0plan\u00a0to close seven schools<\/a> due to declining enrollment and decreased funding.<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

Orange County School Board members went to the state capitol to urge lawmakers to increase funding for public schools
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OCPS Superintendent Maria Vasquez says in the next year they are expecting to lose another 5,000 students and even more funding
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The school district is already moving forward with a\u00a0plan\u00a0to close seven schools due to declining enrollment, and decreased funding
Administrators say\u00a0they facilitate services for many students not enrolled, but those students do not count towards funding<\/p>\n

At the board\u2019s meeting on Tuesday, OCPS Superintendent Maria Vasquez says in the next year they are expecting to lose another 5,000 students and even more funding, which could lead to even more schools closing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish I could sit up here and say this will be the last of our consolidations,\u201d said Vazquez. \u201cI\u2019m afraid that would be an untrue statement.\u201d<\/p>\n

School district leaders blame increased immigration enforcement, declining birth rates and state school choice vouchers as reasons for the declining enrollment. The vouchers allow parents to choose private schools or homeschooling over sending their kids to public schools. School board members say they\u2019re all for school choice but say the problem is that they facilitate services for many of those other students, while OCPS only gets funding for the students still enrolled in their public schools.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have 9,000 homeschool students now and we get zero funding for our choice office to handle those choice students, so those will be some of the things we\u2019ll be discussing when we\u2019re up here,\u201d said Angie Gallo, OCPS District 1 School Board Member.<\/p>\n

Gallo went to Tallahassee in hopes of convincing Florida lawmakers to boost public school funding when they consider their budget during the legislative session.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the conversations we\u2019ll be having,\u201d said Gallo. \u201cWe only get 50 cents on the dollar to transport kids. I understand we get transportation costs, but it\u2019s still going to cost us 50 cents on the dollar to transport their kids when we get none of that funding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gallo says OCPS is also looking at ways of boosting enrollment by convincing parents public school is their best option.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking at some truly innovative ways to meet kids where they are, like think of schools within a school, so we\u2019re going to open up some co-ops as a pilot program in all seven districts,\u201d said Gallo.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gallo says they\u2019re already happy to see the State Senate passing Bill 318<\/a>, which adds more oversight to the school choice voucher program. If it becomes law, she says that should make the school funding picture clearer and more transparent, something she believes will help OCPS moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0On Wednesday, Orange County School Board members went to the state capitol to urge lawmakers to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4996,9995,274,113,12716,115,1335,139,141,140,278,835],"class_list":{"0":"post-135694","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-app-education","9":"tag-app-latest-education-stories","10":"tag-app-top-stories","11":"tag-education","12":"tag-jeff-allen","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-orange-county","15":"tag-orlando","16":"tag-orlando-headlines","17":"tag-orlando-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135694","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=135694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}