ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Orange County Public Schools is reporting 7,672 fewer students than last year, part of a broader enrollment decline affecting several Central Florida school districts.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Maria Vazquez announced the decrease this week after the district completed its 10-day enrollment calculations. District leaders said several factors are contributing to the decline, including lower birth rates, changes in immigration policies, lack of housing turnover and Florida\u2019s taxpayer-funded vouchers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did have our 10-day calculations and, like the vast majority of the districts in the state, we are down. We are looking at approximately 7,672 fewer students than we had last year,\u201d Vazquez said at a Tuesday meeting.<\/p>\n
Despite the decline being more than double what the state projected, district leaders said staff had anticipated the drop. They said the superintendent does not expect school closures or major layoffs this year because of the enrollment numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did a really good job of anticipating this decline. And so we\u2019re not going to see the mass layoffs that we would have seen,\u201d said Angie Gallo, the District 1 School Board member for Orange County Public Schools. \u201cWe\u2019re still going to see some shuffling of teachers and staff, because we do have some schools that have more enrolled than anticipated and others that have less.\u201d<\/p>\n
District leaders said the decline does not mean 7,600 students necessarily left OCPS. They said the drop is driven largely by fewer children enrolling in VPK and a smaller group of incoming students tied to historically low birth rates across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are experiencing a declining birth rate. That\u2019s one of the reasons, and that\u2019s really evident when you look at our pre-K numbers and our kindergarten numbers,\u201d Gallo said. \u201cElementary was really the hardest hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stephanie Vanos, the District 6 School Board member for OCPS, said changes to TPS status and slower housing turnover are also affecting enrollment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe TPS status, that has been changed for many of our community members, as well as just housing turnover, housing isn\u2019t turning over,\u201d Vanos said. \u201cYoung families aren\u2019t moving in. Older families can\u2019t afford to move out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gallo, who was elected to be the next school board chair, said Florida\u2019s taxpayer-funded vouchers are another factor.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore and more families are choosing to take the vouchers to either homeschool, do a co-op, go to private school,\u201d Gallo said. \u201cSo we do need to figure out why they\u2019re leaving and see if we can\u2019t get them to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n
The district is looking at ways to recruit students back, including partnering with Caissa Public Strategies, a third-party firm, to address declining enrollment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe also need to do a better job of just building a connection with our community so that when we have families that do have kindergartners, right, when you know there are other communities that do, they feel a connection to their school and they want to go there, they want to be part of it,\u201d Vanos said.<\/p>\n
Jamie Marshall, a parent with two children enrolled in OCPS, said the size of the decline stood out to her, but she also pointed to the district\u2019s offerings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a big number, and it\u2019s a little alarming at first, but there\u2019s a lot of factors that go into making that number,\u201d Marshall said. \u201cOverall, Orange County has great numbers, great education, great graduation rates. And so I think that should give parents a sense of security that no matter which school they choose within Orange County, they are able to offer their kids a good education.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other Central Florida districts are also reporting decreases.<\/p>\n
Osceola County leaders reported seeing a decrease of 1,591 students compared to last year. According to Seminole County, their district saw an enrollment decline of 1,473 students. Volusia County Schools\u2019 funded enrollment stands at 53,927 students, down 1,400 from this time last year. Lake County saw a slight decline of 396 students.<\/p>\n
Marion County was the exception, with district leaders saying they have not seen declining enrollment like other districts across Florida, indicating their 10-day count was 44,979 followed by a count on Tuesday which increased to 45,208.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Orange County Public Schools is reporting 7,672 fewer students than last year, part of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4996,9995,113,766,115,1335,139,141,140],"class_list":["post-382982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-education","tag-app-latest-education-stories","tag-education","tag-massiel-leyva","tag-news","tag-orange-county","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382982","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=382982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}