{"id":404560,"date":"2026-09-19T12:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T12:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/404560\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T12:28:11","slug":"ocps-definitely-looking-at-closings-as-enrollment-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/404560\/","title":{"rendered":"OCPS ‘definitely looking’ at closings as enrollment falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 40 public elementary schools in Orange County now enroll fewer students than needed to be financially stable, raising the specter of more school closings in a district that shuttered seven campuses in May.<\/a><\/p>\n

Orange County Public Schools\u2019 current enrollment is about 8,000 fewer students than it was in the spring<\/a>, with empty seats in schools across the county, including in formerly crowded campuses.<\/p>\n

For a school district that once added more students \u2014 and built more new schools \u2014 than any other in Florida, the change is stunning.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can tell when you pick them up. You barely see kids around here,\u201d said Nathalie Pe\u00f1a, who sends her twin second graders to Lake Silver Elementary School in Orlando\u2019s College Park neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Lake Silver is the emptiest campus in the county this school year, enrolling about 347 students on a campus meant for more than 720, making it only 48% full.<\/p>\n

A school needs to fill about 65% of its seats to generate enough per-student funding from the state to be self-supporting financially, district officials say. Schools with fewer students are a drain on district finances.<\/p>\n

Forty five campuses are currently at or below that mark, including more than a third of OCPS\u2019 127 elementary schools, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of this month\u2019s enrollment data.\n<\/p>\n

The seven schools closed last school year were between 38% to 61% full, a range that 28 campuses fall into now. That includes 25 elementary schools and three middle schools. Fourteen other elementary schools, one high school, one middle school and one K-8 school were slightly fuller but under the 65% bar.<\/p>\n

District leaders have said they do not plan to close any campuses this school year. But after that, with projections showing OCPS losing thousands more students over the next five years, closure discussions seem inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely gonna have to look at closing schools,\u201d said Angie Gallo, an Orange County School Board member who will take over as the board\u2019s chair later this fall.<\/p>\n

OCPS blames its enrollment woes on four main culprits: Declining birth rates, a slow housing market, the national immigration crackdown and 2023 changes to Florida\u2019s school voucher program, which made tuition help for private school or homeschooling services available to all students, regardless of family income.<\/p>\n

Roughly 78% of the children born in Orange County five years ago have enrolled in kindergarten in district-run schools. That share used to be closer to 92%.<\/p>\n

The combination of factors has meant a relatively sudden drop in enrollment for a district that even this summer opened new schools to reduce crowding on other campuses. And it has hit elementary schools the hardest, many in long-established neighborhoods from Azalea Park to Maitland, Pine Hills to Winter Garden.<\/p>\n

\"StudentsStudents and families explore the campus of the new Water Spring Middle School on Friday, August 7, 2023. The new school, built in the fast-growing Horizon West community in east Orange County, opened for students at the start of the 2023-2024 school year. (Rich Pope, Orlando Sentinel)<\/p>\n

Much of OCPS\u2019 recent school construction has been in the fast-growing areas of Horizon West and Lake Nona.\u00a0But even schools in those communities are now seeing their numbers fall.<\/p>\n

In Horizon West, located in the southwest corner of the county, Bay Lake Elementary School opened about 10 years ago. It aimed to relieve crowding at Sunset Park Elementary School, which then had about 1,200 students.<\/p>\n

Bay Lake filled quickly, opening with 800 students, slightly above its capacity. But today the school, nestled into a community of new single-family homes just a stone\u2019s throw from Walt Disney World, has about 550 students \u2014 putting it just above the 65% mark. Sunset Park has dropped to about 650 students on a campus meant for 840.<\/p>\n

About eight years ago, Jodi Jessop, a mother of three, helped start the Horizon West School Coalition, which urged local and state leaders to find ways to build new schools more quickly because so many were so crowded.<\/p>\n

Until this year, her three children attended Horizon West public schools \u2014 but then her family became part of the declining enrollment trend. After deciding their district-run schools weren\u2019t meeting their needs, Jessop transferred her younger two children to a private school in Ocoee, using vouchers to help pay tuition, and enrolled her oldest daughter in courses through Florida Virtual School, a statewide public online program.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you now have options you can now exercise that right and those options to find better, and that\u2019s exactly what I did,\u201d Jessop said.<\/p>\n

She estimates that in her 65-home neighborhood plenty of other parents have made the same choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can probably count on maybe one and a half hands the kids that are still in public schools,\u201d Jessop said.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in the Lake Nona area south of downtown Orlando, once-rapid school growth has slowed.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, OCPS opened its newest high school, Innovation High, in the Lake Nona area. That was to ease crowding at Lake Nona High, which by then had 4,500 students on a campus meant for 2,800, an enrollment overflow that required so many portable classrooms that the school dubbed the collection of temporary structures \u201cthe ranch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheA fleet of portable classrooms, dubbed “The Ranch,” on the Lake Nona High School campus between the baseball and softball fields, on Tuesday, May 21, 2024.
\n(Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda\/ Orlando Sentinel)<\/p>\n

A new Lake Nona area middle school opened in 2024, too, followed by a new elementary school the next year and another in August.<\/p>\n

But now, some of the community\u2019s schools have lost students.<\/p>\n

NorthLake Park Community School, for example, has about 551 students on an 840-student campus, so it\u2019s about 65% full. In 2017, it had more than 900 kids.<\/p>\n

The changes are even more stark in some of the county\u2019s long-established communities.<\/p>\n

MetroWest Elementary School is now one of the most under-enrolled in Orange, with roughly 400 students on a campus meant for 840.<\/p>\n

The school in southwest Orlando sits in the large development off Kirkman Road that opened in the mid 1980s. A decade ago, it was one of the biggest elementary schools in the state with almost 1,600 students.<\/p>\n

Twenty years ago, Camelot Elementary School in east Orange was so crowded that it needed 45 portable classrooms to accommodate more than 1,300 youngsters, structures that took over the basketball court and ran right up to the pitcher\u2019s mound on the field behind the school.<\/p>\n

Today, Camelot has 448 students on a campus meant for about 720 \u2014 only 62% full. The two schools OCPS built to provide relief to that packed campus, Castle Creek Elementary and Stone Lakes Elementary, are both below the 65% mark as well.<\/p>\n

OCPS says there will be no additional campuses built for at least five years. It expects that less full schools in high growth areas will fill eventually but that is less likely in older, built-out neighborhoods where enrollment has plummeted.<\/p>\n

Still, Gallo said OCPS did not overextend itself with a building program that added 71 new schools in the last twenty years. Instead, it made the best decisions it could given its rapid population boom.<\/p>\n

In 2015, for example, more than 5,300 new students enrolled in OCPS, more than in any other Florida school district.<\/p>\n

\"PortablePortable classrooms fill the outfield of the baseball diamond at Camelot Elementary School in east Orange county, Dec. 16, 2005. The school was then district’s most crowded and had 45 portables. It now is only about 62% full. (Joe Burbank\/Orlando Sentinel file)<\/p>\n

The Florida Legislature\u2019s decision in 2023 to open up school vouchers, once reserved for low-income families or for those whose children had disabilities, to everyone was unexpected, Gallo said. And its impact was far reaching.<\/p>\n

In Orange, about 34,000 students have received state-funded vouchers so far this school year, and the number could grow, according to Step Up for Students, the organization that administers most of the state scholarships.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know that we could have predicted that, and we were growing at such a large rate that we had to keep up with that growth,\u201d Gallo said.<\/p>\n

Amanda Weber\u2019s son Logan started third grade at a new OCPS school this year because her neighborhood campus, Bonneville Elementary School, was closed in May. In her view, the district \u201chas gotten in way over their heads\u201d with its new school construction boon.<\/p>\n

And it blindsided families like hers when it announced the closure of some of its emptiest schools last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho\u2019s to say this won\u2019t happen again? Who\u2019s to say I won\u2019t be in this predicament again by the time he\u2019s in fourth grade?\u201d Weber said.<\/p>\n

Nationally, birth rates peaked in 2007 and have declined since. But Orange, with its booming home sales and constant new construction, was buffered for years from shrinking student counts felt in other parts of the country.<\/p>\n

That cushion has ended, said Scott Howat, a spokesman for OCPS.<\/p>\n

Home sales here have slowed. Pre-pandemic, roughly 40 out of 1,000 Orange County homes changed hands each year. Now, that number is closer to 26. Older residents are staying in their homes years after their children graduate from high school or renting them to people without school-age children.<\/p>\n

Residents who lived near Bonneville told district officials students at the University of Central Florida now rent many neighborhood homes.<\/p>\n

Maggie Davis and Robert Borling, who live in College Park, got vouchers to homeschool their two daughters but found that difficult for their family. Nearby private schools proved too expensive, even using the state scholarship, which on average pays $8,000 to $10,000 per child. Lake Silver Elementary is close to their home, so they enrolled the girls there.<\/p>\n

\"RobertRobert Borling and his two daughters, Kennedy, 7, and Vivian, 5, bike to Lake Silver Elementary School Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. Lake Silver is one of the almost 50 Orange County public schools operating at or below 65% capacity, according to OCPS enrollment data. (Joe Burbank\/Orlando Sentinel)<\/p>\n

Kennedy, a second grader, and Vivian, a kindergartner, both love it, and Borling loves riding a bike with them as they scooter to campus every morning.<\/p>\n

But the low enrollment worries him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s other kids in this neighborhood. I don\u2019t think any of them go to public school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The problem with under-enrolled schools isn\u2019t that they have empty classrooms, said Marguerite Roza, a professor who studies education finance policy at Georgetown University. It is that districts must still pay for essential school-wide employees, like principals, physical education teachers and media specialists, and do it with smaller budgets.<\/p>\n

So when enrollment drops, district leaders often find themselves forced to choose between two unpopular options: Closing campuses or cutting amenities like music classes or counseling services.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible to run a smaller school, but most parents expect them to look the same as a bigger school, and they\u2019re not the same,\u201d Roza said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 40 public elementary schools in Orange County now enroll fewer students than needed to be financially stable,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[113,114,266,115,139,141,140,109],"class_list":["post-404560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-education","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404560","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=404560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}