ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0It\u2019s an unpopular decision, but school leaders say they must do it. The Orange County School Board instructed district leaders Tuesday night to begin the attendance rezoning process for seven schools with low enrollment.<\/p>\n
The school board will take an official vote in late January on whether to close the seven schools at the end of this school year.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Seven schools in Orange County may close due to low enrollment
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Meetings will be held to inform parents in January
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Officials say closing these schools could save the district $10 million annually<\/p>\n
District staff will hold meetings from Jan. 14\u00a0through Jan. 22\u00a0at each of the schools that might close to start giving parents information.<\/p>\n
Leaders say that closing the schools would save $10 million each year. The district previously said its funding is down $41 million this year because fewer students are attending public schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just don\u2019t have the funds to continue to fund those schools that are so under-enrolled,\u201d District 1 school board member Angie Gallo said.<\/p>\n
The schools that might close include Union Park Middle School and Bonneville, Chickasaw, Orlo Vista, Eccleston, Meadow Woods and McCoy Elementary Schools. Students would have to move to different schools.<\/p>\n
Gallo says the district will communicate with parents, school staff and the community throughout the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important that they have input and they have a say in what we do and what the rezoning looks like,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Superintendent Maria Vazquez says district principals have been tracking declining enrollment for the last few years. Vazquez adds that the expansion of families using private school vouchers and a new law allowing private charter schools to collocate in low-performing traditional school buildings sped up the timeline on this tough discussion.<\/p>\n
District 6 school board member Stephanie Vanos says the state\u2019s agenda is peeling students and money away from public schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we had more funding, we could try additional programs, add more resources, give parents more of what they want \u2014 if we had the funding to do that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Parents made it clear in recent days that they wish they had known their schools were at risk of closing much sooner, so they could have tried to recruit families to send their children to the schools that are likely to close.<\/p>\n
District leaders say that if the seven schools close, they will put the buildings to administrative use so they will not sit empty.<\/p>\n
Vazquez says that the district would ask city governments to help them maintain critical community programs for families currently operating inside the seven schools, so those programs don\u2019t go away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0It\u2019s an unpopular decision, but school leaders say they must do it. The Orange County School…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[4996,9995,113,1337,115,772,1335,139,141,140],"class_list":{"0":"post-86226","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-education","11":"tag-keith-landry","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-on-air-ticker-article","14":"tag-orange-county","15":"tag-orlando","16":"tag-orlando-headlines","17":"tag-orlando-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86226","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=86226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}