The Orange County (Florida) School Board has agreed this week that seven underenrolled schools need to be closed to save money because the once fast-growing system has lost thousands of students.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that Superintendent Maria Vazquez has recommended the closures; the eight-member board, though it did not take a vote during a 6-hour meeting Tuesday, indicated support.
“We have now come to the point where we can no longer continue to subsidize the dollars needed at these schools that are significantly underenrolled,” Vazquez said.
The closures will affect about 3,200 students and 270 teachers.
Union Park Middle School and Bonneville, Chickasaw, Eccleston, Meadow Woods, McCoy and Orlo Vista elementary schools are the campuses to close. District staff said the seven schools were picked because of their low enrollment, projections that show they’ll lose more students in the next 10 years, and their proximity to other schools that have room for more students.
The district has seen enrollment drop by almost 9,000 students in the last three years, largely because of vouchers and declining birthrates, school officials say. Population shifts also mean fewer school-age children in the older neighborhoods where the seven schools sit.
Each of the seven schools slated to close enrolls only about half the students it has room for, as of the most recent enrollment counts.
Harold Border, the district’s chief of strategy, said it costs about $1.3 million annually to run an Orange County elementary school. For an average elementary school to “break even” on costs, he said, the school needs 680 students.
About 80% of district elementary schools now enroll fewer than 680 youngsters, according to enrollment data.
The district’s decision to shutter campuses also comes as “schools of hope” charter schools have made pitches to move, rent free, into traditional public schools that aren’t filled with students. Such moves are allowed under a new state law.
If a charter school moved into an Orange County district building, the district could not charge for the space and would have to pick up the bill for food, custodians and transportation. Critics have called the effort a “land grab” by charter schools that would siphon resources from traditional public schools.
