Orange County Public Schools

The superintendent of Orange County Public Schools is Maria Vazquez. The position of superintendent is appointed by the school board. The district is overseen by the Orange County School Board, a body of seven elected officers, each board member sitting for a particular geographic district. School board districts are not analogous in any way with county commission districts. As of 2022, the current school board members, in order of district number, are Angie Gallo, Maria Salamanca, Alicia Farrant, Pam Gould, Vicki-Elaine Felder, Karen Castor Dentel, and Melissa Byrd.[5]

Board members are elected every four years with 8-year term limits [6] as of July 1, 2023, with Districts 1 through 3 elected during midterm election cycles (next in 2026) and Districts 4 through 7 elected during presidential cycles (next in 2024). School board elections in Orange County are non-partisan.[5]

A county-wide public vote in 2009 created the elected position of school board chairman. Bill Sublette was subsequently elected to this position in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014. Teresa Jacobs was elected in 2018 and re-elected in 2022.[7]

OCPS has used an attendance model of kindergarten through grade 5 for elementary schools, grades 6–8 for middle school and grades 9–12 for high school since July 1987.[8] Before then, grade 6 was part of elementary school and grade 9 was part of middle school ("junior high" in OCPS prior to July 1987). As now required by Florida law, virtually all elementary schools have pre-kindergarten programs.

OCPS has 210 regular-attendance schools as of the 2022-23 school year: 130 elementary, 10 K–8, 40 middle, 22 high, and eight exceptional student education centers. The district also has an adult education system with six dedicated campuses and night classes at most high schools, four dedicated special education schools as well as a hospital/homebound program, and dozens of alternative education centers, including charter schools.[9] Six of the high schools in OCPS have separate ninth-grade centers, three of them off-site of the main campus, built after the shift from K–6/7–9/10–12 to K–5/6–8/9–12.

Some elementary middle and high schools include magnet programs that allow students to specialize in particular subject areas. Students must apply to magnet schools in order to take advantage of this specialization. Some magnet programs offered by OCPS are agriscience, aviation and aerospace, Cambridge AICE, criminal justice, culinary arts, digital media & gaming, education, entertainment production, entrepreneurship, finance, fine arts, first responders, foreign languages / dual languages, gifted academy, International Baccalaureate, international studies, healthcare, hospitality, laser photonics, law, leadership, medicine, nursing, performing arts, STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), veterinary animal science, and visual arts.

The schools of OCPS are divided into six areas called learning communities: North, East, West, Southeast, Southwest and School Transformation Office (STO). Southeast and Southwest were split from a larger South Learning Community in 2006. The School Transformation Office Learning Community, which was founded in 2013, includes schools throughout Orange County who have received failing grades and helps provide resources for students at these schools to succeed. Prior to the existence of STO, there was a Central Learning Community, which was known as the "Urban Cohort" until 2005.

The district is in an aggressive expansion and school improvement project being fueled by a 0.5% sales tax option passed by the voters of Orange County in 2002.[10] Skyrocketing land and materials costs, however, have outpaced faster-than-expected sales tax revenue increases and slowed progress. Many projects had been pushed back, and some had been cancelled altogether. An extension of the half-penny sales tax was passed in 2014 for another ten years.

Most paperwork distributed to students and parents by OCPS is available in both English and Spanish. Many such documents are also available in Portuguese, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Arabic, and Filipino due to the significant populations in Orange County that speak each language.

• Official website
• Orange County Public Schools Nutrition Services Official Website
• Orange County Launchpad Student
• New OCPS District Site