The Orange County Public School Board voted Tuesday night to close seven schools experiencing under-enrollment.
Officials with Orange County Public Schools brought the proposal forward, citing under-enrollment tied to factors like declining birthrates, expensive housing in the surrounding areas and Florida’s universal voucher program.
Six elementary schools are being closed -- the district calls it “consolidation.” Those schools are McCoy, Bonneville, Orlo Vista, Chickasaw, Eccleston and Meadow Woods elementary schools. Union Park Middle School will also close.
Students at those schools are being rezoned to schools nearby. Some parents, like Tiffany Marable, are unhappy about that. She has two children at Eccleston Elementary, twins in the first grade.
“I already kind of figured that they were going to close it,” Marable said. “I just felt like they lied because they were saying that it wasn't final, but they were still sending out emails to teachers telling them to look for other jobs. … So, I just think they already knew. They just lied about it.”
During the School Board meeting, each consolidation proposal was brought up individually, and the board voted on closing each school one at a time.
Staci Neal, the senior director of student enrollment, presented each school, the rezoning proposal and some of the data behind each.
District 5 board member Vicki-Elaine Felder was in tears as she made the motion to close Eccleston. In her office, Felder said, she has a photo of herself at Eccleston on her first day of first grade.
“I'm just so frustrated because, not just Eccleston, it just seems such a dichotomy for educators to close schools. That just does not make sense,” Felder said.
The schools don’t have the money they need each year, and they don’t know where cuts will happen, Felder said. “And we're having to share the little pie.”
Ethel Pierce has two nieces who attend Eccleston. Like Marable, Pierce believes that the School Board had “already made up their minds” long before Tuesday’s meeting.
Pierce’s biggest concern for her two nieces is losing their close connection to their teacher, Angela Murphy. The girls could be transferred to Washington Shores starting in August.
“We walked the pavement,” Pierce said. “We did the petition. We did everything that was necessary to keep the school open. …Today is Eccleston, tomorrow is Washington Shores. The next day it can be Ivy Lane. It could be any number of schools in our community. They're zoning the kids out of our community and telling us we don't have enough students.”
OCPS held listening sessions for each of the schools up for consolidation beginning in January. The district also provided parents with feedback forms and accepted petitions.
