Orange County Public Schools

Orange County Public Schools (OCPS) is the public school district for Orange County, Florida. It is based in the Ronald Blocker Educational Leadership Center in downtown Orlando. OCPS is the eighth-largest school district in the United States and the fourth-largest in Florida. The district serves about 209,000 students at 214 schools and is one of the largest employers in Central Florida with more than 23,000 team members. For 2026, the Florida Department of Education awarded OCPS with a district grade of A, previously earned in 2025, 2024, 2019, and 2010. School board The superintendent of Orange County Public Schools is Maria Vazquez, appointed by the Orange County 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 city or county commission districts. As of 2024, the current school board members, in order of district number, are Angie Gallo, Maria Salamanca, Alicia Farrant, Anne Douglas, Vicki-Elaine Felder, Stephanie Vanos, and Melissa Byrd. Board members are elected every four years with 8-year term limits 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 2028). All school board elections in Florida are currently non-partisan. A county-wide public vote in 2009 created the elected position of school board chair. 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. Schools OCPS has used an attendance model of kindergarten through grade 5 for elementary schools, grades 6–8 for middle schools, and grades 9–12 for high schools since July 1987. 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 214 regular-attendance schools as of the 2025–26 school year: 133 elementary, 10 K–8, 41 middle, 23 high, and seven 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. 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. OCPS schools offer a variety of advanced studies, magnet programs, and scholastic academies that allow students to specialize in particular subject areas. Students must apply by submitting an electronic application to the School Choice Services magnet office by a set deadline and gain acceptance in order to participate in most programs. Programs include Advanced Placement (AP), agriscience, artificial intelligence, aviation & aerospace, AVID, Cambridge AICE, criminal justice, culinary arts, digital media & gaming, dual enrollment, education, entertainment production, entrepreneurship, esports, finance, fine arts, first responders, foreign languages / dual languages, gifted academy, International Baccalaureate (IB), international studies, healthcare, hospitality & tourism, laser photonics, law, leadership, medicine, nursing, performing arts, Pre-Advanced Placement (Pre-AP), Pre-International Baccalaureate (Pre-IB), STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), technical theatre, veterinary animal science, and visual arts. As of July 2023, the schools of OCPS are divided into seven groups called school cadres: Elementary, Middle/K-8, High, School Transformation, Exceptional Student Education, Career and Technical Education, and School Choice. In order to provide more direct support to schools from the district, schools are now grouped primarily by grade level instead of by geographic learning communities which were in place for over 20 years. 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. 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 and again in 2024 for another ten years. Since 2003, OCPS has opened 64 new schools and renovated or replaced 132 schools. 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. Elementary schools K-8 Schools Middle schools High schools Prior to 1952, there were only two high schools in the City of Orlando: Orlando High School and Jones High School, which was a segregation-era Black-only high school until integration was enforced. Other municipalities in the county had high schools: Apopka, Florida; Winter Park, Florida; Ocoee, Florida; Winter Garden, Florida (Lakeview H.S.), and Eatonville, Florida (Hungerford H.S.). In 1952, Orlando High was split into what became Edgewater High School and William R. Boone High School. Originally to be named "Orlando North" and "Orlando South", respectively, Orlando South took its modern name after its principal, William R. Boone, died before it opened. Orlando North took the name of the road it was built on, Edgewater Drive. The former Orlando High campus became Howard Middle School. Jones High moved to its present location in 1952, which was reconstructed in 2004. In 1975, Ocoee High School and Lakeview High School were closed (their old campuses then housed Junior High schools of the same names) and their students went to the new West Orange High School. 30 years later, a new Ocoee High School was built and opened in 2005. Robert F. Hungerford High School, founded in 1897 as the Robert F. Hungerford Normal and Industrial School in the historically black community of Eatonville, was renamed Wymore Tech and Wymore Career Education Center in the 1960s until it became the Hungerford Preparatory School in the late 1990s and operated as a district-wide magnet school without a specific geographic attendance zone. OCPS closed Hungerford Prep in 2009. Approximately half of the district's high schools were opened after 2000, not including reconstructed campuses for existing schools. Exceptional Education Schools Alternative Education Schools Charter Schools Footnotes External links Official website Orange County Public Schools Nutrition Services Official Website Orange County Launchpad Student New OCPS District Site