Schools
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 1988. Before then, Grade 6 was part of elementary school and Grade 9 was part of middle school (called Junior High in OCPS prior to 1988). As now required by Florida law, virtually all elementary schools have Pre-Kindergarten programs.
OCPS has 178 regular-attendance schools as of the 2009–10 school year: 125 elementary, 34 middle and 19 high. Three of the middle schools are really K–8 schools, but are classified by OCPS as middle schools. In addition, one high school (Lake Nona High) currently houses middle school students as well. 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. One more elementary schools is scheduled to open for the 2010–11 school year.
The schools of OCPS are divided into six areas called Learning Communities: North, East, West, Southeast, Southwest and Central. Central was known as the "Urban Cohort" until 2005. Southeast and Southwest were split from a larger South Learning Community in 2006.
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, has outpaced faster-than-expected sales tax revenue increases and slowed progress. Many projects have been pushed back, and some have been cancelled altogether. The district is currently working on extending the half-penny option tax in 2012, when it is set to expire.
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 and Haitian Creole, due to the significant populations in Orange County that speak each language.
Read more about this topic: Orange County Public Schools
Famous quotes containing the word schools:
“In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“The schools begin with what they call the elements, and where do they end?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)