OCPS leaders, remembering leaky roofs and peeling paint, urge voters to renew sales tax
Before Orange County voters approved a half-penny sales tax for school construction more than two decades ago, the county’s public schools relied heavily on portable classrooms to handle growing enrollment, and many older buildings suffered from leaky roofs, balky air conditioners, peeling paint and even rodents.
One former principal said she used to bake cookies for maintenance workers, hoping to convince the overworked staff to make fixes on her campus.
The sales tax, first approved by voters in 2002 and renewed in 2014, was a game changer for Orange County Public Schools, giving it money to overhaul 136 older campuses and build 65 new ones in fast-growing areas.
In the light-filled cafeteria of Edgewater High School — a school founded in 1952 but thanks to sales tax money now housed in modern campus that opened in 2011 — OCPS leaders on Monday made a public bid for voters to again vote yes on the tax. It will be on the Nov. 5 ballot.
“Without that continuation, we will be $4 billion short,” said Teresa Jacobs, chair of the Orange County School Board, as she and Superintendent Maria Vazquez delivered a State of the Schools address to community leaders.
Central Florida’s largest school district needs to spend nearly $9 billion in the next 10 years to build 15 new schools in the Apopka, Horizon West and Lake Nona areas, where residential growth is crowding existing campuses, and to upgrade older buildings, including replacing roofs, air-conditioning systems and technology. Without the sales tax, it can expect to bring in only about half of that amount, officials said.
“It is critical that we are able to renew the sales tax,” Vazquez said after the meeting, attended by business, community, law enforcement and school leaders.
In early May, the school district estimated it would be short $2.7 billion but updated that figure to $4 billion to include needed work on more schools, officials said.
To date, Orange’s tax has been popular with voters, passing with 59% of the vote in 2002 and then 64% in 2014.
Dick Batchelor, the former state lawmaker and consultant who led the public campaign to pass the tax initiatives, attended the event and said he expected the tax would pass this year, too. The new campuses visible across Orange County are the best argument for voters saying yes again, he said.
“That gives them the confidence that the school board is doing what it says it is doing,” he added.
The average age of an OCPS campus was 32 years before the sales tax passed. It is 13 years now.
A video shown during the event included “before” and “after” photos of campuses that have been redone with sales tax money and included an interview with a former principal who remembered seeing mice on her rundown campus and baking cookies for maintenance workers in hopes they’d paint and make other repairs.
The video also showed older photos of Edgewater High, where before renovations a chunk of the auditorium ceiling fell in, the bleachers in the gym stopped retracting and outdoor walkways had been leaking for years.
Jacobs, a mother of four, said she remembered that her children’s school in MetroWest and many others were “mazes of portables and covered walkways” before tax-funded renovations.
The number of portable classrooms in use on OCPS campuses has dropped from more than 3,600 in 2001 to fewer than 1,500 this year, officials said
If the voters say yes again, the local sales tax would remain at 6.5%, a half-cent above the state-required 6%.
As the state stopped providing much money for school construction and maintenance, many Florida school districts have looked to pass local sales taxes to fill the gaps. Voters in neighboring Lake, Osceola and Seminole counties, among others, have agreed in recent years to pay more in sales tax to help build or overhaul schools in their communities.
The sales tax currently pays for more than 45% of OCPS’ capital funding, with local property taxes covering about 42% and impact fees paid by developers of new homes providing about 10%, according to OCPS’ 2023-24 budget.
In 2008, the state stopped providing utility tax revenue to school districts that had been targeted for school construction. In 2019, OCPS got its last $2.25 million in utility tax money that could be used for school maintenance.
Even with the half-penny voters approved, the sales tax in Orange is lower than that in Osceola or Seminole. More than half is paid by tourists or others who do not live in the county, officials said.