Orange County Public Schools to cut 200 district-level administrators

Orange County Public Schools will cut more than 200 district-level administrators as it grapples with the impacts of declining enrollment, an OCPS deputy superintendent said in a sobering email recently sent to staff.

The district lost thousands of students this school year, will close seven schools this summer as a result and expects enrollment to drop by another 10,000 pupils in the next five years.

Now OCPS is implementing 3% cuts across all district departments, “resulting in the elimination of more than 200 positions,” because of enrollment-based funding losses and to avoid eliminating teaching positions, Deputy Superintendent Jose Martinez wrote to staff Sunday.

“We are navigating a period of significant financial constraint, and there are no painless paths through it,” Martinez wrote.

The email did not identify which positions would be cut but said the 200 employees’ work would be absorbed by remaining staff. OCPS has about 1,300 district administrators and other support staff, OCPS spokesperson Michael Ollendorff said. So the lost jobs represent about 15% of that workforce.

Ollendorff said the cuts will include the elimination of one group that oversees some of the district’s more than 200 campuses. But he declined to specify which schools and which employees would be impacted.

Staff cuts will happen at the district level because “leadership carries a responsibility to absorb the weight first and confront the realities others are being asked to navigate,” Martinez wrote.

The nation’s eighth-largest school district, OCPS has said its enrollment crisis can be blamed on lower birth rates, a loss of immigrant students and the increasing popularity of state-funded voucher scholarships for private school and homeschooling services. Because state school funding is based on a per-pupil formula, fewer students mean less money for the district, which said it lost about $41 million this school year.

“We have had to make decisions that reflect our current reality, not the one we wish we were still in,” Martinez wrote.

And cutting so many positions is not easy, he added. “They required real restructuring, real loss, and real change across departments.”

In March, the Orange County School Board voted to shutter seven half-empty schools — Union Park Middle School and Bonneville, Chickasaw, Eccleston, Meadow Woods, McCoy and Orlo Vista elementary schools. Superintendent Maria Vazquez has said the district may need to close more schools next year.

Earlier this month, OCPS also decided to cut SAFE coordinators, staff who provide mental health and other intervention services to middle and high school students. Many of those positions had been paid for by federal COVID-19 relief money, which has now run out.

Those cuts were also “rooted in funding constraints,” Martinez wrote.

“These are not easy choices. But they are necessary ones. And we will get through this,” he wrote.

The county’s teachers union reacted angrily to the SAFE coordinator cuts, posting “make better choices” on social media and sending the same message in letters to the school board. The union also urged teachers to wear black on Monday in a sign of opposition.

“Eliminating roles and reducing services that address student safety, mental health, and well-being is a dangerous direction. These supports are not optional. They are essential,” reads the letter that Clinton McCracken, the president of the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association, shared.

The letter also said that the school district in neighboring Brevard County is cutting more than twice what OCPS is in district spending, which makes the union question whether Orange could trim more from its administration and try to preserve the SAFE coordinator jobs.

“While the district has stated that reductions are being made, the scale matters,” the letter said.