Orange County voters will likely be asked in November to continue paying a half-cent additional sales tax so that a school construction program that has renovated or replaced 136 older campuses and built 65 new ones can continue for another decade.
The Orange County School Board voted unanimously Tuesday night to put the sales tax — which has raised more than $4 billion for school construction over two decades — up for a vote this fall. The proposed referendum must still be approved by the Orange County Commission before it can go to voters in November. School officials hope the commissioners will sign it off next month.
Orange voters first approved the school sales tax in 2002, with 59% voting yes. The tax was renewed in 2014 with 64% of the vote.
Without a new vote, the tax would expire at the end of 2025. School officials said that would leave them without money to renovate aging schools, repair air conditioners and roofs and modernize technology and safety features or build new campuses in Orange’s fast-growing communities. , such as Lake Nona and Horizon West.
“It is absolutely crucial,” he said Teresa Jacobs before Tuesday’s vote.
During the meeting, Jacobs and the seven other board members all called the funding critical if the school district is to continue its school construction program. The district has few other sizable sources of money for school construction, so the sales tax money is needed if the district, which operates more than 200 campuses, continues to modernize older campuses and create news as growth dictates. required, officials said.
“This is money that will make a huge difference,” said board member Maria Salamanca, adding that school boards in other Florida districts are struggling with even basic school maintenance because they don’t receive such funding.
“You see that their schools have a lot of problems with air conditioning, with paint, with roofs,” she said.
When the district first voted on the sales tax, it promised that an independent oversight committee would review all construction spending. The members of this committee include experts in construction, engineering, auditing and finance, and they continue to meet.
Its chairman, Patrick Knipe, sent a letter to the board, which was read Tuesday, saying the committee “strongly supports” the request for voters to renew the tax.
School leaders were pleased that Mayor Jerry Demings and county commissioners agreed earlier this month not to call for a trucking sales tax referendum on the November ballot. County leaders made that call after the proposal failed to gain traction during weeks of community meetings. In 2022, a referendum on the transportation sales tax was handily defeated by voters, with 58% voting no.
School administrators feared that the school tax, even if popular, would be dragged down if both came to a vote.
“I was relieved when Mayor Demings decided not to go for the transportation tax,” board member Angie Gallo said before Tuesday’s meeting.
Two taxes may have seemed too much for voters concerned about rising costs of housing and other expenses, Gallo said.
But the school tax — which means the sales tax on many items is 6.5% instead of the state’s required 6% — could be more acceptable based on the vote alone, she and others said, as it is a expansion and not a new tax. . They also point to the visible building boom it has spawned, with students now attending renovated or new schools across the country, from Apopka to Maitland to Windermere.
“I support it,” Gallo said at the meeting. “I believe our community will support this as well.”
More than half of the money collected from the tax comes from tourists and others who are not Orange residents, according to OCPS.
“The burden is not only on the residents, but we will benefit as well,” said board member Karen Castor Dentel.
The tax makes OCPS a leader in school construction in Florida, and four new schools will open this year, including the 23rd traditional high school, Innovation High School. The idea is to relieve crowds at the overcrowded Lake Nona High School.
Between 2011 and 2019, 130 new public schools were built in Florida and 51, or 39%, in Orange County, according to Tindale Oliver, a consulting firm that has helped the district with school planning. No other district in Florida had built more than six schools during that period.
