Orange County Public Schools is Expanding Summer School After Falling Grades

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla.` — Orange County Public Schools is expanding summer school after about a quarter of students saw their grades drop.

The district says grades have improved as more kids return to physical classrooms; however, teachers are still seeing more “D’s” and “F’s.”

OCPS believes twice as many kids will need help this summer compared to last year.

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“Well, we were looking at, at least double the students that we’ve had in the past. Originally, we were looking at about 25% of our population,” said OCPS deputy superintendent, Maria Vazquez.

That is a quarter of OCPS’s more than 200,000 students.

“We were pretty close to 50,000 students that we were looking at learning loss, that doesn’t necessarily mean that those students were receiving D’s and F’s,” Vazquez said.

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Vazquez said 18-20% of students plan to attend summer acceleration and enrichment camps, which are only face-to-face. Vazquez added, Launch ED just didn’t work for some kids which is part of the reason students had more D’s and F’s.

“We are still seeing students that are earning more D’s and F’s than they did last year,” Vazquez said.

To help, summer school is expanding to five days a week over two months. The district also agreed to keep rules like mandatory masks in place.

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“Although people are getting vaccines, and it’s more hopeful than it has been, we’re still in a pandemic,” said OCCTA president, Wendy Doromal.

The district is also giving teachers some flexibility.

“They could choose to co-teach and work one week and or work every other week, or work two days a week,” Vazquez said. “Knowing how tired they are, they have just done an incredible job this year, they’ve worked miracles.”

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Summer school begins on June 2.

Cox Media Group