OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — Osceola County schools is heading down the same road its larger neighbor to the north set on last year: finally playing offense against an environment that has encouraged students to attend virtual and home-based methods of learning over traditional public school.
Tuesday night, the district voted to spend up to $100,000 to recruit more than 100 students back to its classrooms.
The per-student basis of the contract mirrors Orange County, which hired the same firm in April 2025. For each successful recruit, Cassia, a private company, will get $935, while the district will receive approximately $7,000 more funding from the state.
Orange County renewed its contract with Cassia six months after initially signing it after the district verified the company recruited 2,000 students – netting the struggling system more than $14 million in state funding.
“We simply do not have the administrative overhead to do the outreach ourselves in support of these families,” Superintendent Dr. Mark Shanoff said in a news release. “Our school district outcomes are on the rise, and we need to be intentional about telling the story of the Osceola County student experience. Once we enroll them, our job to is provide the best education possible, which I am confident that we can do.”
The new wave of recruits was not enough to prevent Orange County from voting to close seven of its schools next year. Shanoff said Osceola is not currently considering closing any schools.
Still, the district has lost 5,200 students in two years, data shows, and it’s not clear if this initial recruitment effort will place a large dent in that trend.
Outside East Lake Elementary Wednesday, several mothers said they removed their older children from the school with mixed results. One said her daughter would re-enroll next summer, while another said her daughter loved learning at home, away from other children.
Osceola’s efforts will not target charter school students, who the district consider to be still within the public school system.
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