The Orange County Board of Education met on Monday night to discuss attendance data and Orange County Schools' academic calendar for the 2025-26 school year.
What's new?
- During the public comment period, multiple community members expressed concerns about the recent PowerSchool data breach.
- “When the PowerSchool information hack came, with this community school model, all that information regarding children's personal information and mental health could be anywhere now,” Jackie Whelan, a community member, said.
- Chief Equity & Student Achievement Officer Sheldon Lanier and Director of Student Engagement and Support Services Jessica Dreher gave an update on first semester attendance and discipline data.
- Dreher presented the data from a social and emotional learning survey given to Orange County Schools' students in grades four through 12 last fall.
- “We're looking at using this data with our SEL teams, which is going to help us determine if there are needs for small groups, individual sessions or whole group guided sessions for students,” she said. “It will help us determine any needs.”
- Lanier presented the discipline data from July through December 2024.
- He said there has been a decrease in percentage of disciplinary referrals for female, Asian, Indigenous, Black and Hispanic student groups, with a slight increase in male and multiracial disciplinary referrals compared to last year.
- The data also showed that the number of out-of-school suspensions stayed the same for Hispanic students and decreased for female, Black, white and Asian students.
- One of the goals of OCS's Strategic Plan states that the suspension rate of Black and multiracial students will be reduced to 3 percent by 2026. While suspensions have increased for multiracial students and the district has not yet reached its goal, Lanier said the rate is down from the initial nine percent.
- Dreher also presented data about attendance in all OCS schools from July through December 2024.
- She said all district schools are getting closer to the district's goal of a 95 percent average daily attendance rate. According to the presentation, Hillsborough Elementary School is the only school that has reached 95 percent.
- Dreher presented the data from a social and emotional learning survey given to Orange County Schools' students in grades four through 12 last fall.
- Chief Academic Officer Julie Pack presented the proposed academic calendar for the 2025-26 school year.
- Pack said the calendar was created by a calendar committee made up of members representing OCS schools and departments. She said when the committee created the calendar, its primary goal was to ensure balance.
- “Balance between the needs of our certified staff, our classified staff and our students and our families, and the balance with the year-round and traditional calendars,” she said.
- The calendar has a total of 215 days, with 176 instructional days, 18 teacher workdays — two less than the 2024-25 school year — 11 holidays and 10 annual vacation leave days.
- “There is a reduction from 20 teacher workdays to 18 teacher workdays, and that's because when our students aren't in school, our cafeteria workers and our bus drivers don't work,” Pack said. “We heard from transportation and child nutrition about how hard it is to find workers when they don't have as many days to work. They're going to go find work in other places.”
- Hillsborough Elementary School, which operates on a year-round schedule, will start its school year on July 16, while all other OCS schools will begin on Aug. 25. All schools will end on June 10.
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Fall break will be a full week made up of two teacher workdays, one annual vacation leave day and two holidays.
- “I already got compliments about the Thanksgiving break,” board member Bonnie Hauser said. "People are really happy to see that.”
- Pack said the calendar was created by a calendar committee made up of members representing OCS schools and departments. She said when the committee created the calendar, its primary goal was to ensure balance.
What decisions were made?
- The board unanimously approved the proposed calendar.
What's next?
- The board will meet again on Monday, Jan. 27 at the Whitted Human Services Building in Hillsborough.
