Orange and Osceola schools
Puerto Rican students filling Orange, Osceola classrooms
need more money from the state to handle the influx of Puerto Rican students as well as freedom from state classsize and testing rules for this school year, local officials say.
KISSIMMEE — More than 2,500 Puerto Rican students have enrolled in Orange and Osceola County public schools since Hurricane Maria slammed into the island more than six weeks ago, and many more are expected before Christmas.
To handle the influx, school leaders say they need more money from the state and a temporary waiver from Florida’s class-size rules and testing requirements, particularly for high school students.
School board members from both counties emphasized those points to state lawmakers at a meeting Friday attended by Sen. Jack Latvala, a Clearwater Republican running for governor. He is also chairman of the Florida Senate’s powerful appropriations committee, which has begun work hashing out next year’s state budget.
“I’m just here on a factfinding trip,” said Latvala at the meeting at Celebration High School in Osceola. “We want to be equipped to help them as much as we can.”
The Central Florida School Boards Coalition, which represents Orange, Osceola and 11 other school districts, made the same requests to Gov. Rick Scott and Education Commissioner Pam Stewart last month.
But it has not gotten a response yet, said Linda Kobert, vice chairman of the coalition and a member of the Orange County School Board.
Latvala said he would ask that Stewart speak to the Senate’s appropriations committee in Tallahassee later this month to address funding questions.
In Osceola, 1,085 students from Puerto Rico have been enrolled in public schools in the aftermath of the storm that knocked out power to most of the island and closed many schools, said Superintendent Debra Pace.
“We do welcome our
Puerto Rican students,” she said, but added, “It is putting a strain on the system.”
Enrolling all those new students is equivalent to adding a new elementary school to district rolls. Yet most of those youngsters arrived after the official student count used for state funding in early October. So the district won’t get money for 700 of them this semester, she said, though there is still a cost for educating them.
“We’re adding teachers. We’re adding social workers. We’re adding bus drivers,” Pace said, and schools are working to provide the youngsters the extra help they need to navigate their new schools.
“It’s a little overwhelming. I don’t know anyone here,” said Diego Muñiz, 15, who started at Celebration High two weeks ago and was one of four Puerto Rican students to greet lawmakers and board members. “The school system is very different.”
The Florida Department of Education has said that current law allows districts to do an extra student count in December but provides for extra funding only if enrollment exceeds 5 percent of their expected total. That would mean Orange would have to enroll about 10,300 new students, and Osceola would have to take in more than 3,000.
In both counties, educators said they need financial help even if they don’t hit those numbers. They also want to be free from state penalties if they cannot comply with state class-size rules this school year, which state law allows in emergencies.
“We’re not asking for anything permanent. We simply asking for a temporary waiver,” said Bill Sublette, chairman of Orange’s board, whose district had enrolled 1,506 students from Puerto Rico as of Friday. “We think that’s an easy lift.”
What likely will be a tougher sell is the districts’ request to test newly arrived students in Spanish, not English. Though federal law allows that flexibility, current Florida law does not. Sublette and others said allowing that temporarily for newly arrived Puerto Rican students would make sense.
Though some Puerto Rican students are well-versed in English, nearly 80 percent of the new arrivals are not, Pace said.
That means high school students, who were on track in their Puerto Rican schools, could find they cannot graduate here, where passing state exams is required for a diploma.
Pace said she’s particularly worried about the 76 high-school seniors from Puerto Rico who just recently entered Osceola schools and have little time to master English and pass state exams.
“What we’re doing is asking for what’s fair, what we need in order to do our jobs,” said Kelvin Soto, chairman of Osceola’s board.