Positively Osceola connected with influential community leaders, inviting them to reflect on the achievements and challenges of 2024 while sharing their aspirations and goals for 2025. Among those offering valuable insights and a forward-looking vision was Dr. Mark Shanoff, Superintendent of the School District of Osceola County.
The School District of Osceola County has had a successful 2024. And we are looking forward to an even better 2025. In the school district, we are unapologetic about our high expectations for our students. For our team, we have focused on building a Day One culture. This means that we aspire to approach each day with the same optimism and belief that typically comes with the first day of school.
In November, we welcomed three new board members, Bethzaida Garcia is District 2, Anthony Cook is District 3 and Paula Bronson in District 5. Chair Heather Kahoun (District 4) and Vice Chair Terry Castillo (District 1) were unanimously elected by their fellow board members to continue in their leadership roles. At the state level, Vice Chair Castillo is a Florida School Boards Association (FSBA) officer, serving in the role as treasurer this year. Chair Kahoun serves as the FSBA Vice Chair of the policy committee.
This past year, we saw gains across the board in our student achievement outcomes. We continue to work diligently to ensure our students are successful. To that end, every student is entitled to rigorous coursework to the best extent possible. This year, any senior who hadn’t taken either a college credit course or an industry certification bearing course was scheduled into one. We owe it to our students, their families and our community to ensure our students have the right skills to either continue their trajectory forward in college, pursue career development through Osceola Technical College, enter the military or directly enter the workforce. We would not be good stewards of the public trust without raising the bar for our students to be competitive.
We opened the 2024-2025 school year with fewer vacancies than last school year. With a nationwide teacher shortage, we are working diligently to recruit great candidates to our classrooms. If you know of someone interested in entering the teaching profession, please have them contact our Human Resources department.
This past year, we committed resources to bring additional centralization for discipline and academic support for our schools. We want to ensure that expectations for a safe learning and working environment are consistently met across all schools. Furthermore, we want to ensure that no matter what school students attend, they receive the best instruction possible every day. Our district staff members have worked diligently this fall to support schools. Most notably, SDOC continues to build a data visualization system for our teachers and school leaders that will allow us to make instructional decisions that are well informed and timely. It also allows district leadership to ensure district support staff are accountable to the outcomes at schools.
We opened two new schools in 2024, Knights Point K-8 and Voyager K-8, we continued construction on two new transportation facilities, and we broke ground on the comprehensive renovation to Osceola County Schools for the Arts and High School ‘AAA’ off of Nova Road.
We are excited about the lagging indicators that will be released soon by the Florida Department of Education, so stay tuned for those.
In 2025, we will continue to build on high expectations for all students. With the new strategic plan set to be released in early 2025, the School Board has taken an aggressive posture to capitalize on the progress made. While we have much to be proud of, we have a lot of work yet to do to ensure success for our students and our community. The School Board will also undertake Master Board training, a key professional development milestone for school board members in Florida.
Also in 2025, we will open a new K-8 school in the Kindred community and work diligently to complete additional deferred maintenance projects. At any given time, we have over 100 facility improvement projects occurring. These aren’t all large projects, but impact the learning and working environment positively.
Perhaps the largest new project that parents and students will hear most about is our new upgraded communication system, Parent Square, that will launch at the beginning of the new school year. This will be a one stop shop for parents to receive all the news about the school district and their child’s school. If parents have children in multiple schools, again, this will be a single source location of information.
If you have not already done so, we ask that you follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Our superintendent, Dr. Mark Shanoff, and our Board Members regularly communicate through Facebook and Instagram. We post something new every day!
We are excited about what’s in store for 2025 in the School District of Osceola County, where everyday is Day One!
