Last week, the Florida Department of Education released the official graduation rates for the class of 2025. Once again, the strong effort of our public schools to educate all children and ensure that every student has a bright future was successful. 

While the state excitedly boasted a 2.5% gain, bringing the state graduation rate to 92.2%, Orange County Public Schools is considerably higher. Its average graduation rate among its 22 traditional high schools is 97.2%! 

We are incredibly proud of this continued growth and the ability of our schools to make a concerted effort to reach every student, no matter their circumstances, and ensure that they cross the finish line and graduate with a diploma. 

Our own local high schools continue to show growth each year as well. Apopka High School had a graduation rate of 97.5%, increasing about four percent over last year, and Wekiva was right behind them at 96.9%. I am incredibly proud of both schools for their hard work in this area.  

These graduation rates are impressive on their own, but especially when you consider that OCPS had one of the lowest graduation rates in the state just 25 years ago. The class of 2000 graduation rate was a dismal 49.5%. Imagine just half of our students receiving a high school diploma. What happens to those who don’t? What happens to our community? 

Successful schools influence the culture, well-being, crime rate and economic prosperity of a community. In other words, the success of our schools has a direct correlation to the success of our community. 

Higher graduation rates create a more qualified, readily available workforce. We have significantly more students also graduating and going to college, as well as significantly more students graduating with a workforce certificate or training, which makes them ready to enter the workforce. 

These drastic increases don’t just happen by accident. These increases happened because the district made a conscious effort to focus on getting every child to graduate.  

It meant making appointments with every student and going over graduation plans.  

It meant making sure schools did not “hope” every student would graduate but instead “expected” every child to graduate. 

I’m incredibly proud of our schools for this work, ensuring that every student has a bright future. Education changes lives, and I’m so glad we are not letting lives slip through the cracks!