Enrollment Analysis: Hispanic students comprised 43.9% of Orange County’s districts student body in 2023-24 school year

There were 95,003 Hispanic students enrolled in Orange County districts in the 2023-24 school year, a 0.9% increase over the 94,167 Hispanic students in the previous school year, according to the Florida Department of Education.

Data showed that Orange County welcomed a total of 216,597 students at the time. Among them, Hispanic students comprised 43.9% of the student body to be the most represented ethnicity in the county. They were followed by white students with a count of 53,681 (24.8%), and Black students, totaling 50,054, or 23.1% of the student population.

Among the two districts in Orange County, Orange County School District recorded the highest enrollment of Hispanic students in the 2023-24 school year, with a total of 92,176 students, making up 44.4% of the school’s total student body. This marks a 0.5% increase over 43.9% of Hispanic students in the district during the previous school year.

Gov. DeSantis has approved an education budget of over $28 billion for the 2024-25 school year. The new budget includes more than $1 billion earmarked exclusively for teacher salaries to better address the teacher shortage the state faces.

According to the National Education Association (NEA), Florida ranks 50th in the U.S. in terms of teacher salaries, only ahead of West Virginia.