Wednesday, December 18, 2019

"How are the schools here?" - Osceola County Florida Version

Osceola County Florida Schools (2019 version)

By:  Jason Braddock

Last Updated 12/17/2019

This is a dreaded question for Realtors in the field for a multitude of reasons.  First is that they may simply not know if they are good schools.  Secondly, they may not have the same definition of good as you.  Lastly and probably most importantly, for them to answer the question it may violate the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination based on sex, race, religion, or family/economic status.

There are tools and resources the savvy Realtor can point you toward for you to draw your own conclusions or to guide you into asking them for schools that most interested in.  If you know you want to be in a certain Elementary school zone you can ask your agent to refine your search to that area.  This has upsides and downsides.  The upside is that the agent does not have to ask you your motivations for that school zone and therefore avoid possible Fair Housing concerns.  The downsides is that it may require research and legwork on your own.

Even if you ask the Realtor to look for middle schools that are only rated as A by the state they might not know where to start.  There are several resources we like to give to our clients concerned with being in "good schools" when they inquire.  We will list them below and go into some narrative about what we have found useful on each of those websites.

At the top of our list of resources for parents to reference is the Florida Department of Education website.  This is where you will find the official data on districts and schools.  It is the primary source that we used for our analysis of schools when we moved to the area.  We have also combined some of the data provided by the state and district to easily sort possible schools for our clients to request.  We always point them back to original resources and additional websites for them to draw their own conclusions before we narrow their search.

Rather than searching for the proper link on the department of education website just click here:  http://www.fldoe.org/accountability/accountability-reporting/school-grades/
The Excel spreadsheet for schools includes every school in the state alphabetically by district then by school.  If you are not widely versed in each of the measures a school is graded on you can get quite lost.  In our humblest opinion as former educators we strongly suggest looking at the ratings for English Language Arts Achievement (column E), Mathematics Achievement (column H) and School Grade for the current year (column T).  The scores are out of 100% or a letter grade.  The closer to 100% or an A the better the students at the school did on the state assessments.  If you delete the first 4 rows in the spreadsheet you can also sort the schools by county and whether or not it is an Elementary, Middle, High School, K-8 and/or charter school pretty easily.  For the purpose of this blog post we will be focusing on the five counties that we focus on in our business (Orange, Osceola, Lake, Polk, Seminole and Brevard counties).  Again, we are not claiming that just because the school did not make our lists we mention below does not make them bad schools.  The lists below answer specific questions that do not violate Fair Housing rights as we did not consider any of the protected class data when sorting the data.

The questions that we aim to answer in this blog is:
"Which elementary schools have an A and also feed into middle schools and high schools with A or B ratings?"

In order to determine the answer to this question we downloaded the school spreadsheet from the state website above and then we had to find the feeder patterns for attendance zones for each of the counties and combine them.  We then manually highlighted the schools.  Our color coding system is as follows:  A=dark green, B=light green, C=yellow, D=orange, and F=red.  After we color-coded the feeder pattern spreadsheet we looked for the elementary schools that were dark green but fed into middle schools that were also dark green and high schools that were dark green as well.  For each district there were not many, so we also considered schools that were A-rated elementary schools but A for Middle School and B for High School or vise versa.  We also paid particular attention to high schools that had multiple middle school feeders and how each one played out.  In other words we considered if an A-rated high school had all A-rated middle schools or if one or more were B-rated or lower middle schools, and the same for the elementary schools.

Website for the 2019-2020 Osceola County Zoning/Redistricting and Feeder programs for your own reference can be found:  https://www.osceolaschools.net/departments/facilities_division/planning_services/redistricting_and_school_zoning_information

Our spreadsheet combining the state spreadsheet and the Osceola County feeder program can be found here:  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UDYrMEXeLNrqXsvLWQS7KarNtJ_xWFC3Kpyh2sc5uAc/edit?usp=sharing

Our analysis (based on 2019 reports) is that if you are looking for an A-rated elementary schools that feeds into A-rated middle schools and A-rated high schools you should MAY have to enroll your child into a special high school program that are open to all district students as long as they qualify (ie. NeoCity Academy, Osceola School of the Arts, or PATHS at TECO).  None of the general high schools in Osceola County received an A-rating for the 2019 school report card.  That being said we still have recommendations based on the progression from Elementary to Middle Schools that are A-rated:

1.  Narcoossee Elementary feeding into Narcoossee Middle School and then off to Harmony HS, Saint Cloud HS or even possibly to Tohopekaliga HS (more about that later).



2.  Harmony Community School feeding into the new Harmony MS then to Harmony HS.


3.  Celebration K-8 feeding into Celebration High School


Also, if you have a gifted or talented child that can qualify for a special school like the new NeoCity Academy, PATHS at TECO or the Osceola School of the Arts they are the highest ranked upper level schools in the district.  You also can be zoned for any middle or elementary school to attend.  These schools require more to get in though.  It can be a portfolio, an audition, a GPA requirement or other considerations.

Tohopekaliga High School also only has one year of data behind them and was not ranked on several indicators therefore driving their scores to the bottom of the pack in terms of high schools in the county.  They have state of the art equipment and programs.  I’m waiting to see what is in store for year 2 of this school.  The staff and administrators are top notch and super involved.

Other new schools to keep in mind moving forward include the new Michigan Avenue Elementary and Harmony Middle School that just opened and are currently unrated.

With many master planned developments on the books for the area near Neptune Rd there are new K-8 and high schools planned to open in the 2022-2023 school years.  Also, you should keep an eye out for what is happening at Neptune Middle School.  That principal is making great gains.

Just to be clear.  Just because a school does not make it on the list above does not make it a "bad school" or one we do not recommend.  As former educators we KNOW that the state assessments do NOT always tell the full picture of a school, a district and especially a teacher.  Our recommendation is to visit each of the schools websites to narrow down your list, then visit the schools and inquire about their programs specific to your children's needs.  A good way to narrow down the perfect school is to look for special programs that meet your child's interests and needs, whether that be drama, sports, robotics or whatever.

An additional warning:  Just because a listing on a website or the MLS (multiple listing service) says that a house is zoned for a specific school it is best to do your due diligence and check.  For this we prefer to go right to source.  You can call the school district to ask about where the house is slated to be zoned for next school year.  For Osceola County schools they actually have this nice little tool where you can type in the address and it will tell you the zoned schools:

 Click here to use SchoolSite Locator to determine a student's school of attendance.
Click here to use BusPlanner to determine a student's busing information.

They have the current maps for each of the schools on their website as well, but they are for the 2018-19 school year and will need updated:

Click here for the 2019/2020 Attendance Zone Boundary Maps and Descriptions.


We also really like their updated Map Library for those that like colored PDFs that can be printed out as you drive around looking for a "nice neighborhood" that you like:  https://ocps.net/departments/student_enrollment/map_library



Other resources we like to triangulate data across:




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