By Matthew Hughes, Interning Correspondent with The Apopka Voice
Melissa Byrd has a passion for education.
After graduating from The University of Central Florida in 1997 with a degree in elementary education, she began her life’s work. She taught at Forest City Elementary and Pace Brantley Hall School and then decided in 2003 to leave the classroom to raise her family.
During that time, she took many leadership and volunteer positions, such as vice president and chair of the School Advisory Council at Piedmont Lakes Middle School, and regularly volunteered at Clay Springs Elementary.
Orange County Public School Board Member Melissa Byrd
But in 2018, Byrd parlayed her experience in classrooms to run for the Orange County Public School Board, and after winning a special election in 2018, she is now an Orange County Public School (OCPS) Board Member representing District 7, which includes Apopka. Byrd started in that role by serving the final two years of a four-year term after former School Board Member Christine Moore vacated the seat to run for the County Commission. She was re-elected in 2020 and is in the middle of her second term.
Byrd sat down with The Apopka Voice to talk about the upcoming school year, the COVID-19 protections that will be in place, future election plans, and the exciting things that will happen in schools this year.
The conversation started with an issue that seems to be at the forefront in Apopka - school overcrowding. At a July 7th meeting, the Apopka City Council expressed frustration at Apopka schools being overcrowded, and no clear plan to address it.
Byrd too is concerned.
“This issue is a big issue, and it’s not an easy one," she said. "I’ve been working on it ever since I got into office four years ago. The problem is that we need way too many schools, and we don’t have enough money to build them all.”
According to Byrd, the last numbers she received from OCPS indicated that they would need 65 additional schools to be under capacity.
However, it doesn’t just end there.
According to a report by the Orlando Economic Partnership, it estimates that 1,500 people will move to Orange County every week for the next 10 years.
“The State of Florida is not funding our capital the way it needs to be funded. We have to rely on impact fees and our generous taxpayers… We have to rely on all those things to get our schools built because we just don’t get funding from the state for our capital projects.”
--Melissa Byrd
"Orange County is the most rapidly growing county in Florida,” Byrd says. “No other county in our state is dealing with the amount of growth that we have.”
But despite the exponential growth, the state is not investing in building schools.
“The State of Florida is not funding our capital the way it needs to be funded," Byrd said. "We have to rely on impact fees and our generous taxpayers… We have to rely on all those things to get our schools built because we just don’t get funding from the state for our capital projects.”
And while impact fees are helpful, they cannot be used for current projects.
“The impact fees are a whole other issue," said Byrd. "The impact fees don’t fully pay what they need to pay to build a school. So when a builder comes in and pays the impact fees, we collect that money, but we have to hold on to it until we have enough money to build a school.”
So, regardless of the severity of overcrowding in Apopka schools, nothing can be done until the funds needed are supplied to the school district. And it doesn't stop at Apopka.
“There’s no way I, nor the district, can justify building schools up here when we’re 50 or 100 over-capacity, and we have schools that are 400, 500, or 1,000 over in other parts of the district,” she says. “We see that an Apopka high school is 200 students over, and that’s not ideal. But, we can’t go and start building a high school tomorrow and have a high school built in a year with only 250 or 300 students. Then what? We can’t open up this $100 million high school with 300 students. We wouldn’t be able to run the high school… We have property already bought, we just have to wait until we get the critical mass we need to build that school.”
“I do wish that all of our children that do not have the opportunity to get vaccinated would wear masks. There are children that are really high-risk that have been out of school for an entire year and a half, and they need to get back in school because they’ve missed out on a lot of services that they need.”
--Melissa Byrd
Overcrowding is a serious issue, but with COVID-19 numbers spiking around the country, the need to stay safe is more important than ever, especially in a school that is already past its limit. However, there will be no mask mandates in schools, as Governor Ron DeSantis issued an executive order that states that schools cannot mandate masks in Florida. If any school district in Florida tries to mandate masks, they will lose their funding. A mask policy was put in place for all Orange County schools last year, and on July 13th, 2021, the board voted on a new mask policy. However, making a new one is no easy process.
“When you make a policy in the state of Florida you have to go through the rule-making process, etc… It’s a big process if you want to change any policy,” says Byrd.
The board concluded that the best way to deal with this issue was to take out the mask mandate and add a clause stating that to make any other changes regarding masks in school, the superintendent would then be given the power to make the final decision. This allows the school board to bypass the rule-making process if they want to make changes to a policy promptly.
“I wanted to take the mask mandate out of our policy so that we didn’t have to go through a two-month process to change it every time we wanted to change it,” says Byrd.
On July 27th, Byrd and OCPS Board Chair Teresa Jacobs said they both felt that the superintendent needed to mandate masks due to the rising cases of COVID due to the Delta variant. However, it was not a consensus vote, so the superintendent decided to keep looking into the situation while checking data from local hospitals daily.
“It looks like we’re going to have to live with optional masks,” says Byrd.
Although masks are not going to be mandatory, Byrd urges caution and understanding to those whose children cannot receive the vaccine.
“I do wish that all of our children that do not have the opportunity to get vaccinated would wear masks,” she says. “There are children that are really high-risk that have been out of school for an entire year and a half, and they need to get back in school because they’ve missed out on a lot of services that they need.”
For those students that are returning to school, there is a lot to look forward to in the upcoming school year. And according to Byrd, something to be excited about is getting reacquainted with the school itself.
“This last year has been so incredibly challenging... more challenging than I ever could have possibly imagined this job being. I don’t think anyone would have imagined that I’m making life-and-death decisions. When staffers and kids get sick, I take it personally. It matters to me because I’m the one that has to go up there and make a vote that affects everyone.”
--Melissa Byrd
"It’s going to be a big adjustment,” says Byrd. “We’ve invested a lot of money and received a lot of money from the state for social-emotional learning and mental health learning. There’s going to be a period of getting comfortable... getting to know you... talking about what your experience was like (throughout COVID), kind of getting these kids back into the swing of things."
Byrd is also excited about the return of the many activities that were gone when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“Last year we were really restricted in what we could do. We couldn’t meet in person; we couldn’t have volunteers or visitors on campus. I think everyone’s excited to get back to having all of those fun activities again.”
Byrd wanted to be a teacher her entire life, and now she’s in a position where she makes important decisions that benefit schools, teachers, and students within the district. She was re-elected in 2020, won two elections in two years, and holds the seat until 2024.
But will she run for another term?
“You’re asking me at a really hard time,” she chuckled. “This last year has been so incredibly challenging; more challenging than I ever could have possibly imagined this job being. I don’t think anyone would have imagined that I’m making life-and-death decisions… When staffers and kids get sick I take it personally. It matters to me because I’m the one that has to go up there and make a vote that affects everyone.”
Despite the stress of being a board member at such a critical period, Byrd says she is glad she’s in her current position.
“It’s a lot. But, at the same time, I’m glad that I am in this seat at this very important time. My kids are in these schools, so I’m making decisions that I know are affecting children, adults, and this community.”
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here