District has spent $159 million of added sales tax revenue since 2022
The half-penny sales tax, approved by voters in 2016 and earmarked specifically for school facility improvements, isn’t keeping up with skyrocketing prices of materials, Osceola School District officials said last week at a School Board workshop session.
Chief Facilities Officer Dave Sharma told School members the uncertainty about the impacts tariffs are going to have on material pricing.
“We’re already dealing with historically high pricing since Covid, which haven’t really corrected themselves, especially when it comes to electrical gear or structural steel… concrete to some extent. And now we still have another uncertainty that’s been thrown on top of it. So we’re trying to manage it the best we can and still keep our projects going forward.”
When the sales tax initiative was passed, the District identified 30 schools that needed reconstruction and improvements. Nine years into the program, six of those schools have been addressed.
“It’s important to note that we have touched every single facility in this district in some form since 2022,” Sharma said. “We are figuring out what the worst is. We’re not letting things fail by any means.”
According to Sharma, the District has spent $159 million of the half-penny sales tax revenue on those projects since 2022.
“But these are not the projects that everyone sees as a splash. It’s not new paint, or ceiling tiles, or new lights,” he said. “It’s mostly going to be HVAC, fire alarm, intercom, things that people don’t see but are necessary for the safe operation of a school.”
Sharma stated that they are spending the money as efficiently as they can with the money they have, but “We can’t spend money we don’t have.”
In 2036, the sales tax is schedule to be up for a voter renewal.
Sharma’s presentation also included updates from the $920 million construction program for the District: Due to issues with the developer bringing the property online, the K-8 school at Roan Bridge won’t be opening this summer as originally planned. In the meantime, the District has rezoned some students who should have attended that school to Hickory Tree Elementary School, bringing its student enrollment to 1,034. Cross Prairie K-8 in Kindred is on schedule to open this May.
High School AAA on Nova Road, which had fallen behind schedule due to issues getting a wetlands permit from the Army Corps, is back on schedule to be completed in May 2026. The nearby East Osceola Transportation and Operations is complete, and staff have moved in. The District plans to begin deploying buses from there next school year. They will restructure routes, as buses will be deploying from West Osceola, which is set to be complete by April 2026, Simpson Road, and East Osceola.
Renovations at Osceola County School for the Arts are continuing, and students should be moved from portables to the new classrooms over Christmas break.
Osceola School Superintendent, Dr. Mark Shanoff, commended Sharma and his team’s work.
“We’ve gone around quite a bit in this district and turned a lot of dirt over with new projects,” Shanoff said. “I think we’re trying to be responsive on a number of different levels … not just instructionally, but also operationally. And I think that our public will start to see a major difference in that. In one case, we’re actually, assisting with traffic because we are now taking buses and putting them in more local areas so you will have fewer buses actually crossing the district, and I think that will help the greater community.”
