Grand jury findings that prompted Governor Ron DeSantis to suspend four school board members in Broward County, also include concerns about incidents within Orange County Public Schools. The report cites incidents at schools in the Apopka area involving a sexual assault between students, a sexual assault on a student by a teacher, and students attacking school resource officers.

What You Need To Know

  • A grand jury came up with findings that prompted Governor Ron DeSantis to suspend four Broward County School Board members

  • The grand jury’s report also included findings involving sexual assaults and other incidents at Apopka-area OCPS schools

  • Investigators say school administrators did not cooperate with police responding to the complaints

A grand jury reports while it did not find widespread fraud in the reporting of incidents within OCPS, it found problems in schools in the Apopka area where investigators say school administrators didn’t cooperate with police, including “concerted efforts to not only suppress the reporting of incidents but also actively hamper police investigations.” The grand jury also found the situation got so bad in 2016, the Apopka Police Chief wrote a letter to the Orange County School Board documenting multiple instances where school administrators got complaints of sex crimes, but failed to report the incidents to law enforcement or the Department of Children and Families.

Orange County School Board Vice-Chair Melissa Byrd, who represents the Apopka area of the school district, was elected to the board in 2018 after vowing to make schools safer.

“The first time I was hearing about any of this was when I was reading it in those reports, so yeah, I was devastated to say the least, and it is not what we’ve been working hard for these past few years,” said Byrd.

The grand jury says it also found evidence that after students attacked school resource officers in the 2018-2019 school year, and police asked those students to be removed from school, those students remained in school and one of them brought a gun to school—and used it in a shooting incident just off school grounds right after dismissal. And the grand jury found that in 2019, after one student took video of another student using the restroom and shared that with other students, school administrators investigating the incident “actually instructed the perpetrator’s guardian to destroy the video—negatively affecting any criminal case.”

Byrd says since she’s been on the school board, she’s made working side-by-side with police a priority.

“Strengthening that relationship, making sure the police department and the school district are working well together and when issues happen on school campuses they are reported immediately,” said Byrd.

Spectrum News reached out to Apopka Police Chief Mike McKinley, who says his department has worked with Orange County School administrators over the past several years to make sure both parties know what should be reported to law enforcement, saying in part “we have been assured that the crimes occurring on school campuses are being reported to our SROs to be investigated.”

“We talk all the time. I ask him if everything is okay, how is everything going, and he tells me if he needs help with anything,” said Byrd.

“And that’s why I was so shocked by reading this report, because that is not the reality that I see every day and the reality when I talk to him.”

A spokesperson for Orange County Public Schools said while student safety is their highest priority, they do not comment on specific security matters.

There’s no sign of impending action against any Orange County school board members or administrators. A spokesperson for Governor DeSantis’s office said, “there are no other suspensions to announce at this time.”