Orange County Public Schools is preparing to break ground this summer on a $62.5 million comprehensive renovation of Ocoee Middle School — a project that would rebuild much of the 180,000-square-foot campus on 20 acres at 300 South Bluford Avenue, add a regulation 400-meter track and field, gut and rebuild the kitchen, replace all mechanical and plumbing systems, and install 26 temporary portable classrooms starting in March. Substantial completion is targeted for spring 2028.
But for homeowners along South Lakeshore Drive, just downhill from the school, the project raises a question that’s more personal than any construction timeline: Will it finally stop the flooding — or make it worse?
Three residents told Ocoee city commissioners at a Feb. 17 meeting that runoff from the school has been damaging their homes for years. An engineering report obtained after the meeting shows the new stormwater system would cut peak runoff toward their homes by more than half. But the night of the presentation, OCPS didn’t bring the civil engineer who designed the system — and commissioners tore into them for it.
Years of flooding on Lakeshore Drive
One homeowner on South Lakeshore Drive, downhill from the school, told commissioners she has lived on the street since 1985 and has replaced the flooring in her home three times because of water running off the school property. A French drain installed on the back of the school property years ago, she said, was never maintained.
Patricia Robertson, whose parents built their home on South Lakeshore Drive in 1976, said the water problems started when the middle school was rebuilt. “We did not have a water issue until the middle school was rebuilt,” Robertson said. She described spending thousands of dollars on new drain fields, French drains and waterproofing. “The retention pond that was there and built there whenever the middle school was rebuilt did nothing except overflow and come down into our yards and our houses.”
Robertson also raised concerns about privacy and noise from the planned track, which would bring athletic events closer to the homes along Lakeshore Drive. Justin Jansen of South Lakeshore Drive echoed the drainage concerns.
No engineer at the table
OCPS sent a four-person team to the presentation: Andy Orrell from facilities communications, Tamara Pelk from real estate and planning, Tom Wannen from HuntonBrady Architects, and Freddy Torres from Williams Company. But no civil engineer was present — and commissioners noticed.
Commissioner Scott Kennedy, who said his day job is as a CPA and certified construction industry financial professional, called the absence glaring.
“You have been questioned with some very specific questions that have very quantifiable answers — should have quantifiable answers,” Kennedy said. “Runoff rate, flood rates, water flow rate. We see every project come this way, and your answers are all qualitative. Well, what is the engineering on the watershed? ‘Well, it was rigorous.’ That doesn’t mean anything.”
Kennedy pointed to a fundamental problem: OCPS, as a sovereign entity under Florida law, does not go through the city’s standard planning and zoning or site plan review processes. Under Section 1013.33 of the Florida Statutes, school districts are exempt from local building codes, building permits and associated fee assessments, though they must demonstrate consistency with local comprehensive plans.
“You’re sovereign. You don’t go through any standard processes that any other project in this city that affects our residents goes through,” Kennedy said. “You haven’t had the formal meetings with our citizens, P&Z, open to the public. You haven’t had a site plan review that comes to us.”
He told the OCPS team directly: “Your answers, with respect, are really, really, really bad.”
Orrell, the OCPS communications representative, apologized for the absence of an engineer and said he had been told the appearance would be a routine update. “I did not bring our engineer, and I apologize for that,” Orrell said.
What the engineering report says about the flooding
The numbers Kennedy demanded that night do exist — in a stormwater design report prepared by the project’s civil engineering firm, AVCON, Inc., and submitted to the St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) under Environmental Resource Permit No. 45498. OCPS spokesperson Michael Ollendorff provided the report in response to interview questions.
The report, dated July 2025 and publicly available at flwaterpermits.com, shows the renovation would add three dry retention ponds with a combined capacity of roughly 1 million gallons. In a typical annual rainstorm, the model shows zero stormwater discharge off the site — all of it captured on campus. In a major 25-year storm (8.60 inches of rain in 24 hours), peak runoff flowing toward the Lakeshore Drive homes would drop from 9.4 cubic feet per second to 4.5 cfs — a 52% reduction.
The report’s baseline comparison isn’t the current school campus. It’s the land before the school was ever built: 21.9 acres of woods and grass with no pavement, no buildings, no impervious surface. OCPS’s position is that after the renovation, the Lakeshore Drive neighbors would be better off than they were before the school existed.
Tom Wannen, AIA, an associate principal at HuntonBrady Architects, had tried to explain this at the meeting. He said new retaining walls would replace the sloped terrain that currently sends water rolling downhill onto neighboring properties. “Instead of a hill, there’s going to be a wall,” Wannen said. “The water that’s falling on there is being captured on site, not rolling down onto the adjacent population.”
Wannen said the stormwater design would reduce runoff “to below the conditions existing before the school existed.” The engineering report supports that claim for the eastern side of the campus — the side facing the Lakeshore Drive homes.
Wannen also said AVCON analyzed the neighboring septic systems — which he acknowledged may not have been properly permitted when originally installed — and concluded the new stormwater ponds would not impact them.
Michael Ollendorff, a spokesperson for OCPS, said the stormwater design was approved by SJRWMD and “addresses the issues that the residents are raising.” He said a fourth in-person community meeting will be scheduled but no date has been set. OCPS has held three previous community meetings at the 30%, 60% and 100% design stages.
Mayor Rusty Johnson had suggested lining the retention ponds to prevent underground seepage — a technique the city uses for some of its own ponds near Starke Lake. Ollendorff said lining the ponds is “not feasible” and “does not align with what SJRWMD recommends for the site.” The site sits in the Wekiva Recharge Protection Basin, where state rules prioritize soaking stormwater into the ground rather than piping it elsewhere — the opposite of what pond liners would do.
‘Why not build a new school?’
Several commissioners questioned the fundamental premise of the project: whether $62.5 million should be spent renovating a 25-year-old campus rather than building a new school.
Commissioner George Oliver III argued at length that the money would be better spent constructing a new K-8 school. He said OCPS owns land on Ingram Road that has been plotted for a school for years and estimated a new K-8 would cost between $55 million and $100 million — comparable to the renovation budget.
“Why don’t we just take that money, build a new school, go to the old school over here, move those students from that school to this new school?” Oliver said. He proposed that once students were relocated, the old campus could be renovated with less impervious surface, addressing the drainage problems, and then students could be split between the two schools to reduce overcrowding.
Oliver said the city has more than 55,000 residents served by three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school, and accused OCPS of using charter school enrollment numbers to keep public school populations below the threshold that would trigger new construction.
But enrollment data provided by school board member Melissa Byrd complicates that argument. According to Byrd, Ocoee Middle School’s current enrollment is 1,147 students in a facility built for 1,261 — meaning the school is below capacity. Byrd said all Ocoee-area schools are currently under capacity.
Byrd said a charter school opened in the area and absorbed students who would have attended Ocoee Middle, reducing enrollment below the threshold that would have triggered construction of a new relief school. “A relief school for Ocoee Middle School was built, just not by OCPS,” Byrd said. She said OCPS had been close to building a school on Ingram Road, but the charter school’s opening made it unnecessary under the state’s funding model.
“The state funding model requires you to have enough students to fill the seats,” Byrd said. She said OCPS cannot build a new school when existing schools are under capacity because the state will not fund empty seats.
Commissioner Richard Firstner said the $62.5 million “isn’t doing a thing to increase the educational value to our students” and called on OCPS to focus on filling teacher vacancies and increasing school capacity.
Kennedy, in a written response to interview questions on Feb. 18, said his criticism was not about cost. “I know Williams Co. and the bid process produces a market rate for the project,” Kennedy said. But he said the money may be better spent elsewhere. “I agree with fellow commissioners that the priorities may best be at the Ingram Road site.”
Kennedy said “the project as presented is ‘really, really bad’ for Ocoee citizens that live near the school and that is my obligation to advocate for them.” He deferred to the city for further comment on the details and said not enough time had passed for OCPS to respond to the city’s concerns.
Commissioners Wilsen and Oliver did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Orlando Monitor.
The city’s limited role
According to Rumer, OCPS did not share the stormwater engineering data with the city after the meeting. City public works staff retrieved the documents themselves from the SJRWMD permit file, reviewed them, and sent drainage comments to OCPS on Feb. 20 — three days after the commission meeting, according to Michael Rumer, the assistant city manager.
Kennedy had said he hoped OCPS would “work with our DSC to improve the project” — a reference to the city’s Development Services review process. Rumer said that review has not begun. He said it would involve routing the full set of civil drawings to the city’s engineering, utilities, public works stormwater, planning, police and fire rescue departments for comment. But because OCPS is sovereign, the plans would not go to the City Commission for approval. “Comments would only be informal,” Rumer said. “This would at least make us aware of what is being constructed and determine if any issues are worthy of escalating.”
The city does not have a formal position on whether the $62.5 million would be better spent on a new school, Rumer said. “It is strictly a school board decision.”
Rumer said he could not comment on whether the city has received drainage complaints from residents about the school property, saying he needed to discuss the matter with the public works department.
Byrd: ‘I was not aware’ of the meeting
Mayor Rusty Johnson criticized school board member Byrd for not attending the Feb. 17 presentation. “We ain’t heard a word out of her,” Johnson said. “Never do we hear anything out of her.”
Byrd said she was not aware the presentation was happening. “I was not aware of the presentation to the City of Ocoee Commission on February 17th,” Byrd said. “It was a breakdown in communication within the district which we have addressed.”
Byrd said she first heard about the flooding concerns in January — not from OCPS, but from a resident email chain that was primarily about traffic near the school. “No one in our office, no one at OCPS to my knowledge, and no one at the school recalls having heard about these flooding concerns prior to January of this year,” Byrd said.
She said she met with Commissioner Oliver on the day of the community meeting. Byrd said the stormwater design was vetted by SJRWMD for both Starke Lake and the Wekiva Recharge Zone.
Community outreach questioned
Commissioner Rosemary Wilsen said she attended the OCPS Zoom meeting held in January and saw fewer than 10 participants. She said she had known about the Lakeshore Drive drainage problems for years and had visited residents’ homes — an account that conflicts with Byrd’s statement that no one at OCPS or the school recalls hearing about flooding concerns before January.
“I’m disappointed because I feel the school board, as us, should be more receptive to our residents who live around us,” Wilsen said. “Find out what’s going on. You’re putting all of basically our tax dollars into this and you’re not asking.”
She told OCPS that when residents are educated and included early, they become partners — but when they’re left out, “they become adversaries.”
Orrell said OCPS had held three previous community meetings at the 30%, 60% and 100% design stages, and committed to holding an in-person meeting before construction begins. “We’re going to be there for at least another 25 years,” Orrell said.
Dr. Jim Moyer, an elected supervisor with the Orange Soil and Water Conservation District, questioned whether the stormwater design accounts for future climate conditions. “The experts are saying that the extreme weather conditions coming in the next 25 years have only occurred four times in 1,200 years,” Moyer said. “Are you planning for now what you think is now, or you planning for 20 or 25 years in the future?”
OCPS did not directly answer the question. The AVCON report models the 25-year, 24-hour storm (8.60 inches of rainfall) as its design event, which is the standard SJRWMD regulatory requirement. The report does not address climate projections beyond the regulatory standard.
Construction is expected to begin this summer, with portables arriving as early as March. Lakeshore Drive will see temporary construction traffic during portable installation in March and again during track construction in 2027, though OCPS committed to keeping the gate on that road closed to non-emergency traffic after construction is complete.
OCPS said a fourth in-person community meeting will be scheduled, but has not set a date.