In Lake County, nearly 1 in 5 K-12 students attend private school

Central Florida sends its children to private school at about the same rate as the rest of Florida. That puts the region well above the nation as a whole.

In Orange County, 15.9% of students enrolled in kindergarten through high school attended a private school, according to Census Bureau estimates covering 2020 through 2024. That matches Florida's share of 15.9% and sits above the U.S. rate of 12.7%, or about 1 in 8.

Behind that percentage are about 36,648 private-school students out of 230,437 enrolled countywide. That is a large group of families whose children are not in public classrooms.

Lake at the top, Osceola at the low end

Lake County has the region's highest share. There, nearly 1 in 5 K-12 students, or 19.4%, attend private school. Seminole County follows at 16.6%, about 1 in 6.

Osceola has the lowest share in the region, at 14.8%. That is still above the national rate.

Measured against the state, those gaps are smaller than they look. Lake's share runs 3.5 percentage points above Florida's, and Osceola's runs 1.1 percentage points below it. Both differences are within the margin of error, as are the even smaller gaps for Seminole and Orange, so every Central Florida county is statistically at the state rate.

Ahead of the Sun Belt peers

Set Central Florida beside the metros it competes with for jobs and new residents, and the contrast sharpens. Hillsborough County, home to Tampa, has a private-school share of 13.6%. Mecklenburg County in the Charlotte area posts the same 13.6%.

Out West, the shares come in lower still. Travis County, home to Austin, is at 11.7%. Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, is at 11.2%. Bexar County, home to San Antonio, is at 9.6%, or nearly 1 in 10.

On these estimates, every Central Florida county ranks above every peer county. Orange places third on the list, behind Lake and Seminole and just ahead of Osceola.

A district built for growth, now planning for less

The census figures stop in 2024, but OCPS's own planning shows the pressure on public enrollment. The district has projected an enrollment drop for the coming school year (clickorlando.com). Local news coverage of that forecast named Florida's expanded school voucher program as one major factor, saying it is shifting families toward private schools and home schooling (clickorlando.com).

That is a sharp turn. Over the past decade, OCPS opened school after school to keep pace with Central Florida's booming population (clickorlando.com). Now the Orange County School Board has approved paying a private vendor to encourage families to re-enroll their children in district schools (clickorlando.com).

The building plan now has a long pause in it. "We don't foresee a need for a new school after the ones that open in 2026 until 2030," a district official said (clickorlando.com).

About the data

We used Census Bureau American Community Survey estimates pooled over 2020 through 2024 to calculate the share of enrolled K-12 students attending private school in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties, Florida, the U.S. and the core counties of peer metros. We compared each Central Florida county with the state using the survey's published margins of error, and ranked the local and peer counties by their point estimates.

• These are survey estimates with margins of error, so small differences between counties may not be real.
• The data covers 2020 through 2024 as a single period and can't show year-to-year shifts or enrollment changes since then.
• The survey does not say why families choose private school or how they pay for it, including whether they use a voucher.

Private-school share: the percentage of students enrolled in kindergarten through high school who attend a private school rather than a public one. Margin of error: the range around a survey estimate within which the true value likely falls; differences inside that range can't be distinguished from no difference. American Community Survey multiyear estimates: Census Bureau figures that pool survey responses collected from 2020 through 2024 to produce more reliable numbers for counties and other local areas.

Sources

• U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey: Sex by School Enrollment by Level of School by Type of School for the Population 3 Years and Over (ACS 5-year 2020–2024), latest period 2024; retrieved Oct. 16, 2026. Data