Orange County Public Schools could sell a vacant 6-acre campus on Waltham Avenue for $1.5 million, with Cornerstone Charter Academy named as the highest bidder for the long-empty former Pine Castle Elementary site. The Orange County School Board was considering the proposed sale.
The property sits next to Cornerstone Charter Academy and has been vacant since Pine Castle Elementary closed several years ago, according to WKMG ClickOrlando. Cornerstone was named as the highest bidder for the parcel, and the proposed agreement would still let OCPS use the property when needed, even after a sale. Board documents indicate Cornerstone plans to use the land as recreational space, such as sports fields.
District officials had considered other uses for the property before school consolidations shifted those plans elsewhere, the outlet reported, with OCPS relocating the original project to a different building. The proposed sale would bring in $1.5 million.
A District Squeezed by Shrinking Enrollment
The potential sale comes as OCPS grapples with a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall tied to fewer students walking through its doors. District officials said OCPS lost about $23 million this fiscal year, largely because of declining enrollment, per ClickOrlando's reporting. The district has already consolidated seven schools as it works to adjust to the smaller student body.
That enrollment slide has been steep and well documented elsewhere. Enrollment declined by 7,672 students from the 2025-26 school year through the 2026-27 10-day count, according to the West Orange Times & Observer. The district has also cut more than 200 district-level positions and trimmed district-level budgets by 5% over the past two years, and it approved a 2026-27 budget of $7,907,359,217 in September that included an $8.5 million reduction to central-office spending.
The Orlando Sentinel reported in September that current enrollment was about 8,000 students lower than it had been that spring, with nearly 40 elementary schools falling below the student counts officials consider necessary for financial stability. District leaders said at the time they did not plan to close any campuses during the current school year.
Conflicting Accounts of the Bidder
Not every account of the Pine Castle property agrees on who wants it. An earlier Citizen Portal report on a Belle Isle letter of intent identified the Era Foundation as the apparent bidder, citing a reported offer and appraisal of $1,210,000 — a figure and a name that differ from ClickOrlando's more recent reporting naming Cornerstone Charter Academy as the highest bidder for the $1.5 million sale. It is not clear from available reporting how the two accounts relate to each other.
