OKEECHOBEE — At the regular meeting of the Okeechobee County School Board on Tuesday, July 14, Superintendent Dylan Tedders presented a review of the district’s accomplishments and progress for the 2025-2026 school year.

This past year, Human Resources recruited, screened, hired and onboarded 58 new employees, including 18 instructional staff members, 39 classified employees, and one administrator.

Food Service served a total of 1,184,201 meals and snacks. Broken down that was 367,579 breakfasts, 777,771 lunches, and 38,851 after-school snacks.

Many capitol projects were completed during the 2025-2026 school year including Phase 2 of Everglades Elementary HVAC system, South Elementary’s roof was completed, the reflooring of building 14 at Central Elementary, as well as all security cameras being updated.

As for academic accomplishments, there were many areas of improvement on state assessments.

For the 2025-2026 FAST Early Literacy assessment Kindergarten scored 60% which is above the state average of 59%. It’s also an improvement over the 52% Kindergarten received for the 2025-2026 school year.

Third grade scored 51% on FAST ELA, up 5% from the previous year.

Some of the biggest improvements were seen in Math testing. Seventh grade scored 63% on FAST Math testing, 10% above the state average and 11% above their 2025-2026 score. Eighth grade scored 34% on FAST Math testing, 10% above their 2025-2026 score.

In addition to testing, 497 students in Okeechobee were CTE Industry certified this past year.