FUTURES Foundation for Volusia County Schools’ Turn Around Program

A lawyer in Daytona Beach, Florida, Ted Doran serves as managing partner at Doran, Sims, Wolfe & Ciocchetti. Outside of his work as a lawyer, Ted Doran is a founding member of FUTURES Foundation for Volusia County Schools, which sponsors a number of programs to improve local schools, including the Turn Around program.

The FUTURES Foundation for Volusia County Schools Turn Around program forms part of the area’s drop-out prevention efforts and honors middle and high school students who have shown considerable improvement in several areas, as witnessed by teachers and guidance counselors. The program recognizes one student from each grade level for improvement in attendance, grades, citizenship, and attitude.

Students selected for recognition attend a celebration with their parents and have their names engraved on a plaque on display at their school. Through this program, FUTURES seeks to honor students who have rarely received recognition and reward them for their transformations.

Volusia County Unemployment Rates Decrease as Employers Increase

Ted Doran is a managing partner with Doran Sims Wolfe & Ciocchetti of Daytona Beach, Florida. Actively engaged in the community, Ted Doran is a founding member of Team Volusia, an economic development corporation for Volusia County.

Comprising the Deltona-Daytona Beach-Ormond Beach inclusive metro area, Volusia County is continuing to expand employment opportunities. Employers in Volusia County added 8,000 employees in the last year. Unemployed workers were reduced by 17 percent from the previous year.

The top five industries that added jobs in Volusia County were retail, professional and business services, construction, manufacturing, and leisure and hospitality. 

Volusia County has four main organizations devoted to area economic growth:
- Team Volusia, whose primary purpose is to create new businesses
- Volusia County Economic Development, which encourages sustained economic growth by recruiting new investments
- The CEO Business Alliance, which is composed of CEOs who commit financial resources and time to expanding jobs and job retention 
- The Department of Economic Opportunity, which encourages economic growth through state and federal financial initiatives.

The Volusia County School District

The managing partner of Doran Sims Wolfe & Ciocchetti, Ted Doran has served as school board attorney for Volusia County Schools since 2002. In this role, Ted Doran represented the Volusia County and Monroe County school boards in a case involving the Department of Education.

Located on the east coast of Florida and numbering more than 500,800 residents, Volusia County comprises 16 municipalities, and its largest metro areas are Port Orange, Deltona, Ormond Beach, DeLand, and Daytona Beach. The industries present in the county include tourism, light industry, farming, education, and variety of professions.

The Volusia County school district has more than 62,000 students. The school system has 7,300 employees making it one of the largest employers in the county. Over 50 percent of the employees in the district are skilled teachers, and are all certified by the state. Around 42 percent of the staff instructors possess educational specialist degrees, master’s degrees, or doctorate degrees.

Volusia County Schools is made up of 86 schools including elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as alternative, combination, and charter schools. Along 221 bus routes, 23,433 students are transported daily from 2,255 stops. The student population is diverse and it members speak 88 different languages.

For 2014-2015, the 2015 class received scholarships amounting to $28.6 million. In the American College Test, the district’s composite score is 20.1, exceeding the state average of 19.9. Volusia County Schools’ operating budget for fiscal year 2015-16 was $478 million.

Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce’ Business After Hours Event

A few years after obtaining his juris doctor degree from the University of Florida College of Law and working in a large law firm in Daytona Beach, Ted Doran started his own law office. In addition to his law practice, Ted Doran also served as a board member as well as chairman of the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce unifies the business sector of Daytona Beach by advocating for a strong economic environment. It also serves as a venue for members to share their business with the entire community. To fulfill its vision of improving commerce in the area, the Chamber conducts regular, interactive programs for its members, such as Business After Hours.

Business After Hours develops the professional relationship of the Chamber’s members through a regular networking event. Held every third Tuesday of the month, this program serves as a social gathering for members to expand their network and exchange ideas on how to grow and improve their businesses.

Divisions of the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce

As a managing and senior partner at the Daytona Beach, Florida-based law firm Doran, Sims, Wolfe & Ciocchetti, Ted Doran practices civil litigation and family law and has decades of experience in both areas of law. In addition to his legal work, Ted Doran has served as the chairman of the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce, where he was a board member from 2008 to 2012.

With more than 1,000 members, the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce strives to support a strong economic environment for businesses in the area. The Chamber has been in existence for more than 95 years and includes a diverse variety of local business.

In addition to a board of directors that governs the organization, the Chamber maintains several specialties, including community development, economic development, government relations, membership development, marketing, small business, and special events divisions. Each division focuses on a specific area. For example, the Economic Development Division works to promote tourism -- a significant industry in the region – as well as other business sectors, while the Government Relations Division speaks for Chamber members on issues before local, state, and federal government agencies. For additional information on each division, visit www.daytonachamber.com/departments-and-committees/index.

Another Multimillion-Dollar Win for the State of Florida

For more than three decades, attorney Ted Doran has practiced law in Florida. Ted Doran has dedicated much of his career to counseling state and local government agencies through his Daytona Beach-based law firm, Doran, Sims, Wolfe & Ciocchetti.

In 2013, Doran, Sims, Wolfe & Ciocchetti received a favorable ruling against Branch Banking and Trust Co. (BB&T) in an appeal of a 2012 trial. The firm first represented the State of Florida against The Doctors Company in 2005. It won a $17.9 million judgment and $1.4 million in attorneys’ fees and other legal expenses. The award was the second largest sum received in the state’s history and the reason representatives of the state hired Ted Doran to litigate on its behalf once again.

Ted Doran won $15.5 million for the state after proving that BB&T was withholding $12 million from the receivership estates of First Commercial Insurance Co. and First Commercial Transportation and Property Insurance Co. Ted Doran won an additional award of $2.4 million to pay the state's legal fees and costs.

Ted Doran | Video