The next stage of Broward schools' ambitious multi-phase plan to manage dropping enrollment includes the potential consolidation and closure of at least six elementary and middle schools.
The schools are part of the 34 facilities that landed on the district's radar for Phase 2 of the 'Redefining Our Schools' plan intended to mitigate the district’s chronic under-enrollment problem. It involves adding new programs, combining schools, boundary adjustments, school closures and repurposing school sites.
At a school board workshop Tuesday, board members and district officials discussed the feedback given by affected families, including educational opportunities they'd like to see in their communities and concerns about potential impacts.
" These are not just buildings, they're places filled with memories, friendships and pride," board member Rebecca Thompson said at Tuesday's meeting. She represents District 2, home to many of the schools being considered. "So while I think we can say that the decision is difficult for us as board members, it's truly the community, the families, the students and the staff who have to live with them."
Broward County Public Schools has more than 50,000 empty seats. This school year alone the district lost 10,000 students — or the equivalent of 15 elementary schools, according to Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer Valerie Wanza.
Rising competition from charter and private schools, made more accessible through the expansion of school vouchers in Florida, have caused some of this stress. A lack of new families with young kids moving into Broward has been another factor.
Thompson said previous boards "didn't adapt quickly enough" to these changes and shifting enrollment patterns.
"We consistently under invested in maintaining our buildings, in programs, in ways that could have brought our families back and kept the families we have," Thompson said, "so today it is this board's responsibility and our superintendent's to finally face this reality head on."
District staff hosted a series of community meetings in September to gather feedback from families. At Tuesday's school board workshop, board members and district officials discussed the results of those meetings with a slideshow presentation that included summaries of the criticism, school enrollment data and potential strategies for each of the schools under consideration.
Attendees at the community meetings offered a variety of ideas for what can we done with underused sites and priorities of what to preserve as changes come underway. Among the ideas were improving marketing, offering more vocational and academic programs, and reconfiguring grade levels.
Some of the current considerations include closing Northfork Elementary in Fort Lauderdale and leasing it to Junior Achievement for a new education center; closing grades at Plantation Middle; closing Bair Middle in Sunrise; closing Forest Glen Middle in Coral Springs; and combining schools by pairs, leading one of the sites to close or be repurposed. Five new K-8 centers are also potentially on the horizon.
"We are always thinking about the impact of our students," Superintendent Howard Hepburn told WLRN. "It's not about dwindling opportunities, it's not about pushing families away. We're trying to create a better environment that's going to entice more families to take advantage of those options. But as a district, we have to make some tough decisions at this time because this has been a problem that's been ongoing for a very long time."
READ MORE: 'We want our neighborhood school': Pushback as Broward shutters decades-old elementary
In the first phase of the redefining project, one elementary school closed, four elementary schools are becoming K-8 schools and one middle school is growing to be a 6-12 school.
Financial benefits of closing schools
Closing schools is one way to save money as the district loses funds when enrollment dwindles.
One elementary school closure would lead to an estimated $1.8 million in potential savings, according to the district. Shuttering one middle school is an estimated $2.7 million saved and one high school is an estimated $4.3 million.
"As we've mentioned for the past several years, we have more buildings and more campuses than we could possibly afford," board member Allen Zeman said. Maintaining a "surplus" of space means "that we're misappropriating our resources to buildings and ground when we need to be spending money on students."
Zeman has consistently supported an ambitious approach to closing schools.
"I'm going to argue that there's some value in thinking very hard this year about ripping the bandaid off and doing more," he said, making the case to add five or 10 more schools to the chopping block.
Concern for impact on students with disabilities
Of the dozens of parents and community leaders who voiced their opinions at Tuesday's meeting, some raised concerns about the impacts the changes could have on students with special needs.
Nicole Nuñez, mom to first-grader Harrison, who has autism, said she was worried that a repurposing of his school — Panther Run — could lead to him attending a special school for students with autism.
Nuñez cited the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), federal law ensuring children with disabilities be taught alongside non-disabled peers when possible. For her son Harrison, Nuñez said, that has translated into her son's and his peers' individual growth, she said.
Nuñez worried that her son would not have the same exposure to his peers under the proposals. "Those settings isolate and instead, don't allow for choices for my family and for children like Harrison — that would just be devastating."
Jacqui Luscombe, Chair of the Exceptional Student Education Advisory Council, also drew attention to the needs of students with disabilities.
" I want to appeal for you to be mindful of how students with disabilities are even being spoken about in this process," Luscombe told the board. "These students cannot be spoken about as collective classes — they should be being spoken about individually," she added.
" As far as Redefining overall, our ESE, our students with special needs population is always in the forefront and we're very inclusive," Heprburn told WLRN. "We just don't typically pull that subgroup out in our data because they're always in the forefront of how we're gonna address their needs."
Other parents were enthusiastic about the prospect of a specialized school for students with autism.
Board member Zeman recognized that a school or educational plan that works for one student may not work for another.
"We have to kind of recognize the diversity of thought amongst the parents and for what works for all students on the spectrum — not just some students," Zeman said.
Tuesday's meeting did not include final decisions on the schools' futures, rather it was one of the many meetings planned as the board considers strategies for the second phase of the initiative.
Decisions made for Phase 2 of 'Redefining Our Schools' would be implemented for the 2026-27 school year.
