school enrollment

The dwindling enrollment in Miami-Dade County Public Schools is not because of competition posed by charter and private schools, the district superintendent said, but a waning of new students coming to the Miami area — including from fewer immigrants coming to the U.S.

The Broward school board has outlined 16 elementary schools, 15 middle schools and three high schools as it considers the second phase of a long-term plan to mitigate the district’s chronic under-enrollment problem through closing, repurposing and consolidating schools. The first phase led to the contentious closure of a school in Lauderhill earlier this year.

A decline in the number of babies being born and a boom in private school vouchers and homeschooling have combined to create an enrollment crisis for public education. The threat is so great that some school districts are trying something that would have once seemed unthinkable.

The Miami-Dade school board is considering transforming underused school sites into early learning centers to address dwindling enrollment numbers. The initiative aims to leverage existing infrastructure instead of building new ones and promote fiscal responsibility.