School Board debating closing some schools

Campuses with low enrollment could be merged, overhauled as soon as fall 2022

A student exodus has left Broward County schools with a lot of extra seats, and now School Board members say it’s time to consider closing, merging or overhauling half-empty campuses.

The district has lost 51,000 students over the past 15 years, due to the rise of charter schools, concerns about academics and safety and more recently issues related to COVID-19, according to surveys. Now 30% of district schools have enrollment that’s low enough to be considered problematic under district guidelines.

Some school buildings could be sold to bring extra revenue to the district. Some could house district offices or be leased out to other agencies. Others could be converted into pre-kindergarten, vocational or adult learning sites.

“With all of the expectations on us, and to be able to pay teachers more money, we just can’t have schools empty without any students in them and be able to continue to deliver the highest level of services we need to,” School Board member Lori Alhadeff said at a recent meeting.

Board member Donna Korn added, “if we stay spread out with lots of empty seats, that means we’re not being efficient with dollars.”

Any changes would be made after receiving input from communities affected. Some could start as soon as the fall of 2022.

The School Board had a similar discussion in early 2020 but postponed making major changes due to the pandemic.

Broward considers a school to have insufficient enrollment if it has 70% percent or fewer students than it was built to serve. Those below 55% are considered the most critically under-enrolled.

Right now, there are 51 traditional schools below 70%, up from 30 in 2019. During that same time period, the number of schools considered critically under-enrolled has risen from seven to 17.

Many of these schools aren’t able to afford an art, music or physical education teacher or a media specialist to run the library. Several didn’t get musical instruments through the $800 million bond because they can’t afford to teach music.

Pines Middle has gone through a dramatic enrollment drop in recent years, from 1,446 in 2005