School Board weighs how to bring students back
Hollywood families who have been fleeing Broward’s public schools will have several new options in the coming years if the School Board approves proposals designed to lure their children back.
The board has been brainstorming ways to improve Hollywood’s schools, especially its middle schools, and stop families’ flight to charter schools. The board decided Tuesday to research several proposals to combine elementary and middle schools to be called K-8s and add middle school grades to Hollywood Hills High School.
“The public schools take such a bad rap in Hollywood,” said board member Ann Murray, who represents the area.
“In this particular city, we’ve lost market share,” board member Donna Korn said.
The district noticed many of Broward’s most popular charter schools, including Renaissance, Franklin Academy and Somerset Academy, are K-8 schools, and is now looking at that elementary middle model to satisfy parents who seek a more secure atmosphere for their vulnerable preteens. Broward schools at both the elementary and middle school level have lost students in recent years. District-run elementary schools have lost about 20,000 students in the past 15 years, while middle schools have declined by 10,000.
High school enrollment has been more stable, as fewer charter schools, which are public schools that are privately managed, have wanted to invest in popular but costly programs such as athletics and band.
Parents have expressed dissatisfaction with Hollywood-area middle schools, including Crated Driftwood Middle, C-rated Olsen Middle and Attucks Middle, which got a B from the state last year but had gotten Cs the previous two years.
The grades and other factors, such as student populations that are more than 80 percent minority, have caused the schools to become under-enrolled. Attucks has 404 fewer students than it can hold, while Driftwood has room for 275 more students.
The enrollment trends spurred Hollywood officials and
residents to come up with their own ideas to keep families in schools in the city, including adding 6th, 7th and 8th graders to Hollywood Hills High.
To accommodate the middle schoolers, one idea was to move the high school’s JROTC academy to another Broward campus. The School Board rejected that idea Tuesday after an outcry from students and parents.
“This entire proposal smacks of racism and socioeconomic elitism,” said Dale Miller, whose two daughters attend the academy. “This backward-thinking proposal is a throwback to the 1950s. Find another way to do it.”
“Please don’t move the academy,” parent Robert Buonomo told the board. “It’ll hurt a lot of kids and hurt a lot of families.”
The city’s proposal also called for the creation of a “Hollywood Central K-8 School,” which would add 300 seats for middle school students at Hollywood Central Elementary. The elementary school has room for 709 students but only 416 attend now.
The board is also considering other Hollywood school mergers, including Driftwood Elementary combining with Driftwood Middle and Mary M. Bethune Elementary merging with nearby Attucks Middle.
The board will have another workshop on school mergers in the coming months and will conduct public hearings in February and March. Any board-approved changes would be implemented in the 2020-21 academic year.