Should half-empty schools be renovated?

Broward School Board decides yes for one

The Broward School Board is spending millions renovating nearly half-empty schools, prompting a bitter debate Tuesday about whether that’s a wise use of tax dollars.

About 30 schools have enrollments below 70% of their capacity, which is low enough to trigger a review of whether they should be closed, combined with another school or used in a new way. One of those is Plantation Middle, where the cost to renovate the school has nearly doubled from $3.4 million to $6.6 million due mainly to increased roofing costs.

The other schools on the list are also either being renovated or have work planned.

Superintendent Robert Runcie has maintained that regardless of what happens to the schools, they still need working roofs and air conditioners.

The Plantation Middle project includes a $200,000 renovation to the school’s media center, or library, which may not be needed if the school no longer remains a middle school, Nathalie Lynch-Walsh, vice chairwoman of the district’s Facilities Task Force, told the board.

“It’s one thing to fix the roof. It’s another thing to pay for renovations that may or may not be necessary if it suddenly becomes an office building or community school,” she said. “Now you’ve thrown money out the window and set fire to it.”

Board member Robin Bartleman agreed: “Are we going to enter into all these contracts, take on all these expenditures and next year we’re going to decide we’re not even going to use it?”

Bartleman’s comments angered several School Board members, who said these schools have been under-enrolled for years. They questioned why the renovation work, approved in 2014, was only now being questioned.

Although Plantation Middle, which has half the students it was built to hold, has been on a district list of critically under-enrolled schools for several years, officials said Tuesday they planned to keep it open as a middle school for the foreseeable future.

‘If there’s a conversation about

repurposing Plantation that myself and the community is not aware of, it’s going to be a major problem,” said board member Rosalind Osgood, whose district includes the school. “The media center is disgusting. We renovated a lot of other media centers in a lot of other areas. Kids in Plantation deserve the same.”

Board member Patti Good, whose Miramar and Pembrokes Pines district includes six of the 30 schools, was livid, fearing Bartleman might start questioning renovations at her schools. Good said no decisions should be made about changes to schools or bond projects without discussing it with communities affected.

“That’s what needs to be done. Not here at the fifth hour making sounds bites in the news so [Bartleman] can get her point across,” Good said. “Now my community is watching. The community in Plantation is watching. Now we’re going to have to deal with that issue. It’s irresponsible. I’m so upset, I can’t even begin to tell you.”

Although ideas of what to do with 30 low-enrolled schools were discussed at a Feb. 11 workshop, Runcie and several board members got angry when the South Florida Sun Sentinel named them in a recent story, alarming parents and elected officials in affected areas including Plantation, Tamarac, Miramar and Hollywood. Runcie and board Chairwoman Donna Korn sent a letter to all district parents and staff members calling the story “misleading,” and emphasizing that no changes would take effect for at least a year, and no decisions would be made without community input, statements which were both included in the story.

The letter also said enrollment was only one factor the district would consider when deciding to close or change a school, with others being “overall financial impact, conditions of the building and any potential negative impact of the educational experience of our students.”

Bartleman dropped her idea to delay Plantation High renovations after Osgood said vacant space at the school is being used by staff members in the district’s safety and security division. The School Board approved the project unanimously. But Bartleman said the board should still consider whether to make changes to other projects in the bond, approved by voters in 2014. The program is over budget by $436 million and an inspector told the School Board last month that it could be 2032 before all work is done due to a shortage of roofers.

“I’m not going to rubberstamp every contract for every project we said in 2014 we’ve got to do,” Bartleman said. “Things have changed. Our reserve balance changed. How much roofs are costing us has changed. I’m not going to approve every last thing in the book even if we don’t need it.’”