South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Concerns over potential redistricting
Which students will be moved from overcrowded school has some communities upset
To ease overcrowding, Broward school district officials say they want to trim Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School’s enrollment by as many as 500 students. And eventually, other overcrowded schools also could face adjustments.
But one of the county’s first priorities is Stoneman Douglas High, one of the most overcrowded schools of them all. It raised the question: Which students would face being relocated? Would it be the teens from Parkland, whose parents moved to the city, in part, for its schools? Or would it be the students from north Coral Springs, who say the school belongs to the district, not just Parkland?
Coral Springs Mayor Scott Brook said he’s heard from his residents who are “definitely upset, definitely concerned.”
He said city borders are not the issue: “It’s not our position to force Tamarac children out of Taravella [High School]. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Still, Parkland children going to Parkland
schools “is my objective,” Parkland Mayor Rich Walker said. “We’re in an unfortunate situation. Obviously, this is unfortunate that anyone would have to move, but the reality is MSD is overcrowded.”
Parkland parents say they are crushed that there’s a possibility they could be forced out of their city’s schools if they aren’t living right next to the school.
“I left my job as a CPA in a pretty great position to be a stay-at-home mom, and we made our decision where to live solely based on where the children would be educated,” said Louanne Peterson, a mom of two girls, one of whom graduated Stoneman Douglas last year. Her other daughter is in middle school. She said it would be hard for the Parkland students to be separated from their friends that they’ve gone to elementary and middle school with “and now make friends outside their neighborhood.”
She also noted the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14, 2018, when a gunman killed 17 people and injured 17 others. “There has been enough psychological trauma in Parkland. They still talk about it all the time.”
“There were other cute things about Parkland but our No. 1 concern was the schools,” she said. “Never in a million years when I was paying Parkland taxes did I think I’d have to be a stone’s thrown away to be in Parkland schools.”
Serving many communities
Stoneman Douglas High, Parkland’s only high school, has been a destination for Parkland residents as well as 1,443 students from north Coral Springs.
Walker said no specific suggestions have
been shared with him about how to ease overcrowding at Stoneman Douglas High, Parkland’s only high school. School officials have only publicly said 300 to 500 students will need to be reassigned elsewhere.
The school’s three-story freshman 1200 building, the site of the 2018 mass shooting, has remained closed and will ultimately be demolished, and the school’s student capacity reflects that, records show. A new classroom building on the southwest side of campus was added to replace the freshman building.
The mayor said he understands his constituents’ cries to keep all of Parkland’s students within the city. Stoneman Douglas High now has about 3,500 students, when its intended capacity is 3,077, district officials said. The school trimmed about 75 students last year who shouldn’t have been at the school by verifying the addresses that students submit to say they live within the zone.
Parkland City Commissioner Jordan Isrow told School Board members at a recent meeting that given the overcrowding, there are stories of “kids sitting on the floor in lunchrooms or issues with the ability to get an education because there are too many kids in the classroom” at Stoneman Douglas.
Broward school district officials did not release a list of other schools that also have overcrowding problems, but said Stoneman Douglas’ problem was of urgent concern.
Judith Marte, deputy superintendent for operations, recently told board members that “there was quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes” and overcrowding at Stoneman Douglas was particularly of “serious concern.”
Parkland’s school won’t be alone for the drawing of new boundary lines: “I do not want the board to believe that we are not looking long term at a plan for rebounding schools. That will be a longer-term process . ... We are acknowledging that we need to do some work as it relates to some of schools where enrollment seems to continue to climb,” she said. “We’ve begun the conversations internally.”
Stoneman Douglas’ district School Board Member, Lori Alhadeff, did not respond to a call or text for comment on the issue.
Seeking solutions
Public meetings for parents who live in the current zone — parents in Parkland and northern Coral Springs, including the upper-class neighborhoods of Wyndham Lakes and Kensington — are scheduled for October and November to air “relief proposals.”
If school officials have a list of ideas to remedy the situation, they haven’t provided them in detail. Their public records only say there are “several options to shift enrollment to surrounding under-enrolled school(s)” but publicly they haven’t yet elaborated.
The under-enrolled schools could include, for example, Coral Glades High
School in Coral Springs. The school currently has 847 reassignment students who live in neighborhoods outside the Coral Springs zone, in an option that allows students, in a lottery process, to pick schools where there’s extra space. In the future, for example, the district could choose to allow fewer reassignment students who don’t live in the area in favor of the overflow Stoneman Douglas students as new boundaries push students south, or east, or both. Under-enrolled schools in Coconut Creek also are a possibility.
School district officials at a recent meeting called it a “journey” to get through the process, which will begin “immediately.”
“We won’t kick the can down the road,” promised School Board Chairman Torey Alston. “I do recognize there are a few things in the hopper and of course we’re going to have to make those tough critical decisions. This board will do that.”
A final decision is expected by March, in time for the next school year.
Still unknown: Whether students rezoned out of the school, but already attending there, will be allowed to stay or required to attend a new school.
School officials have warned at a public meeting that Stoneman Douglas’s overcrowding problem may increase because there are two pending construction projects in Parkland:
City officials said the Falls at Parkland along Loxahatchee Road, immediately west of Parkside Drive, will be an age-restricted community where at least one person must be over age 55. Those will be
349 single-family homes and
106 villas.
The second property is in the northwest corner of Parkland and is in the land-clearing phase. The number of homes has not yet been filed with City Hall “but it’s not a huge parcel,” according to city spokesman Todd DeAngelis.
Redistricting out of Parkland has been broached before, but some previous plans were shot down by furious residents who said they bought their highpriced homes for the A-rated schools, where the three elementary schools and one middle school have mostly been exclusively reserved for Parkland residents.
In 2013, a former School Board member suggested making room in Parkland schools by bussing some Parkland residents to middle schools in Coral Springs and Deerfield Beach. Another proposal included sending children from new developments in Parkland to Deerfield Park Elementary and to Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach. The former city manager reported new homes sales were plummeting as a result.
At the time, after an outcry from Parkland residents, the School Board member shifted course, saying, “After meaningful dialogue and careful consideration, I withdrew and amended the proposals to allow all children in Parkland to attend their community school.”