Who says South Florida doesn't have roots? When school starts Monday, some of the kids showing up in their trendy new Hollister skirts and Bratz backpacks will be the third or even fourth generations of their families to walk those same hallowed halls. For such a transient place, tradition is strong -- and everywhere.

The Evans family of Southwest Miami-Dade County has sent 15 students from three generations to Epiphany Catholic School since 1959.

William Noble, now 78 and living in Miami Lakes, can still sing most of the fight song from Miami Senior High, from which he graduated in 1946: ''Hurrah for the blue and gold, may it wave in something something forever.'' And he can show you his mother's yearbook from Miami High, dated 1916, when her favorite cheer was ``Sis boom, zip bang, boo boo boo or something.''

In Fort Lauderdale, the extended Singletary family has given three generations of cheerleaders to Dillard High -- one of whom started as a cheerleading mascot at age 5.

How far we've come.

In what today is Miami-Dade County, the first school opened in 1887, in a palmetto-thatched log house near Dinner Key in Coconut Grove. It had 10 students counting ''Little Joe,'' who was technically too young but included to meet minimum enrollment criteria -- one of the last times the system would have to cope with under-enrollment. Today it has 398 public schools with 353,216 students, the fourth-biggest school system in the country.

Broward's first schools opened in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach in 1899, while it was still part of Dade County. Today the county has 280 public schools with 259,604 students, the country's sixth-biggest system.

The halls of those schools are filled with ghosts of students past.

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