Enrollment and facilities could determine which Broward schools close, says superintendent
The Broward School Board held its first workshop about school closings Wednesday, and at one point Superintendent Peter Licata asked the nine board members to define how low they thought that student enrollment has to be at a school to consider closing or repurposing it.
He got nine different answers.
Still, Licata said he got the guidance he needed and will propose specific actions on the next board meeting on April 16. Licata said he will create a “list of proposals” including academic changes, school mergers and partnerships with cities.
“It’s going to be a large menu format, and we’ll talk through it,” he said.
After the Wednesday workshop, Lori Alhadeff, the board’s chair, told the press that they succeeded because they exchanged ideas in a public format, and that was their goal.
“It was a very robust conversation that the board had,” Alhadeff said. “It’s our way … to basically talk to the superintendent and let him know what we are thinking as a School Board — we all have different ideas, what’s important to us — and then kind of give it to him and leave it up to Dr. Licata to sift through that information and be able to come back to us with his thoughts as far as moving forward.”
Last July, the Broward School Board directed Licata to close or repurpose at least five schools by 2025. “Repurposing” means the school district could use an entire school campus or part of it for other purposes like affordable housing, daycares or technical classes.
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Broward school district officials haven’t released a list yet of schools they’re considering to close or repurpose, but the board wants to vote on a final implementation plan in June. Licata has said there “could be” up to 30 to 40 schools out of the total 239 that end up being affected.
Board members want to close or repurpose schools because the district has lost about 58,000 students in the last 20 years — a trend they expect will continue — and that loss of students has translated to a loss of millions of dollars every year.
Enrollment, facilities condition could define schools’ future
On Wednesday, Zoie Saunders, the district’s chief strategy and innovation officer, said Licata’s team wants to use two main criteria to pick which schools to impact: the schools’ enrollment levels and the facilities’ conditions.
The last time the Broward school district assessed its facilities was in 2014, so the district is in dire need to do it again and is in the process of hiring an outside company to do it, Saunders said. In the meantime, the district will deploy internal teams to start gathering information.
Because of the lack of data on facilities, Licata focused on enrollment Wednesday, asking board members to define a baseline on how empty a school has to be to be considered.
READ MORE: Which Broward schools may be at risk of closing? Enrollment numbers may provide answers
“My objective today is having a specific range of schools, starting with enrollment as the primary criteria to begin the process,” he said at the top of the meeting.
One by one, each of the nine board members delivered mixed messages.
Sarah Leonardi and Debra Hixon both said that the district should consider schools operating at or under 60% of their capacity. Jeff Holness put that number at 55% and Nora Rupert even lower at 50%.
But others declined to give a number.
Instead of citing a percentage, Daniel Foganholi said he already expected Licata to have filtered it down on his own before Wednesday’s meeting.
“A lot of people expected to see names today,” he said. “I really wanna get to the solution right now.”
Torey Alston agreed with him: “I, too, was expecting this update to be a little different … I was expecting to get some type of list.”
Alston also said he doesn’t want Licata to guide decisions based on low enrollment because the list of 67 schools that are most under enrolled are located in “heavily Black and Hispanics areas.”
“This list clearly focuses on certain communities, certain populations ... This is not equitable,” he said.
READ MORE: Will any high schools in Broward close? Superintendent discusses after latest meeting
Similarly, Brenda Fam said that low enrollment shouldn’t be a main factor because some of those schools are under-enrolled because the district has neglected them for years, in what she called a “vicious cycle.”
“If you’re not going to invest, how are you going to blame people for not coming?” she said.
Allen Zeman didn’t provide a number either. He said he wants to see more data on all schools before filtering down the list of schools the district could possibly close or repurpose.
Alhadeff, who spoke last, said she wants the board to use facilities data to guide the decision. She then asked Licata whether he got what he needed.
“I am confident that I got the viewpoints of everyone in a public setting, that I have enough criteria to move forward,” Licata said.
Will the Broward School Board close any schools?
Still, at times, it didn’t seem clear if the board will end up closing schools or not.
At least three board members — Holness, Leonardi and Hixon — voiced some level of hesitation about closing schools on Wednesday.
“I’m not adverse to closing schools; I just don’t think we need to close five,” Hixon said, adding she wants to close one or two.
Leonardi said she “accepts” the idea of closing schools, but she doesn’t think the district “necessarily” has to do it.
Holness said: “Closing schools is not off the table; it’s just a last resort for me.”
Conversely, at least three other board members embraced the change wholeheartedly.
Foganholi said closing schools doesn’t have to be the last option, and if it’s the best solution then it should be the first option.
Alston also said the board should be more open about the need to downsize.
“We are not being openly honest as a board with the community,” he said. “We know we have too many schools. We are under-enrolled. Those are facts.”
READ MORE: ‘Let’s look at the root causes’: Community weighs in on potential Broward school closures
Zeman described the idea as a “grand opportunity” to reallocate resources and improve the quality of education in Broward Public Schools.
“Every school closing is a loss, and every school closing is a gain,” he said.
“I have a vision about what Broward County can look like after these decisions are done. It’s a Broward County with an extra hour of instruction in every elementary school that’s leftover. It has funding for after-school academic programs. It has funding for summer school academic programs for every child that gets behind on academics. And its primary goal is to rebuild the K-3 system so that 100% of our students are proficient by the end of third grade,” he added. “That vision is possible only with real change … and in the end closing some schools.”
This story was originally published March 20, 2024 at 5:05 PM.
