Tuesday’s Broward County School Board workshop meeting produced more clarity on the direction of the district’s “Redefining Schools” process.
The district’s School Boundary Committee recommended converting some schools to the K-8 model and the 6-12 model, and some other changes to deal with declining enrollment, but it’s not as bold as the original marching orders were.
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“It is the Broward County School Board that promised Broward County that we would close five schools, and we aren’t talking about closing five schools anymore,” said board member Dr. Allen Zeman during the meeting.
In fact, the only school that appears to be on the endangered list is Broward Estates Elementary, which has the lowest enrollment in the district. It would be converted into an early childhood learning center and its current students would go to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School.
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“This seems like a winner all around,” said board member Dr. Jeff Holness.
The community wanted that change. Right now, there’s a waiting list of 4,000 families in that area who want early education services.
Superintendent Dr. Howard Hepburn thinks the community in general will be happy and doesn’t need to brace for shocks.
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“So it’s nothing to really brace for, I think the public’s gonna really learn that we’ve listened to them, we’ve collected all of their feedback,” Hepburn said.
The boundary committee recommended Hollywood Central, Coral Cove, and Coconut Creek elementary schools be converted to K-8 schools, and Pines Middle School would be a 6-12 academy. It also suggested combining Silver Lakes and Silver Shores elementary schools, and part of Silver Shores would be moved to Silver Palms Elementary School.
The goal is to reverse declining enrollment.
“What this does is it provides other options in the district for parents to choose because they don’t have that option here and they’re seeking it elsewhere, another thing we’re doing is extensive programmatic enhancements,” said deputy superintendent Dr. Valerie Wanza.
“That communication is fabulous but the challenge we have as a school board is how do we stitch together 239 campuses and 206 schools to serve 197,000 students when we used to have 250,000 students and that’s still a challenge we have not lived up to yet,” Zeman said.
He suggested the district should be looking to close at least 40 schools, so that resources and money can be consolidated.
“This is just the initial phase, this is phase one of redefining, we’re gonna have an additional phase, starting a phase two, immediately after the board votes in January, so we know there’s some hard decisions that have to be made,” Hepburn said in response to Zeman’s point.
The superintendent will release his recommendations on Wednesday. He says it will be "very similar" to the proposal discussed at Tuesday’s workshop meeting, and the school board will vote on it in January.
