About 30 schools in the Broward County (Fla.) district could close, merge with other schools or convert into a new type of facility as the district looks for ways to deal with under-capacity campuses.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that many of these schools with declining enrollment are in the southern part of the county, where thousands of students have transferred to charter schools.
Most changes would likely take place in the 2021-22 school year. The school board plans to review some tentative ideas in May.
“This is not an easy conversation to have,” Superintendent Robert Runcie says.
Enrollment in the district, the nation's sixth largest, has dropped about 30,000 in the past 15 years, mostly because of charter schools and to a smaller degree private school vouchers. The demographics also have changed in Broward County; most growth is among adults without school-aged kids.
Chief Financial Officer Judith Marte has predicted another drop of 4,000 students for 2020-21.
The district considers a school to have insufficient enrollment if it has 70% percent or fewer students than it was built to serve. Many of these schools aren’t able to afford an art, music or physical education teacher or a media specialist to run the library.
“We are doing a disservice to our students by keeping them in these critically under-enrolled schools,” board member Laurie Rich Levinson says. “The opportunities are not as great as when you have the full breadth of options.”
Nine schools have enrollment below 55% capacity, making them the most likely to be affected.
District administrators say they will pay close attention to situations where several schools with low enrollment are close to each other and easily could be combined.
School Board members have said that they are reluctant to sell or abandon unneeded schools because of state requirements that charter schools be given access to them. They fear that could end up drawing more students away from district-run schools.