LAUDERHILL, FLA. (WSVN) - The Broward County School Board is set to hold a meeting on Wednesday morning as they ponder whether to close up to five schools across the district due to low enrollment.
The meeting comes months after school board members held town hall meetings and district workshops to consider various opinions before making their ultimate decision.
The county’s school superintendent, Dr. Howard Hepburn, will present a plan that recommends several changes to some schools and a closure of another.
“We know there’s going to be some hard decisions that have to be made,” Hepburn said in a December interview.
According to his plan, three elementary schools, Coconut Creek Elementary, Hollywood Central Elementary, and Coral Cove Elementary in Miramar, will be converted into K-8 centers while Broward Estates Elementary in Lauderhill, the district’s lowest-enrolled and performing school, will close and be converted to an early learning center.
Additionally, it would consolidate Silver Shores Elementary into two other schools: Silver Palms and Silver Lakes. It would convert Silver Shores campus into a full choice school where students apply to get in. Finally, it would reconfigure Pines Middle School as a 6-12 grade school over a period of time.
Broward School Board Member Lori Alhadeff said it is a good start.
“Dr. Hepburn has come back with this plan in phase one and then based on board action tomorrow, we’ll see what happens,” said Broward School Board Member Lori Alhadeff.
She added that this initial plan can save the district millions of dollars.
“It will save millions of dollars and then we can reallocate those resources to other things, to put back into educating our students. I think that this is a very clear plan for the school board to take a first stab,” said Alhadeff.
The school board chairwoman said the idea of consolidating schools is a step forward.
“We wouldn’t have the operational costs of two schools when you combine two smaller schools together and they run out of one facility,” said Broward School Board Chair Debbi Hixon.
If the school board were to approve phase one, it’s unclear what phase two would look like. However, there is a consensus among school board member that some schools will need to close while others will need to compete.
“We are losing students to that K-8 model. It’s a way of keeping students in a place where they like to be,” said Hixon.
“Parents need to know where they are going to send their kids to school, what’s that going to look like, and I’m very optimistic that Dr. Hepburn will be bringing back a phase two and then even more to condense our district and save us money,” said Alhadeff.
Officials have said for months that the school district is under-enrolled and that they are spending millions of dollars on 45,000 empty seats, which is equivalent to about 50 schools.
The district said school closures are necessary to recoup that lost money.
“The law of economics in education and in public resourcing is that we have 40 to 60 more schools than we can afford,” said Broward School Board Member Allen Zeman
The school board will vote on the superintendent’s plan on Wednesday.
The superintendent’s recommendations would impact the 2025-26 school year.
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