3 Broward schools would close, others would change under proposal

Three Broward schools would close and a number of others in the southern half of the county would face major changes, under a proposal Superintendent Howard Hepburn is recommending to deal with declining enrollment.

Broward Estates Elementary in Lauderhill, Olsen Middle in Dania Beach and Oakridge Elementary in Hollywood would close under the proposed plan presented Monday night at a town hall at Hollywood Hills High.

While Broward Estates and Olsen are both identified as severely underenrolled, Oakridge is 76% full and hadn’t made a district list of schools with an enrollment concern. However, it’s D-rated and has dated facilities, Alan Strauss, a district administrator, told those attending Monday night’s town hall.

Broward Estates could become an early learning center, Olsen may be converted into district administrative space, while Oakridge could be sold and possibly used for workforce housing, Strauss said.

Three schools are being considered for changes to their grade configurations, according to a PowerPoint presentation shared Monday night. Pines Middle in Pembroke Pines would become a 6-12 “college academy” similar to Millennium 6-12 in Tamarac, which was recently ranked as the district’s top performing high school by U.S. News & World Reports.

Hollywood Central Elementary would become a K-8. Sunland Academy in Fort Lauderdale would switch from a K-3 to a traditional K-5 school.

The School Board is expected to vote on any final recommendations June 18. The proposed changes would take effect during the 2025-26 school year.

Another proposal would convert the underenrolled Bennett Elementary in Fort Lauderdale from a boundary school to a full-choice Montessori school, while removing the Montessori program at nearby Virginia Shuman Young Elementary. Instead of being an all-choice school, Virginia Shuman Young would become a neighborhood school with boundaries.

Bennett is next door to Sunrise Middle, which also has a Montessori program.

“Virginia Shuman Young sits in a neighborhood where there are images of real estate agents that bring clients by to show them this lovely school though,” Strauss said. “However when they purchase a home a block or two away, it’s a full-choice school. They cannot gain entrance into that school. So instead they wind up going to private school.”

The low-enrolled North Fork Elementary in Fort Lauderdale and Silver Shores Elementary in Miramar could become full-choice schools rather than ones with neighborhood boundaries, under the proposal.

Panther Run Elementary in Pembroke Pines would get a new pre-K special needs program, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in Fort Lauderdale, now a Montessori school, would get a new program and a boundary change.

Thirteen other schools would get boundary changes.

They are: Thurgood Marshall Elementary, Westwood Heights Elementary, North Side Elementary, Walker Elementary and Harbordale Elementary, all in Fort Lauderdale; Stirling Elementary, Attucks Middle, McNicol Middle, Colbert Elementary and Hollywood Hills Elementary, all in Hollywood; Plantation Elementary; Silver Lakes Elementary in Miramar; and Silver Palms Elementary in Pembroke Pines.

The proposal also names three schools in the north part of the county that could be involved in “public-private partnerships.” These Deerfield Beach schools would stay open, but part of their facilities could be sold, leased or shared with another agency, officials said. These schools are: Quiet Waters Elementary, Deerfield Beach Elementary and Tedder Elementary.

To come up with the proposed plan, the district compiled data on every schools’ enrollment, academic performance age of facilities, historical significance and available capacity at an adjacent school.

What data is @Browardschools using to decide which schools to close or repurpose? They compiled a spreadsheet of all schools based on enrollment, adjacent capacity, school grade, facility age & historical importance. Here are all schools rated: https://t.co/JMOY3AkBoH
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— Scott Travis (@smtravis) April 28, 2024

The district appeared to place the greatest weight on available capacity at nearby schools.

Only 10 schools were listed as being in areas where all students could attend another nearby school. All 10 of those schools are affected by this plan, with proposals ranging from having their boundaries changed to being closed.

The district has 54,100 empty seats due to families opting for charter, private and home school options. Enrollment is projected to decline by another 4,300 students this fall.

The district also floated a more dramatic proposal Monday night called “Total District Realignment,” designed to match the number of seats with the number of students. That proposal would close 42 schools, including two high schools. No specific school names were listed.

Hepburn is not recommending this plan, which he said will require the district to redraw all school boundaries and eliminate most magnet programs and reassignments and could result in a greater loss of student enrollment.

The district is asking the public through surveys whether they’d prefer Hepburn’s plans or total realignment.

Reaction was mixed during Monday’s town hall, with some attendees praising the recommendation of converting Hollywood Central into a K-8 school and others criticizing the proposal to close Olsen and Oakridge.

Dania Beach Vice Mayor Lori Lewellen said her city is getting 10,000 new housing units, so she questioned why Olsen would close.

“You don’t know how many children are going to be coming into the city, not to mention the development going on in Hollywood,” she said.

She noted that Dania Beach students already have to leave the city to attend high school, and they’d have to leave for middle school as well under the proposal, which would send them to one of three Hollywood middle schools. She suggested converting Olsen into a 6-12 school.

Six more town halls are scheduled over the next two weeks. They are:

— 8 p.m. April 30, J.P. Taravella High School, 10600 Riverside Drive, Coral Springs
— 6 p.m. May 1, Dillard High 6-12, 2501 N.W. 11th St., Fort Lauderdale
— 6 p.m. May 6, Fort Lauderdale High School, 1600 N.E. Fourth Ave., Fort Lauderdale
— 6 p.m. May 7, Charles W. Flanagan High, 12800 Taft St., Pembroke Pines
— 6 p.m. May 8, Western High, 1200 S.W. 136th Ave., Davie
— 6 p.m. May 9, Deerfield Beach High School, 910 Buck Pride Way, Deerfield Beach

For more information go to browardschools.com/redefining.