Broward School Board may close schools, rejecting superintendent’s proposal
About eight schools could be considered for closure as soon as 2025, as Broward School Board members decided the superintendent’s plan to restructure a few schools didn’t go far enough to deal with dwindling enrollment.
School Board members decided at the end of a five-hour meeting Tuesday night to direct Superintendent Howard Hepburn to bring back options on May 29 for possibly closing seven to eight schools during the 2025-26 year or delaying school closures until the 2026-27 school year. Hepburn is not expected to bring back any names of schools until a later date.
Board members said they want to ensure there is adequate time for community feedback, which they said was inadequate in recent proposals.
“It’s important that this process starts and ends with the community,” Board member Sarah Leonardi said.
But board members were divided about how quickly community input could happen.
Some other board members said that might be rushing the process, since many groups don’t meet during the summer months. They proposed delaying any closures until 2026-27. Board member Allen Zeman appeared to change his mind during the meeting, first naming five possible schools he wanted closed 2025-26 before deciding it might be better to wait.
“If it’s a tradeoff between community involvement and speed to get to the new steady state where we need to get to in Broward County, I’d rather get to the community conversation,” Zeman said. “Better to do what’s right than do it quickly.”
Most board members agreed that some schools should close but differed as to where they should be be concentrated. Some wanted the closures to touch every School Board member district in the county while others wanted to focus on areas where there’s a large number of underenrolled schools, primarily Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Miramar and Pembroke Pines.
The school district was largely panned for a proposal that Hepburn brought to the seven town halls, which would have closed three schools and overhauled nine others.
The School Board had tasked former Superintendent Peter Licata to recommend closing or repurposing at least five schools by June. The district has lost numerous students to charter, private and home schools and now has space for about 54,000 more students than it has enrolled.
After Licata abruptly resigned last month, Hepburn inherited the initiative and Licata’s plan, known as “Redefining Broward County Public Schools.”
The plan initially presented to the public proposed closing Olsen Middle in Dania Beach, Oakridge Elementary in Hollywood and Broward Estates Elementary in Lauderhill.
After fierce opposition at seven town halls, Hepburn withdrew school closures from his plan, recommending instead to change programs or the grade configurations of a few schools, hoping the efforts would attract more students and state revenue.
“I honestly see that it’s not your plan. Take it and make it your own, because I see that you can do better. What you have now is trash,” Narnike Pierre Grant, a Parkland parent and chairwoman of the district’s Diversity Committee, said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Several board members were also critical of Hepburn’s proposal.
“This plan is not bold enough. It’s not transformative enough for what I know Broward County Public Schools can be,” Board member Torey Alston said.
Board member Daniel Foganholi questioned how realistic that idea was to base a plan entirely on trying to recruit students who left.
“How do you expect families to put their children back in public schools if we didn’t fix what they left for in the first place?” he asked.
Foganholi, who had advocated for an aggressive plan to make necessary changes at once, which he described as “ripping the Band-Aid off” in recent meetings.
“I want to see a solution. This is not a solution,” he said. “It’s not ripping the Band-Aid off. It feels like you’re pouring Neosporin on top of the Band-Aid and hoping it will work.”