‘Let’s look at the root causes’: Community weighs in on potential Broward school closures

Anabelle Rivera moved from Miami Shores to Weston in 2021 in hopes that a Broward public school could help her autistic son. She had tried three private schools in Miami-Dade and disliked them all.

“To my surprise it was better,” she said. “We are in a much better place now but it took a lot of work. It took a lot of conversations between me as an interested and informed parent and staff.”

Then recently, the mom of a seventh grader at Tequesta Trace Middle School found out the Broward school district will close or repurpose at least five schools of its total 239 schools in the 2025-26 school year. She decided to attend a Thursday community meeting hosted by the school district to discuss those plans.

READ MORE: Have you or your child recently left a South Florida public school? Tell us why

Rivera was one of about 75 people who went in person to J.P. Taravella High School in Coral Springs; about 50 others tuned in online.

The event was the second in a series of three. The first event took place Feb. 8 at Fort Lauderdale High School, and attracted about 150 in person and about 200 others online. The last event is planned for 6 p.m. Feb. 22 at Charles W. Flanagan High School in Pembroke Pines.

Like the first event, Broward Schools Superintendent Peter Licata began Thursday with a presentation in the school’s auditorium that explained the district must change because it has lost about 58,000 students in the last 20 years. After, the attendees got divided into five groups and sent to different classrooms.

FROM FEB. 8: ‘Tough conversations’. Broward school district holds first event on school closures

In the small breakout group that Rivera was in, about 20 people sat in a semicircle. Two facilitators asked questions and led the discussion, using an artificial intelligence surveying program called ThoughtExchange.

They first asked a question about what challenges and opportunities of closing or repurposing some schools.

Rivera, the mother of the autistic son, said she hopes that the district takes the chance to add more resources to students with disabilities like her son. She also said that she has a daughter, a senior at a charter school in Wynwood that focuses on the arts, who has thrived there because she’s developed her singing, and Broward public schools should replicate those types of program in all fields.

“I’m hopeful,” she said.

A woman said the district will struggle to regain the public’s trust, an issue largely rooted in a failed 2014 tax payer-approved $800 million project to fix schools, called the SMART bond.

Another woman said that it would be a problem if people lose their jobs in the process.

Aiykiera Brown, a senior at Millennium Collegiate Academy in Tamarac, said she worried students’ mental health would suffer if they were removed from their comfort zones and separated from their friends.

“You could have a lot of students drop out,” she said.

Then facilitators repeated the two questions from the first event on ThoughtExhange.

First: “When the District decides to close or combine schools, what should we think about the most. What considerations are most important and why?”

Those answers largely led the group to wonder why students were leaving in the first place. A woman worried that if the district doesn’t identify the underlying causes and fix them, repurposing or closing some schools would be a “Band-Aid solution.”

“So then the plan is what? To keep closing schools?” she said.

Joi Calderon, the mother of a junior at J.P. Taravella and an eighth grader at Ramblewood Middle in Coral Springs, agreed with that. She wondered if the Broward school district has looked at charter and private schools and analyzed why people are choosing those over the traditional public schools.

“Is it a community thing? Is it a cultural thing? Is it a location thing? I don’t know,” she said. “But let’s look at the root causes, because if not we’re going to keep losing students.”

Calderon also said the district should set ways to measure success quickly in each of its decisions. Whether the district decides to close a school, combine two under-enrolled schools, convert part of a school to provide another service like a technical education, change the school attendance zone or implement any other idea, the district should monitor how that’s going and pivot with agility if needed, she said.

“How are they going to reassess, and how are they going to make decisions to say, ‘Yes, we need to move forward with this’ or ‘No, we need to retract it. Let’s try this instead?’” she said.

READ MORE: Broward superintendent discusses the options as district explores closing schools

The second question facilitators asked the group — “How can we make changing schools a positive experience for students, teachers, and the community to help our schools become the best they can be?” — elicited some ideas.

A man suggested the school district hold more meetings in low-income neighborhoods to reach people who may have not been able to travel to the three designated locations. Or alternatively, he said, the district could offer free transportation from across the county to the last event.

Another man said he used to work for the school district as a lawn maintenance operator and knows the district owns a lot of land in Broward. He wondered if instead of spending money on constantly cutting grass and maintaining empty lots, the district could sell of lease them.

“You know what 50 acres can go for?” he said. “3.4 million.”