‘Tough conversations’: Broward school district holds first event on school closures

While scrolling social media Wednesday night, Cathy Curry, 61, saw a list of the most under-enrolled schools in Broward County Public Schools and one caught her eye: her alma mater Hallandale High School, the same majority-Black school that in 1974, she and her mom marched in protest to get the district to open.

She saw that the district could close it because it’s operating at only 64% of its capacity. She panicked.

“I was so hurt I couldn’t sleep,” Curry, who graduated from the high school in 1980, told the Herald.

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

The following day, on Thursday, she decided to attend a district event on the topic at Fort Lauderdale High School. That was the first of three events that Broward school district officials have planned to seek community input on its plan to close or repurpose at least five out of its total 239 schools in the 2025-26 school year. They say the district must change because it has lost about 58,000 students in the last 20 years.

Instead of holding a traditional town hall Thursday, district officials held small-group conversations.

First Superintendent of Broward Public Schools Peter Licata briefly explained why the district needs to affect at least five schools. Then officials split the roughly 150 in-person attendees inside the school’s auditorium — and the about 200 who tuned into the live stream online — into eight groups and directed them to different areas like classrooms and the cafeteria. They assigned a facilitator to lead and survey each group using an artificial intelligence platform called ThoughtExchange.

Facilitators asked each group two questions using ThoughtExchange and then led a discussion about all of the groups’ answers, which they could see and rate up or down online.

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

Some of the answers included bus schedules and transportation concerns, the well-being of children, maintaining or improving the quality of the education, increasing targeted programs for specific careers in the future, the overall fiscal impact to the district and the classroom sizes.

The second question was, “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?”

Those answers featured statements like “infrastructure is key,” “increasing mental health for students,” and “pay the teachers a decent wage.”

The first question upset Curry.

“To see that felt like the decision is already made, and it’s disingenuous to gather the community here,” she said.

Zoie Saunders, the district’s chief strategy and innovation officer, was facilitating Curry’s group and apologized for that. She later told the Herald that the original question was too long and in the editing process, it lost some clarity.

“I completely acknowledged that was a mistake,” Saunders said. “We’ll try to wordsmith that question for the future.”

Overall, Licata, who walked in and out of all of the group settings, told the Herald after the event that he thought it went well.

“I thought tonight was pretty good,” he said. “We had some really good conversations; we had some really tough conversations ... It was the first night. We’re going to redirect some things, fix some things. We are going to address what people have said. We’re listening.”

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

Complaints with format, use of AI

Others in Curry’s group raised concerns about the district’s logistics for the event.

Narnike Pierre Grant, the mother of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School freshman and the chair of the school district’s diversity committee, said she disliked being divided into small groups.

“I wasn’t happy with the format. I don’t think it was conducive for the people in this district,” said Pierre Grant. “When they were advertising it, they made it feel like a town hall, and that’s not what it was. It was hard for people who aren’t technologically savvy.”

In response, Licata said the district never called the event a “town hall meeting.” The official district web page and the flyer describe the events as “Community Conversations.” But he acknowledged that the district can hammer that point more in the future.

Overall, he said he understands there’s a history of mistrust in the school district and that that might affect some perspectives.

“We know we have to build trust. This is new to this district, and I’m new to this district. It will take time,” he said.

Similarly to Pierre Grant, one of the teachers who attended Thursday, Erica Hansinger from Western High School in Davie, felt that the district could’ve surveyed people at home instead of in person. And that the use of AI didn’t foster “deep, raw conversations.”

After the group members answered the two questions, they got to up-vote or down-vote other attendees’ ideas. At the end, the platform produced a “summary” with conclusions about what the people said, which the facilitator read out loud.

“That’s not the way to engage the community,” said Hansinger, who’s been teaching for 20 years. “I was baffled. It was bizarre.”

After the group stopped looking down at their devices in Hansinger and Pierre Grant’s group, they started chatting. A woman shared that she had experienced trauma back in 1995 when the district rezoned some schools and she lost all of her friends; she said she doesn’t want her own children to experience that too.

“Her story touched me,” Hansinger said, pointing out the woman wouldn’t have been able to share that emotion and those details online on ThoughtExchange and that it possibly hindered others from sharing their own tales.

In response to that, Saunders said the district decided to use the platform to collect more data and spark ideas. She said that it’s not over-relying on its results, as it will also consider other factors when deciding what schools to change like enrollment, neighborhood demographics and the condition of the facility.

The next two district events will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday, February 15, 2024 at the J.P. Taravella High School at 10600 Riverside Dr. in Coral Springs and at 6 p.m. Thursday, February 22, 2024 at the Charles W. Flanagan High School at 12800 Taft St. in Pembroke Pines.