Closing some Broward schools? Here’s why they could get new life as charter schools
Sun Sentinel | By Scott Travis | May 16, 2024
Some schools may be on the Broward School District’s chopping block in the few years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean students won’t be able to get an education there.
These campuses could get a second life as a charter school, due to a state law that gives charter schools access to surplus properties as well as zoning restrictions that could a restrict a school site from being used for non-educational reasons.
A state law that hasn’t been discussed during the district’s “Redefining Our Schools” efforts would give charter schools access to facilities the district no longer needs. The statute has been in effect for more than 25 years but has rarely been used, experts say.
But at least one operator of charter schools, the city of Pembroke Pines, is discussing the possibility of using that law to acquire district schools. “The state statute is very, very important to us,” Thomas Good, vice mayor of Pembroke Pines, told the City Commission at a May 1 meeting.
The law states “if a district school board facility or property is available because it is surplus, marked for disposal, or otherwise unused, it shall be provided for a charter school’s use on the same basis as it is made available to other public schools in the district.”
The district would still own the property and would serve as the landlord to the charter school, which would be required “to maintain the facility in a manner similar to district school board standards.”
The law could hinder the district’s ability to sell school sites to deal with budget problems. The district also risks losing more state money if a charter school were to replace an existing school, since funding for any students enrolled would go to the charter school.
“I think that’s why you see there’s not a whole lot of closures,” School Board member Debbi Hixon told the South Florida Sun Sentinel earlier this month.
Zoning restrictions could also require properties to remain schools, even if they are no longer owned by the school district.
Earlier this month, the district proposed closing Oakridge Elementary in Hollywood and making that space available for affordable housing, but the Hollywood City Commission opposed that idea. The Oakridge site is currently zoned for government use, but city commissioners said at a May 1 meeting the property could be zoned so that it can only be used for a school, even if the district were to dispose of the site.
“We have land use and zoning authority in our city, and if educational land use is the use we want, we don’t need to own the property to ensure the one and only use is that,” Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy said at a May 1 meeting.
The district’s initial plan also proposed closing two other schools in the 2025-26 school year: Olsen Middle in Dania Beach and Broward Estates Elementary in Lauderhill.
Schools Superintendent Howard Hepburn decided — after two weeks of town halls — not to recommend any school closures for the 2025-26 school year. However, the School Board on Tuesday rejected that plan and asked Hepburn to bring back options for closing eight schools either in the fall of 2025 or the fall of 2026, depending on how quickly the district can get community input.
Although the district has proposed no school closures in Pembroke Pines, Good said the statute could be useful to the city in the future. “If they decide to surplus one of their schools, because we’re a charter school, we can actually take possession of one of those schools by statute,” Good told the commission.
Some board members have expressed an interest in closing up to 42 schools within the next few years so that the capacity of district schools matches actual enrollment. The district has about 54,000 empty seats, disproportionately located in the south part of the county.
Good told the Sun Sentinel the city is not trying to take over these schools, and most city commissioners have voiced opposition to the district closing schools. But if the district were to close them anyways, “we’d like to continue to provide education for our neighborhoods. We don’t want those schools to go away.”
The A-rated Pembroke Pines charter school system is a popular option for students in the south end of of the county, serving about 6,000 students with a waiting list of about 5,000. It was created in the late 1990s after the school district was slow to build new schools to accommodate explosive growth in Pembroke Pines area.
The school district caught up in the 2000s, but then many other charter schools started opening the area, including Franklin Academy, Somerset Academy and Renaissance Charter School at Pines. That’s resulted in many district-run schools in the city being underenrolled. The district-run Pines Middle is the lowest enrolled school in the county at 34.5%.
Lynn Norman-Teck, executive director of the Florida Charter School Alliance, a membership group, didn’t respond to requests either in February or this week asking whether charter schools are interested in schools vacated by the district. But she expressed interest in 2020, when the district was also discussing whether to close schools.
“Charter schools would happily lease that facility, where the community is happy and the district is happy. It’s a win-win,” Norman-Teck said in February 2020. “A parent doesn’t really care who is running the school. They just want a great school.”
Board member Torey Alston, one of the more charter-school-friendly members on the School Board, said he’s open to this use for district property that may not be needed.
“District surplus property is just that. Surplus items should be available to the business community if the district expresses the need to remove the property from our inventory,” he told the Sun Sentinel. “If there was an opportunity for the City of Pembroke Pines or anyone else, that shows a level playing field.”
Hepburn told the Sun Sentinel on May 9 the possibility of charter schools taking over district schools did not factor into his initial recommendations. He said he proposed keeping all Pembroke Pines schools open because there are a large and growing number of students in the area who are choosing other options.
He has recommended changing several schools in the area, including turning Pines Middle into a 6-12 collegiate academy and converting Silver Shores Elementary in nearby Miramar to a K-8 school.
“It would not be wise of us to close schools in the area when there are so many students in the area,” Hepburn said. “It’s better for us to offer more innovative programs where we’re considered an option for parents to choose us instead of the competition.
