The Dolphins and Jets were playing on Monday Night Football. That’s a good enough reason to keep most people home in Broward.
But an estimated 300 people showed up for a workshop Monday night in Pembroke Pines on what Broward should — and should not do — about its rapidly declining public school enrollment.
The crowd was enthusiastic and well-informed, and the 10- and 11-year-old students who spoke were poised and well-spoken — the best possible testimonials for a school district in a serious time of transition. With pride in their voices, parents spoke of high-achieving students and dual-language programs and asked for more innovations.
“Don’t shut us down. Innovate us,” a Lakeside Elementary parent said.
The two-hour session at Charles W. Flanagan High School was by far the best-attended of eight workshops held over three weeks, according to the school district. That’s a sign of real parental engagement.
Mike Stocker/Sun Sentinel
Steve Bousquet, Sun Sentinel columnist.
“We’re going to have to make some really hard choices, and really hard changes, that are going to impact our community,” said Rebecca Thompson, the School Board member whose district includes Pembroke Pines.
“We’re going to end up stronger together,” Thompson told them. “We’re going to have more resources for our kids.”
For all of the endless talk and hand-wringing about “redefining” Broward schools, only one school — one — has been closed, in a predominantly Black community lacking in political clout. Broward Estates Elementary in Lauderhill was repurposed as an early learning center.
Closing schools will produce a political backlash, and every month that passes brings the School Board closer to the 2026 election, when five of its nine members are up for re-election. The inevitable will become harder, not easier.
As the Flanagan High session drew to a close, one man raised his hand.
David Sangiao-Parga, who teaches English at Barry University, has put four kids through Broward schools. What he sees is Broward putting its most loyal, dedicated customers through the agony of protecting their kids’ schools from extinction.
“It’s really kind of disheartening to see all of these different schools up here, begging for a reason to stay open,” he said, as the room fell silent. “We should not be begging for scraps, to be allowed to stay open. We’re punishing the children and the educators and turning them into dancing monkeys for scraps of what we have left.”
He spoke to how public schools are used as a political tool by Florida politicians.
“What I see is a community that it being taken advantage of and used to prop up agendas to undermine education across the board, from kindergarten to college,” he said.
The school district’s current “to be addressed” list included 34 schools marked for possible change, from redefined missions to permanent closure.
Six of them — four elementaries and two middle schools — are in Pembroke Pines.
The city became a growth magnet in the 1980s and exploded in population in the years after Hurricane Andrew clobbered Miami-Dade in 1992.
Thirty-some years ago, many Broward schools were overcrowded, and kids studied in leaky, ugly “portables.” Chapel Trail Elementary, now seriously underenrolled, opened in 1995. Nearby Panther Run Elementary, also coping with a student shortage, opened its doors in 1998. Flanagan High is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
But more and more students, aided by state-run vouchers, are moving to charters and private schools. The birth rate has declined, and families are fleeing northward, unable to keep up with the cost of living in South Florida.
The enrollment trend line in Southwest Broward is clearly unsustainable. School Board data shows that half of the seats at Chapel Trail are empty.
Paradoxically, some parents and teachers say, in half-empty schools, classroom overcrowding is getting worse.
An ESE teacher, Sarah Samuels Hall, wrote on Facebook that “classrooms are at (and in many cases way above) capacity because the district has made very deep cuts to school-based instructional positions.” She said some elementary classes have 20 to 30 students when they should have 18 to 25.
The community conversation will continue Tuesday, Oct. 7, at an all-day School Board workshop.
Steve Bousquet is Opinion Editor of the Sun Sentinel and a columnist in Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Contact him at sbousquet@sunsentinel.com or (850) 567-2240 and follow him on X @stevebousquet.