Dive Brief:
- Florida's Broward County Public Schools' approved the consolidation of six schools in a Jan. 21 board meeting as the district faces ongoing losses in student enrollment. The decision comes months after the nation’s sixth largest district announced in August that it planned to “address” 34 of its 239 schools for possible closures or consolidations.
- The district’s enrollment decline has been quite “significant,” it reported in September. Data shows student enrollment dropped 5% — with 9,987 fewer students — between the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years, and it fell nearly 17%, or 37,707 fewer students, over the 10 years between 2015-16 to 2025-26, according to district data.
- The school consolidations are expected to save Broward County Public Schools $8.95 million annually, according to documents from the district’s proposals.
Dive Insight:
As Broward County Public Schools expects to see some savings from these consolidations, the district reported losing $90.5 million in the past year alone due to its notable enrollment declines. The drop in enrollment over the last decade also led to a dip in district funding totaling almost $342 million.
Overall, the district had 236,667 students enrolled as of Sept. 8, 2025.
The large enrollment drops — and the significant financial challenges that come with it — at Broward County Public Schools are part of a larger trend in the U.S. leading some districts to close a handful of their schools.
Just in the past few months, school boards grappling with enrollment challenges have approved public school closure and consolidation plans, for example, in Atlanta, Cleveland, and Austin, Texas.
The reason for these enrollment challenges can vary by district, but researchers and district leaders have often pointed to the declining national birth rate as the primary factor, with the growing number of school choice options as a secondary one. More districts are also beginning to cite heightened federal immigration enforcement as a driver for more recent enrollment declines.
A January report by Florida’s Office of Economic & Demographic Research found in its enrollment forecast that there will be nearly 3.2 million students enrolled in the state’s public schools during the 2025-26 school year. That’s a decrease of 46,456 students compared to the office’s prior forecast.
The report cited Florida’s school choice options for some of the unexpected enrollment changes this school year, as well as “the chilling effects from recently implemented immigration policies.”
While the report expects Florida’s public school enrollment to continue increasing over the next five school years, the projected growth has shrunk compared to previous years’ projections.
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