Dive Brief:
- Broward County Public Schools announced plans to “address” 34 of its 239 schools for possible closures or consolidations during a Tuesday board meeting.
- The pending plans come at a time when the large Florida district is reporting an enrollment decrease of 10,360 students, a count taken 10 days into the 2025-26 school year compared to the year prior. The district’s total enrollment, excluding charter schools, was 188,002 on Aug. 22.
- The district also reported in July that 58 of its schools were below 70% capacity, including 39 elementary schools, 16 middle schools and 3 high schools.
Dive Insight:
As the sixth largest school district in the U.S., BCPS is not immune to a national trend of districts facing enrollment drops amid declining birthrates and growing school choice options.
In a May survey of current and former BCPS parents conducted by Hanover Research, the data found that about half of respondents — 53% — said they enrolled their children in a nontraditional schooling option because they wanted higher quality instruction. A third of families also cited smaller class sizes and another third indicated the availability of more programs. The district surveyed 8,983 parents who either had a child enrolled, formerly enrolled, or partially enrolled in a BCPS school.
The top two reasons parents said they unenrolled their children from BCPS was because they were dissatisfied with the district’s education quality (26%) and they were concerned about school safety (24%).
Among those who previously had a child enrolled or partially enrolled at BCPS, 20% said improved teacher quality through professional development would have made them more likely to stay. Some 18% also separately said better support for students with disabilities, improvements on handling school bullying, or strengthened safety and security measures would have encouraged them to keep their child in the district.
To retain families, the district is being advised based on the parent survey results to:
- Track school climate and culture outcomes for improvements.
- Offer more college and career readiness support.
- Provide more support to teachers to improve the district’s education quality.
- Tackle school safety issues and work to reduce bullying and harassment.
An August analysis by Bellwether, an education nonprofit, warns that more school closures and consolidation could be on the horizon in the coming months and years due to declining enrollment — ultimately leading to strained school budgets. Bellwether estimated that the total loss in revenue from declining enrollment at the nation’s largest 100 districts could total up to $5.2 billion based on 2023-24 school enrollment.
Other large school districts recently weighing a number of school closures and consolidations as a result of declining enrollment include Atlanta Public Schools, Austin Independent School District in Texas and St. Louis Public Schools.
