Broward school board considers closing under-enrolled schools, using sites for affordable housing

Broward County Public Schools is suffering a shortage of students.

The district currently has about 60,000 empty classroom seats and dozens of schools are under-enrolled, so the school board is planning to repurpose and possibly close some of those schools.

At the same time, Broward County is desperately trying to build more affordable housing. The county is building some projects now, but demand is far greater than supply.

“This is a major crisis facing Broward County," said Broward County Commissioner Steve Geller. "We are by many standards the least affordable housing in the country. We need 7,000 new housing units per year just to keep up with population growth.”

Land suitable for housing is scarce, but the school district has lots of acreage occupied by schools that are severely under-enrolled.

In November, the superintendent acknowledged something has to give.

“As a large landowner, our budget’s gonna probably require us to maybe sell those lands,” Dr. Peter Licata said after a school board meeting where the repurposing of schools was discussed.

If the district ends up selling several school properties, why not build workforce housing, for teachers and other civil servants, on school sites? It can happen if the sites are rezoned for residential purposes.

“It’s just the best use for a lot of the land that we’re going to be making available through repurposing," said school board member Dr. Allen Zeman. "At least five schools this year is the decision of the board, we don’t know which five and it may be more than five."

Zeman has been a strong proponent of the school sites-to-housing idea, saying it also makes sense academically to repurpose schools which have too many empty seats.

“The data shows that in under-enrolled schools, as the enrollment declines, the ability to put more programs and more people teaching academics, doing instructional time, which we know makes such a big difference in education, it just declines,” Zeman said. “The message is, the school that you end up going to is gonna have more money per student and it’s gonna do a better job.”

As much as Geller supports the concept of building affordable housing on school sites, he also has words of caution for the school board.

“If you have some schools that are under-enrolled today, but 10 years from now we’re gonna need them, better not close them because once they’re closed we’re never gonna be able to site another school in Broward County, there just isn’t the land availability,” Geller said.

The school board will decide which schools to repurpose soon, but first, it will hold a series of informational meetings with the public.

The first one is Thursday, Feb. 8, at 6 p.m. at Fort Lauderdale High School.