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…