Pay attention, Broward parents: the school district made two announcements Tuesday that may impact your kids this school year, in a good way.
Read more Deputies shoot and kill Florida AMBER Alert suspect who abducted 13-year-old
For the first time in a long time, all 128 elementary schools will offer at least three enrichment courses, putting schools in wealthier areas on equal footing with those in economically disadvantaged areas.
“I’m pleased to say that mission was accepted and that mission was accomplished,” said Dr. Howard Hepburn to applause at today’s Broward County School Board meeting.
It means all kids will have the benefit of the courses they call specials, with at least three specials per school.
“Specials like music, art, PE, media, those are the classes that really get kids excited about school,” said school board chair Sarah Leonardi.
Broward County Public Schools is spending about $800,000 to expand the specials to 14 schools that previously had only offered two of the classes. The initiative was pushed by board member Allen Zeman.
“Our smallest schools were being disadvantaged, and those were also our low-income areas typically, so what happened were low-income kids were getting music or art or PE, whereas middle-class and upper-income people were getting all of ‘em, so we changed that,” Zeman said.
Read more Travelers at MIA deal with impacts from American Airlines IT outage
Every elementary school will also have a full-time librarian.
“This is a fantastic day, this is great news, and a great example of what happens when you listen to your constituents,” added board member Adam Cervera. “The parents were overwhelmingly asking for more specials in their schools.”
The fact that 14 schools had only two special options is a symptom of underenrolled schools, and even though the district is providing more specials to those schools now, the superintendent says it doesn’t change the need for more school closures and consolidations.
“We have about 50,000 empty seats in our district, to be fiscally responsible and use taxpayer dollars wisely, we just can’t have that many open seats in the district,” Hepburn said.
The district also announced a plan to reduce overcrowding in optional but extremely popular high school courses, such as AP classes.
“So our high schools will be able to provide a thousand additional classes, ensuring their class sizes are comparable to the needs of the type of instruction our students are gonna receive,” explained Hepburn.
That also means more students will be able to take those classes in the first place. The district managed to cobble together the funding for these moves, but now they’re looking to hire teachers to fill those roles, with the school year start date of Aug. 10 coming up fast.
Read more South Florida employers, families brace for impact as Haitian TPS ends