Miami Herald: Committee: Count portables in Broward schools as classrooms
Dec 10, 2009
The Miami Herald published this article on December 10, 2009
BY PATRICIA MAZZEI
A group of representatives from the Broward school district, the county and several cities said Wednesday that the school system should not loosen the way it measures school crowding — though it should count portable classrooms as part of a school’s capacity.
The School Board had asked the group, known as the oversight committee, to change how student enrollment is calculated so fewer Broward schools would be considered overcrowded. A less-stringent measure would allow the district to avoid some unpopular school attendance boundary changes that would shuffle students mostly from packed schools in western Broward to underenrolled schools in the eastern portion of the county.
The group rejected a plan to measure school crowding at a regional average and not a school-by-school basis, saying that approach would be playing with numbers instead of addressing the enrollment imbalance between east and west.
“That’s dishonest,” said County Commissioner Lois Wexler, a former School Board member who is part of the committee.
The committee did unanimously support counting portable classrooms when measuring crowding, something the district has not done in the past because of opposition to portables. Parents now prefer those classrooms to having their children reshuffled to different schools, Board member Robin Bartleman said.
“People definitely do not mind at this point having their children in portables,” she said.
In October, the committee had backed measuring school crowding by regional averages — but only if the school district were split into 12 regions for counting purposes. That division would still leave some areas overcrowded and force some boundary changes.
The School Board asked the committee to look at dividing the district into eight regions so that none of the areas would be overcrowded and no boundary changes would come up.
The committee opposed both proposals in a meeting Wednesday after members said they were split on which plan to support. They compromised on counting portables as a short-term solution, acknowledging that more work will have to be done to address enrollment in the long run.
“At some point the School Board’s got to fish or cut bait,” said Weston City Commissioner Daniel Stermer. “You all know by pushing off a year by year by year by year, you don’t have the stomach for this, you don’t want to do that.
“At some point, something’s gotta give. You’re almost at that point.”