‘How would that work?’ Parents push against Pembroke Pines middle school closure
When Abraham Bravo caught wind of an Oct. 27 meeting at Walter C. Young Middle School — where his sixth-grade son attends — to discuss its potential closure, it came as no surprise.
The Pembroke Pines father was one of the first to push back when Broward County Public Schools presented the idea in 2024 and fought tooth-and-nail for the preservation of its suddenly cancelled dual langauge program the year before that.
What did shock him was the over 400 parents who attended the meeting and flooded the room with concerns.
“I thought there were going to be only a few of us talking, but I didn’t even get up to talk because there were people who were enraged,” Bravo told the Pembroke Pines News. “People [showed up] that actually don’t live close, that live in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, who commute to bring their kids to Walter C. Young.”
The late-October assembly is one of 11 town halls BCPS school board member Rebecca Thompson has organized since the district started its second phase of “Redefining Our Schools,” the district’s solution to a sharp drop in enrollment.
There are over 45,000 empty seats in BCPS this school year, WLRN reported in August, and district data shows that roughly 10,000 students have left the county’s public schools since 2024.
To mitigate the drop in funding that follows low enrollment, the district is proposing closing, repurposing or consolidating 34 Broward schools, seven of which are in Pembroke Pines.
The “A”-rated Walter C. Young — located at 901 NW 129th Ave. — could find itself on the chopping block due to its 49.4% capacity, of hosting only 651 students of its maximum 1,319, according to BCPS.
If it gets nixed, the school board is considering two options: turning the school into a grades 3-8 gifted, dual language academy or partnering with the City of Pembroke Pines, which leases the school’s land to BCPS, to build attainable workforce housing on the site.
Parents voice concerns
At Thompson’s latest town hall, a Tuesday, Nov. 4, gathering at Lakeside Elementary, roughly 120 parents shared that neither alternative would make them happy.
“At this point, we’re supposed to work together and now it’s each school for their own because Walter C. Young is going to fight for their own school and we’re going to fight for Lakeside,” said Jennifer Lopez, Lakeside Elementary’s Parent Teacher Association president.
She’s afraid that the creation of a grades 3-8 gifted, dual language academy would draw her school’s brightest away and render its own dual langauge program obsolete.
She’s also worried about sending grade school kids — some as young as 8 years old — to navigate WCY’s sprawling campus and learn alongside teenagers.
“What parent is going to want their third grader with a middle schooler at Walter C. Young?” Lopez added. “How would that work?”
Nichole Ibrahim, who has daughters in WCY’s seventh and eight grade classes, worries that eliminating the middle school would lead to a significant drop in the quality of her children’s education.
If WCY closes, BCPS would split the boundary its students are zoned for between Silver Trails Middle School and Pines 6-12 Collegiate Academy.
Though the former scored slightly higher than WCY in the language arts and math categories used to calculate school grades, it sits nearly 6.5 miles away from WCY’s zoning. The latter raked in scores nearly 10 points lower in each.
“They have students that are school-choicing out of [Pines 6-12 Collegiate Academy] to go to Walter C.,” said the 39-year-old mother. “Why would you close that school and not a lower performing school?”
That leaves only one option for sixth through eighth graders in the area: Pembroke Pines Charter Middle’s Central Campus.
“I thought a charter school would be a good option. ... Very quickly, the resources weren’t the same, the expectations from the students weren’t the same, the continuity of education wasn’t the same, and I had to make the choice to pull [my daughters] out,” Ibrahim said.
What about charter schools?
According to her and Bravo, many parents are adamant about not sending their children to the city-owned, eight-school charter system for several reasons, including a lack of transparency from administrators and limited help for exceptional learners such as gifted or disabled students.
BCPS’ plans to return the land WCY sits on to the city so it can be turned into workforce housing also left several town-hall attendees uneasy about the city’s motivations and involvement in that alternative.
Pembroke Pines has leased the plot to the school for $1 a year since the late 1970s, but that contract ends in 2037. City officials say they’re not planning on grandfathering the low price if BCPS returns the land.
“When it comes time to renew a lease with the school board for the use of that land, we may have to charge them market value because otherwise we’re going to be exposed to an [Inspector General] complaint or something along those lines,” Mayor Angelo Castillo said during a Sept. 17 commission meeting.
“We can’t continue to subsidize other units of government when, in fact, there are other who would be more than willing to pay market value.”
Thompson also explained that while these charter schools are facing low enrollment as well, talks of closing them down haven’t happened because they’re “typically run by for-profit companies ... so we don’t have any authority to close them.”
According to Thompson, the district’s sharp decline in students is due to school vouchers that widened access to private schooling and homeschooling and “the number of charter school options in Pembroke Pines and Miramar.”
As for why the district is rushing to make cuts and changes, Thompson says the state board of education’s September expansion of the Schools of Hope program — which allows approved charter operators to co-locate in underenrolled schools — is to blame.
She says BCPS has already received 27 letters expressing interest in Broward school properties.
“We are trying to protect our school communities so that you guys don’t have a completely different education system operating out of the same school,” the school board member said.
What’s next?
What will become of WCY and other at-risk Pembroke Pines schools will be determined by an early-January school board vote, according to Thompson. An exact date has not been confirmed.
If parents want their kids’ schools to stay open or untouched, she says residents should send in “hundreds of emails” to her and her eight school board colleagues with specific requests by then.
Parents such as Bravo — who’s part of a WeAreWCY Instagram group — have drafted a petition that’s garnered over 1,300 signatures as of Nov. 5 and an email template for residents to fill out and send to their representatives.
BCPS’ next “Redefining Our Schools” community meeting, where WCY will also be discussed, is scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 13, at Miramar High School.
This story was originally published November 5, 2025 at 2:40 PM.
