As a new school year comes to a start, South Florida schools wrestle with everything from metal detectors, enrollment and a new law that will change school start times by the 2026-2027 school year. In Palm Beach and Broward counties, classes start Monday, in Monroe County they start on Wednesday, and in Miami-Dade County the first bell rings Thursday.
On the latest episode of the South Florida Roundup, WLRN’s Tim Padgett spoke with West Miami Middle School world history teacher Silvia Villacis and three South Florida education reporters looking ahead at the 2024-25 school year.
Security measures in South Florida high schools
Starting Monday, high school students in the Broward Public Schools district will have to pass through metal detectors every morning before making their way to their first class of the day. It is one of the security improvements to be launched under the leadership of Superintendent Howard Hepburn.
The metal detectors were piloted in two different high schools in the district during the summer.
Scott Travis, the Broward education reporter at the Sun Sentinel, told WLRN some feared the new practice would create long lines at the beginning of the day, similar to TSA screenings at the airport. But the metal detectors installed in Broward high schools are programmed to go off for weapons and not for other everyday metal objects.
“They have a setting on them where a kid can go through them with a cell phone and keys,” Travis said. “It’s supposed to catch a weapon.”
Travis said Palm Beach County taking the lead in installing metal detectors last year had a lot to do with Broward making the decision to implement them as well.
In Palm Beach County, 24 schools were under a metal detector pilot program last summer. Since then, the school district rolled them out to four high schools at a time.
“With this phased pilot program, they were able to kind of work out the kinks and change things," Katherine Kokal, education reporter at the Palm Beach Post said. “Now that we're starting this new school year, every district-run high school [in Palm Beach County] will have metal detectors.”
In Miami-Dade, the school board has explored the issue but not yet decided on whether to implement similar security measures.
On July 31, board members that staff and the district police made to spend millions on artificial intelligence (AI) security systems and metal detectors. The workshop brought concerns on the price that these would have, as well as the effectiveness of metal detectors in making students more safe.
“Advocates for low-income Black and Brown students specifically, are opposed to the school district spending more money on metal detectors, because they think it can create an environment where some students feel actually less safe,” Miami Herald’s education reporter Clara-Sophia Daly said. “Instead, they are trying to advocate for the school district spending more money on restorative justice practices, increasing the care of school nurses in schools, [etc.].”
So far, the district has implemented the use of metal detector wands, which school resource officers use to make sure dangerous objects are not brought into the classrooms, Daly told WLRN.
Enrollment
Schools in Broward have in recent years experienced low enrollment. A booming market of alternatives to traditional public schools, like private, charter and microschools, is one of the culprits of it. But with the for the first time in more than 12 years, the district is hoping the high achievement will work as an incentive tool to bring students back. However, the district is still working on an effort to close at least five schools due to low enrollment.
READ MORE: ‘Empty seats are not worth our money’: Broward grapples with low enrollment, school consolidation
In the 2022-2023 school year, Miami-Dade saw more than 20,000 new immigrant students enroll, especially from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua.
Villacis said most students at West Miami Middle School, where she teaches world history, are in levels one and two of the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program. One of the biggest problems she faced last school year was immigrant students trickling in at different points of the school year.
The Miami-Dade County School Board recently announced an initiative to conduct a detailed analysis of student enrollment. Its purpose is to identify schools with the highest percentage of foreign students, who enrolled in the district for the last three years, to address the needs of the schools.
“These are students that are coming sometimes fresh into the country. Some of them have even experienced crossing the border,” Villacis said. “They don't know anything about our government, our way of life [or] our educational system … one of my concerns as a history teacher is helping them assimilate into the country, but also into the public school [system].”
In Palm Beach County Public Schools about 10% of the 170,000 public school students come from Haitian households, Kokal said. The school district has rolled out its dual language Haitian Creole programs.
“I got to sit in a kindergarten class last school year, and it’s just remarkable to see," Kokal said. “There’s new programs, new opportunities that I think will continue to evolve as immigrant populations and communities continue [to grow] here.”
School starting times
A new state law will require middle schools to start after 8 a.m. and high schools after 8:30 a.m. by the 2026-2027 school year.
“Teenagers generally have a tendency to sleep late and wake up late,” Harneet Walia, the director of sleep medicine at Baptist Health’s Miami Cardiac and Vascular Institute, told WLRN. “It is backed up by a lot of scientific evidence to push the school times to a later hour.”
The change, which looks to recognize the impacts of sleep deprivation in students, brings many logistical concerns for school officials.
The Palm Beach school district started to how to address the change earlier this summer. One of the challenges they face is the bus routes, Kokal said.
“I know several of the large urban school districts are looking at this and looking at the bus situation thinking, ‘I don't know that there's a way we're going to make this happen.’ So, [there’s] a lot of concern here, and we'll see what happens,” Kokal said.
The Palm Beach School Board is planning on making a final decision on how to change the start times in May 2025.
You can listen to the full conversation above or wherever you get your podcasts by searching: The South Florida Roundup.
