Students, teachers and parents spent Friday afternoon on Wiles Road, near the back of Forest Glen Middle School in Coral Springs, trying to keep the campus open.
The demonstration followed Superintendent Howard Hepburn's recommendation to close Forest Glen and consolidate its students into Coral Springs Middle, one of 10 schools he wants shut for the 2027-28 year, WLRN reported. The School Board is expected to make a final decision Dec. 15, according to the Sun Sentinel.
A Five-Minute Walk to Class
Seventh grader Skyler Hoffman told Coral Springs Talk she lives within a five-minute walk of Forest Glen and wants to attend next year. "I live within a five-minute walk to the school," she said. CBS News Miami reported that other students already walk or bike to class, which is why a consolidation is not an abstract bus-route problem for the people who showed up.
Art teacher Dawn Bustamente set the campus in a longer local clock. "We are coming up on our 40th anniversary, and we are a great neighborhood school," she said.
Student Jace Guell told CBS News Miami the school feels personal, describing more heart than he has found at other schools and a social life that matters to him. Demonstrators said the proposed-closure listing itself has driven families away. They urged district leaders to supply the resources to rebuild enrollment instead of treating the building as finished.
Teacher Megan Waller discussed Forest Glen's programs and competition from charter, private and homeschool options.
Spared in 2025, Recommended Again
Forest Glen has already been through this once. In 2025, after a meeting that ran more than five hours, board members took the school off the list of possible Coral Springs closures, Coral Springs News reported that October.
Hepburn's November recommendation puts it back among the 10, with students directed to Coral Springs Middle. A school can be spared after a five-hour meeting and land on the list again the next fall. Families counting on a walkable campus do not get a matching calendar.
The board has closed seven schools in the last two years as part of its "Redefining Our Schools" initiative, WLRN reported. The Sun Sentinel's count matches that total: one school at the end of the 2024-25 year and six at the end of 2025-26.
Fewer Students, Tens of Thousands of Seats
Broward County Public Schools counted 224,324 students enrolled on Sept. 14, down 12,343 from the year before, USA Today reported. Over a longer stretch, from 2015-16 through 2025-26, the district lost 17.5 percent of its student population, or 38,640 students, according to K-12 Dive. Those are different periods, not two ways of stating the same loss.
The district has attributed the drop to lower birth rates, rising housing costs, fewer immigrant students and competition from private-school choice. Empty seats are the figure officials keep putting next to the closure list. One account put the surplus at about 60,000. WLRN, describing the district picture in early November, said there are more than 61,000 empty seats.
At Forest Glen, Coral Springs Talk reported the school at about 64 percent capacity in November, with 742 students in the building. A 2025 account had put capacity at 57.5 percent that school year. The figures come from different years and were not offered as one running tally.
An Arts Magnet, and a Familiar Pitch
Parents and teachers have proposed an artistic magnet at Forest Glen, with programs such as musical theater, drum line, jazz band and dance. That pitch lines up with a menu officials were already describing in 2025, when responses to declining middle-school enrollment were said to include closures, consolidations, grade-configuration changes, program additions, or selling or leasing facilities, Coral Springs Daily reported.
Community opposition to school closures has surfaced elsewhere in Broward, too, CBS News Miami reported.
What Ten Closures Would, and Would Not, Do
District data cited by the Sun Sentinel said closing 10 schools would reduce empty seats by about 9,000. A district document estimated each closure could save between $2 million and more than $3 million. Those are projections, not savings already in hand. Set against a surplus reported around 60,000 seats or more, 9,000 is a slice, not a solution to the empty-building problem the district is describing.
If the board follows Hepburn's recommendation, Forest Glen would close for 2027-28 and its students would be consolidated into Coral Springs Middle. Dec. 15 is the date the board is expected to decide.
