There’s something new about Broward school elevators this year — they’re routinely passing inspections and deemed safe to operate.
After a South Florida Sun Sentinel investigation in May revealed that most elevators failed to have a current certificate of operation — an assurance they have passed a yearly safety inspection — the district has largely fixed the problem. Less than 2% of the district’s elevators are now out of compliance.
Students and staff had complained that elevators across the district frequently broke down, and a Pompano Beach High student told the Sun Sentinel he often had to miss his classes held on the third floor because the elevator was out of service.
In January, when the Sun Sentinel first contacted the district, only 18% of elevators had a current certificate of operations. By the time a Sun Sentinel investigation ran in May, it was up to 32%.
But now 219 out of 232 elevators still in operation have a certificate inside them verifying they’ve passed a county inspection and are in good working condition, district data shows.
Another 10 have met safety requirements, and the district is in the process of getting those certificates from the county building department and getting them posted, officials said.
Three more elevators are still being repaired, but their issues don’t affect their mechanical operations, district officials say. These include light bulbs that are out, and up and down arrows not lighting up.
“The District is given 90 days to address the minor issues. The District is allowed to operate these elevators during this time since it is safe to so do,” district spokeswoman Cathleen Brennan said.
She said district staff are working with an elevator maintenance contractor “to have 100% of elevators with no exceptions.”
Another three still listed in county records have been shut down, including one in the 1200 building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, the site of the 2018 mass shooting. Two others are in athletic press boxes at high schools.
The district’s rapid pace of fixing elevators in recent months came after years of neglect.
The Sun Sentinel had identified three dozen elevators that had been out of compliance for more than a decade, with an elevator at Coral Springs Middle last being current in 2006. That certificate has since been brought up to date.
The problem was that a district database was failing to track which elevators were out of compliance, so repairs weren’t being done on a timely basis, Deputy Superintendent Judith Marte told the School Board this past week. Marte, a former chief financial officer for the district, returned to the district in April and elevators became one of her first priorities.
“I met with the staff that maintains all the data around the elevators, saw what the problem was, with the database they were using and how it didn’t capture the fields correctly,” she told the board Sept. 20. “We constructed a new database that had drop-down menus.”
The database, developed by the information technology department, will ensure “the problems we had in the past never happen again. This is very, very good news,” Marte told the School Board at a July meeting.
At that July meeting, the School Board allocated $8 million for maintenance related to elevators, intercoms and the exterior painting of schools.
The district has been slower to repair wheelchair lifts, which carry a student or staff member’s wheelchair up to a raised platform, such as an auditorium stage.
The District has 75 wheelchair lifts, but only 44 are fully approved with certificates of operation. Another seven are pending approval, and there are 24 in need of repair or replacement.
“These 24 continue to be the focus of our work. All have been inspected and, in some cases, have not been repaired due to issues sourcing parts,” Brennan said.
She said the district is developing a plan to “move forward with a solution that can be expeditiously implemented. In the interim, the District purchased two mobile wheelchair lifts that can be dispatched to schools, as needed, until their wheelchair lifts can be replaced or repaired.”
All public elevators and wheelchair lifts are required to have up-to-date certificates under a state law known as the “Elevator Safety Act.” In most counties, the state oversees compliance, but Broward is one of five government jurisdictions in Florida where enforcement is local.
The elevator owner, in this case the school district, hires a state-approved third-party inspector to review its equipment yearly, and those results are forwarded to the county building department. If the elevator passes inspection, or if violations are corrected within 90 days, the county issues the owner a current certificate. These expire every Aug. 1 and must be renewed.
The Sun Sentinel started reviewing elevator certifications after receiving an email in October 2021 from Samuel Vogel, who was a senior last year at Pompano Beach High. Vogel, who uses a wheelchair, said he often found himself stuck because the school’s only elevator was routinely out of order. It had been happening since he was a freshman.
“The elevator constantly breaks down, meaning it won’t work or won’t close properly,” he told the Sun Sentinel in October. “I have to push it closed. Throughout my high school years, when the elevator is broken, I have to wait for people to help me down all the floors, which is highly frustrating.”
Vogel also had noticed that the certificate of operations placard — providing proof the elevator was in safe working condition — showed an August 2019 expiration date. That elevator was brought up to standards in early 2022.
The Sun Sentinel’s review found such delinquency was the norm, not an anomaly. Jacqui Luscombe, who leads the ESE Advisory Council, a district committee that advocates for special-needs students, took on the cause and started pushing the district to act. But she said she kept facing roadblocks.
“This was a shameful case of systemic neglect that gambled with the safety of students and staff over a period of years,” she said. “Even after this issue was brought to the district’s attention, it took months of emails and calls to prompt proper response — and in Samuel Vogel’s case, his pleas for help at school level went unfulfilled for years.”
She said she wrote 24 pages of emails to nine different people but only got a response when the Sun Sentinel started working on a story.
“The struggle for accountability and action should not be this hard,” she said. But she said she’s glad school elevators “are no longer an accident waiting to happen.”
To search the license status of an elevator or wheelchair lift in Broward County and to read inspection reports, go to the Broward County elevator search page.
