Falling enrollment is an ongoing trend in South Florida’s public school districts. Just like Broward County Public Schools, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is trying to “right-size” itself, because state funding is based on the number of students in the classrooms.
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The school board on Wednesday voted unanimously to shut down nine schools, and according to activists who demonstrated outside district headquarters, for-profit charter school operators will take advantage of the closures.
Their protest called for the school board to fight back against charter schools co-locating on public school campuses. One of the organizers told the board that these issues are related.
“These families are not losing their schools because their schools failed them; they’re losing their schools because the state failed them. Our community is watching a pattern, public schools close, charters move in,” said Miami-Dade PTA member Lisette Fernandez.
The superintendent said the school closures are based strictly on enrollment numbers, and the kids at those schools will have more opportunities for enrichment at their new schools.
“These students are now going to schools where there are additional resources for them to tap in, additional programming, additional resources, that at the school they were at, unfortunately, we could not provide,” said Jose Dotres, superintendent of Miami-Dade Schools.
As Dotres explained, when schools are severely underenrolled, there’s not enough funding to provide a full educational experience, and school board member Luisa Santos agreed.
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“And so what is actually missing in this conversation is that so many students can be better served if we merge resources and actually invest more per student,” Santos said.
The nine schools to be closed are:
- Parkway Elementary
- Rainbow Park Elementary
- Lenora Smith Elementary
- Miami Springs Middle School
- Phyllis Wheatley Elementary
- Mandarin Lakes K8
- Pine Villa Elementary
- Richmond Heights Middle
- Robert Moton Elementary
Georgia Jones Ayers Middle and Lenora Smith Elementary will combine to form a K8 center, Miami Springs Middle will combine with Miami Springs High School to become a 6-12 school, Mays Conservatory of the Arts and Pine Villa Elementary School will merge into a K-12 school, and Richmond Heights Middle will combine with Biotech High to become a 6-12 school.
So what caused the district to lose more than 13,000 students this year? The district cites low birth rates, the high cost of living driving families away, some students using the state’s vouchers to go to private schools, charter schools drawing some kids away, but Dotres says fear of immigration enforcement is possibly the biggest factor.
“The major hit was the fact of 13,000 less students not coming in, in a county that we’re used to receiving a lot of newcomers from other countries,” Dotres said.
“When families are afraid to send their children to school, our schools lose students, resources, and opportunities,” said one of the public speakers at the board meeting.
As for the charter school co-location issue, that is happening next school year. A charter school company is opening five schools on high school campuses, and even if they wanted to, the school board would not be able to stop it because a new state law expressly allows it.
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