Miami Country Day School, a private institution near Miami Shores, is embarking on a plan to increase its enrollment by 142 students.
Approved last month by the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, the expansion plan consists of adding a surface lot and reconfiguring existing buildings to maintain small class sizes, according to Timothy S. Walsh, chief operating officer at the school. The expansion will increase enrollment for the middle and upper school levels at Miami Country Day, which serves students from preschool to 12th grade.
The expansion is expected to span several years, said Walsh.
(Pufi C. via FourSquare)
About 140 additional students will be accepted into Miami Country Day School in the coming years as the result of an ongoing expansion plan.
In the months leading up to the county’s April 16 vote, surrounding residents of Miami Shores and Biscayne Park took to the community neighborhood app Nextdoor to express concerns over the school’s proposed expansion. Their comments primarily revolved around existing traffic jams, during which residents say their homes and driveways are blocked off by cars as parents wait to pick up their children in the afternoon.
There were, however, no residents present at the county’s public hearing for the item, which occurred around 10 a.m. on a Tuesday. Previous public hearings slated for February and March were either deferred or canceled.
Despite the lack of public comment, Walsh says the issue of traffic has been considered and dealt with.
“As part of the approval process, extensive traffic studies were conducted and approved by the County traffic department,” he wrote in an email. “This culminated in the commissioner’s approval at the hearing.”
(Gregory Reed)
Some surrounding residents have complained of traffic jams and blocked driveways resulting from Miami Country Day School’s presence in their neighborhood.
Walsh said the expansion plan will include a new surface parking lot in front of the school’s current garage, providing an additional 52 parking spaces. He also said the lot will feature two lanes for queuing, allowing the opportunity for vehicles to line up within the new lot rather than on NE Sixth Avenue.
The new parking lot is scheduled to be finished by the start of the next school year, if all goes well during the permitting process.
Construction of a new athletic and fitness center will then begin during the summer at the corner of NE Sixth Avenue and 107th Street, though Walsh said the school does not anticipate any impact on traffic.
Plus, new students won’t be immediately admitted as a result of the new additions. Miami Country Day School’s enrollment is projected to remain stable for the 2024-25 school year, he said.
In Broward County, public school enrollment has been steadily decreasing since 2005, dropping by a total of about 22% since then. The school district announced last month that it will likely have to close, repurpose or sell several of its existing public schools.
(Florida Department of Education)
Data from the Florida Department of Education shows near steady increases in private school enrollment in the state over the past 10 years.
The trend, which is said to be statewide, has been attributed to a growing number of charter schools and increased private school enrollment resulting from an expanded state voucher program. Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded the Family Empowerment Scholarship program, allowing anybody in the state to apply for the $8,000 private school voucher regardless of income.
The harrowing outlook for public schools in Broward and throughout the state of Florida leads one to wonder if the same is true for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the largest school district in the state, where there were more than 600 private schools available to families at the start of the 2023-24 school year.
According to a spokesperson for M-DCPS, the answer is: Not exactly. Despite a rather steady decline in public non-charter school enrollment over the past five years, the rate of that decline seems to be easing up. The school district reported a 6% decrease in public non-charter school enrollment from 2019 to 2020, but only a 0.4% decrease from 2022 to 2023. Public non-charter school enrollment actually increased from 2021 to 2022 by 0.6%.
Meanwhile, charter school enrollment has steadily increased over the same time period, balancing out total public school enrollment and causing an overall increase in the school district over the past two years.
(miamicountrydayschool/Facebook)
Miami Country Day School offers its own financial assistance to enrolled students instead of accepting state-issued vouchers.
Data shared with the Biscayne Times by M-DCPS shows that more than 12,000 additional private school scholarships were nevertheless issued to students in the county from 2022 to 2023. Those additional scholarships, however, are mainly attributed to students who were already attending private school before the extra financial assistance was awarded.
In the case of Miami Country Day School, which maintains a waitlist across all grades, an expanded state voucher program for private schools is certainly not credited for any increases in enrollment or waitlisting, as the school doesn’t accept the state-issued scholarship vouchers.
Instead, the school offers its own form of financial assistance to its middle and upper school levels and will be adding five scholarships for lower-school students as part of its expansion plan.
The school attributes the necessity of its expansion plan to an “ongoing migration of families to the Miami area.”
Migration to and from the county, or even within it, has also led to a decline of school-aged children residing within the attendance boundaries of certain public schools, affecting enrollment rates at those schools.
Plus, the state’s expanded scholarship program may soon begin to have an effect on the county’s public schools, even if it hasn’t already. Florida lawmakers increased total student funding allocations by 6% at the same time that they expanded private school scholarships last year, meaning both moves generally balanced each other out. But as the state voucher program continues to increase, student funding allocations won’t always be able to keep up.
This year, lawmakers increased the allocation by only 2.5%, and M-DCPS chief financial officer Ron Steiger has already said that that won’t be enough to meet the school district’s costs.
That could compel M-DCPS to battle to remain relevant and in demand. The school district touts its 119 magnet schools and 380 magnet programs, dual enrollment articulation agreements with local colleges and universities, seven fully accredited technical career colleges, an aggressive marketing campaign, constant renovations and upgrades to technology, and continuous teacher development as ongoing methods to compete in an ever-growing market of schools.
“As of the 2023-2024 school year, there are 157 charter schools and 602 private schools in Miami-Dade County, increasing the number of choice options for parents that did not exist 20 years ago,” wrote a spokesperson for the school district.