Outside today’s Miami-Dade County School Board meeting, parents, advocates, political leaders and students gathered to protest what they say is the hollowing out of traditional public schools.
Some came with signs that said, “We choose public schools, fully fund our choice.” Another sign showed a graph illustrating the amount of state and local funding for public schools over the past two decades.
Today, the school board voted to approve new boundary changes that include the repurposing of Shadowlawn Elementary in Miami and Parkview Elementary in Miami Gardens, schools that serve historically black and immigrant communities.
Parkview Elementary will be reimagined as a Specialized Center for Exceptional Student Education and Full-Service Resource Center, displacing approximately 105 students. Parkview Elementary has a majority black student body.
About 74 Shadowlawn Elementary students will be enrolled in a new school under the new boundaries.
Outside the meeting, activists argued that these changes and redefinitions of school boundaries are the result of efforts to fund voucher programs and charter schools at the expense of traditional public schools.
“This is a systematic diversion of public education dollars to private schools,” said Mina Hosseini, executive director of PS 305, an education advocacy group in Miami-Dade County.
“This is a small example of something the council is forced to do based on state funding,” Hosseini said.
Ziko Fremont, a father and local businessman whose daughter just finished fifth grade at Shadowlawn Elementary, said he is disappointed that his other children will not be able to continue in school. Fremont also has two children he adopted from Haiti, ages 11 and 7. The 11-year-old boy had just adjusted to school in the United States and thrived in Shadowland. But next year she will need to find a new school.
One of the reasons Shadowland is closing is the physical condition of the school, Fremont says.
“Miami-Dade Public Schools knew that every school was on the brink of deterioration. Why aren’t our school systems and our legislators finding ways to change this?” asked Fremont, who lives across the street from Shadowlawn, located near Little Haiti.
Another Shadowlawn parent, Moses Dany, said because of reuse, he doesn’t know where he will send his son next school year.
“I don’t think closing schools should be a natural process,” said Dany, who attended public schools and is now a firefighter and paramedic in the city of Miramar. He said he believes public schools should receive more resources because “every child deserves a good education.”
District 1 school board member Steve Gallon III said before the meeting that many factors are taken into consideration when deciding whether to create new school boundaries — including enrollment, curriculum options and demographics of a neighborhood.
“I understand that our public school system is now largely defined,” Gallon said of the changes.
During the meeting, board members Roberto J. Alonso, Dr. Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall, Gallon, Mari Tere Rojas and Monica Colucci responded to speakers during public comment who opposed the boundary changes. Council members agreed that boundary changes occurred transparently and with sufficient public participation.
Bendross-Mindingall, who represents District 2, where Shadowlawn Elementary School is located, said at the meeting that the boundary change is a result of changing neighborhood demographics. She supported the boundary changes.
Parents and activists worry that the conversation in Miami-Dade will eventually shift to school closures, which have dominated discussions at the Broward County school board. Former superintendent Peter Licata was tasked with devising a plan to close, repurpose or combine several of the county’s under-enrolled and dilapidated schools. After Licata retired Due to health concerns, his replacement, Howard Hepburn, has paused on the idea of closing schools for now. O latest plan in Broward it involved boundary changes and combining schools. But school closures are not out of the question.
In Florida, legislation that makes school choice easier has dominated the agenda in recent years.
During a recent Florida Board of Education meeting in Miami, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. highlighted that parents in the state now have greater opportunities to choose whether they want to send their children to public, private or charter schools.
In March 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis passed legislation this made it possible for every school-aged child in Florida to receive a taxpayer-funded education voucher of up to $8,000 per child. Previously, the program was limited to families with certain incomes. In the first year of the recently expanded voucher program, most of the funds went to students who were already enrolled in private schools.
In the next fiscal year, $3.9 billion will be allocated for vouchers in Florida, according to the Florida Policy Institute.
But voucher opponents say increasing voucher allocations is just one more thing that weakens our public school system.
“If you want your kids to go to a private school, then you should pay for it,” said Norin Dollard, senior policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute, who was at the rally outside the school board meeting.
“Public schools are a public good,” Dollard said.
