Affluent cities seeking buy-in to top schools

Coral Gables wants to create spots for residents at magnet.

Henry S. West Laboratory is the kind of school every parent wants their kid to attend.

Nestled in a lush green patch in Coral Gables, the public K-8 center better known as West Lab boasts a German-language program, a middle school curriculum focused on science and math, and a partnership with the University of Miami’s School of Education.

It’s so popular that there are nearly 400 students on the waiting list — more than the school’s entire population. But although West Lab is located in Coral Gables, it’s a magnet school, meaning that anyone in Miami-Dade County can apply.

That’s why the city of Coral Gables is considering paying $4.2 million to create seats just for the children of residents. The money would pay for extra classrooms to accommodate about 180 students, who would be mixed in with the rest of the student body. For a one-time fee of roughly $23,000 per student slot, Coral Gables residents would be guaranteed the slots in perpetuity.

The proposal would help fill a need for more spaces at high-quality schools, city officials and residents say. It’s something other cities in Miami-Dade — many of them affluent — have also done to create more local public school options, pitching in millions of dollars to pay for extra seats at popular magnet schools or to fund advanced programs. Some cities have even created their own municipal charter schools.

But some of the municipal investments could make Miami-Dade schools more segregated along racial and economic lines, experts say — and divert money from other nearby public schools.

“I understand that parents want more options, but at the same time it does create these disparities, and it is often wealthier communities that do this,” said Osamudia James, a Coral Gables resident and law professor at the University of Miami who specializes in education issues. “It’s absolutely true that it’s going to aggravate segregation.”

School Board member Steve Gallon shares similar concerns, saying in an email that such proposals “could result in the creation of systems and structures that could impede such access to poor children and those of color to a worldclass education based on

their ZIP codes.”

A change in culture

Take MAST Academy on Virginia Key, for example, a popular science and technology magnet school that draws students from across the county. The Village of Key Biscayne paid about $10 million to expand the school in 2012 in exchange for first dibs for residents at two new academies within the school.

The deal was controversial at the time because some students and teachers felt the district was selling seats to Key Biscayne. They worried that guaranteeing spots for village residents would change the school’s culture.

If nothing else, the investment certainly changed MAST’s demographics. The proportion of low-income students fell by half, from 37 percent of the student body in 2012 to about 19 percent during the most recent school year, according to state data. The percentage of black students also decreased, from almost 10 percent of the student body in 2012 to less than 3 percent this year, school district data shows. The overall proportion of minority students dipped only slightly because of an increase in the percentage of Hispanic students.

Other cities have opted to open their own charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately managed.

Miami Shores was one of the first places in Florida to create its own municipal charter school, approving a $5 million bond in 2003 to build Doctors Charter School for residents in grades 6-12.

The result: Just two percent of Doctors Charter students are low-income, according to state data. Before the charter school was created, the neighborhood public high school options for Miami Shores residents were North Miami and Edison high schools, where at least 90 percent of the student body is poor.

Doctors Charter offers the kind of education students could expect at a private school. More than half of the teachers have a master’s degree or higher, according to the school website, and students can choose from advanced computer science courses and the types of literature classes you might find at a liberal arts college.

Further north, the city of Aventura runs its own K-8 charter school, known as ACES. Aventura is currently in the process of opening a new charter high school — something parents, local politicians and business groups have been advocating for years. They argue that Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School in north Miami-Dade, the public high school serving Aventura residents, is too far away for some families.

Aventura residents will get first dibs at the new high school, which is slated to open in 2019. Although other county residents will be able to apply for empty seats, City Manager Eric Soroka said that based on interest from residents, he doesn’t think there will be any.

Instead, some area residents are concerned that the charter high school could segregate the area, pulling affluent Aventura residents out of Krop along with the added resources, like fundraising contributions, that wealthy students tend to bring with them.

“Personally, I think there’s a benefit to having a diverse school population so that especially high school-aged kids can become friends with kids from other ethnicities,” said Aventura resident Ivy Ginsberg. “By saying that all the slots are going to go to Aventura residents only, it’s like giving Aventura residents their own private school.”

Soroka said that’s not the city’s intention. “The only thing we’re providing is another educational choice for our residents at this point,” he said.

‘It’s a win-win’

School districts are under a lot of pressure to keep wealthy families in the public school system because these families typically have other options. For every child that leaves the school system, the district loses money.

“Wealthier parents get to use their market power to create more choices for themselves,” said James, the UM law professor. “The bargain we make with wealthier parents to keep them from leaving and going to private schools is we give them these options and opportunities and they’re supposed to stay, but in exchange for staying they hoard resources.”

School districts also face stiff competition from charter schools, and many have created specialized programs like magnets in an effort to keep students, said Elena Silva, the director of the preK-12 education policy program at New America, a D.C.based think tank.

This is especially true in Miami-Dade, where enrollment in charter schools has more than tripled over the past 10 years.

In response, the school district has created more than 500 so-called choice programs, which include both magnet schools and specialized programs within neighborhood schools — everything ranging from forensic science and conservation biology to international finance and robotics.

But ensuring equal access to magnet schools can be difficult, Silva said, because low-income students often struggle to find transportation if the schools are far from their homes.

“One of the biggest issues with these choice programs writ large is the question about whether everybody has equal access,” she said. “If you’re putting magnet programs in wealthy communities and then you’re reserving seats at that school, is that helping to address the inequities in the county?”

District officials said Miami-Dade has made an effort to create choice programs across the county to ensure students in low-income neighborhoods have access to the specialized programs.

And from the school district’s perspective, collaboration with city governments helps raise much-needed funds.

“It’s a win-win for our community and our residents,” said Iraida Mendez-Cartaya, who oversees the school district’s office of intergovernmental affairs. “You have two government agencies come and leverage resources, providing more access to communities.”

At a June meeting in Coral Gables to discuss the possibility of paying for extra seats at West Lab, Mayor Raúl Valdés-Fauli pointed out that the city contributes $1 billion in taxes to the school district every decade — about $100 million a year.

“I am very wary of the seriousness of the school district in dealing with Coral Gables because they think we are filthy rich and we deserve to give and not to get back what belongs to us and to seek school places for our kids,” Valdés-Fauli said.