At a Cincinnati concert, Pitbull said he hopes to open a new school somewhere in Ohio.
The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Pitbull hopes to open a new school "somewhere in Ohio." The concert, which featured special guest Lil Jon, took place at Riverbend on Tuesday night, according to Riverbend Music Center.
Pitbull, whose legal name is Armando Christian Pérez, has spent more than a decade building a network of tuition-free public charter schools known as SLAM, short for Sports Leadership and Management. The foundation's site includes an "Our History" page.
A School Built Around Sports and Careers
SLAM's schools emphasize sports. The idea, as Pitbull has explained it, is to give students who find traditional school boring a hook that keeps them engaged, a point the rapper made to npr.org when SLAM's first Miami campus opened, according to ABC News.
The article also discusses a vocational bent at the Henderson school but does not specify its courses. Concert promotional materials for the Cincinnati stop echoed the same theme, with mymix1079.com noting that Pitbull continues to spotlight the transformative work of SLAM charter schools even while touring.
A Network Still Growing, With Some Numbers in Dispute
Riverbend promotional material says SLAM serves more than 10,000 students across 14 U.S. schools, according to Riverbend Music Center. The available material does not specify the schools' accrediting body or any Cognia designation.
The network's origin story also carries a discrepancy. The SLAM Foundation says Pitbull opened the first SLAM school in Miami in 2012; the supplied material does not provide further details about its opening. The article also discusses a second SLAM school in Henderson, but does not establish its opening date or ceremony. It also describes plans for a Tampa campus without establishing enrollment or capacity figures.
What an Ohio school would require
According to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Ohio School Sponsorship Office, a prospective Ohio community school must meet requirements including nonprofit or public-benefit-corporation status, nonsectarian operation, properly licensed teachers and compliance with Ohio law, including state graduation and curriculum requirements. The proposal also must receive approval from a sponsor, and the state’s 2024-2025 annual report says only sponsors rated Effective or Exemplary can authorize new schools.
The state report also shows the accountability context for any potential new campus: 48.2% of Ohio’s non-dropout prevention and recovery community schools received overall ratings of three stars or better in 2024-2025, down from 50.4% in 2023-2024, and 15 community schools were identified as at risk for closure based on the 2024-2025 report card.
Expansion Talk Has Come Before
Expansion talk has also included Baltimore and Miami projects, but the supplied material does not establish the details described here.
The available material does not establish a site, application, timeline or operating partner for a Cincinnati-area school, nor does it say whether a potential campus would carry the SLAM name or curriculum. For now, the reported Ohio-school idea remains an announcement without publicly described plans for where or how a campus would operate.
