Christopher Columbus High School made an unsolicited offer to buy Banyan Elementary, the public school sitting just across SW 87th Avenue from its main campus, but Miami-Dade County Public Schools staff are recommending the district turn it down. The all-boys Catholic high school, run by the Marist Brothers, wants the land to build an aquatic center along with new educational and athletic facilities, and has proposed either an outright purchase or a long-term lease.
According to the Miami Herald, the district has not disclosed the total dollar amount Columbus High offered for the elementary campus. The high school has also committed to giving Miami-Dade schools access to the proposed aquatic center, though the surrounding Banyan Park currently separates the elementary campus from the SW 87th Avenue corridor where Columbus High sits.
The proposal did not get far at Wednesday's meeting of the Fiscal Accountability & Government Relations Committee, which advanced an agenda item recommending the offer be rejected. That agenda item described a plan involving demolition of the existing district school facilities and construction of new ones at the petitioner's expense. Board member Mari Tere Rojas, who represents the district that includes both Banyan Elementary and Columbus High, said the proposal was not feasible.
Enrollment Numbers in Dispute
Part of the disagreement centers on how full Banyan Elementary actually is. The school had about 350 students last school year and a state-calculated utilization rate of 56 percent, but staff reported a 62 percent utilization rate at Wednesday's committee meeting. Notably, Banyan Elementary was not included on the district's recent list of schools monitored for possible closure, which the district released in August.
That list identified 27 additional schools under watch for potential shutdown, and shortly after it came out, Superintendent Rafael Villalobos paused the review process, per the same Miami Herald report. The district had already approved the closure or consolidation of nine campuses over the summer, a move miamiherald.com tied directly to the financial strain of fewer students generating less per-pupil funding from the state.
A District Shrinking Fast
The numbers behind that strain are stark. Miami-Dade's traditional public schools enrolled about 307,000 students in 2012; this school year that figure was expected to land around 217,100, according to a separate Miami Herald analysis. Enrollment on the first day of this school year came in at 215,078, down 15,000 from the previous year, and of 316 campuses with attendance data stretching back to 2012, 254 — more than 80 percent — have seen declines.
The district's $7.36 billion budget for this school year reflects a 3.6 percent cut to operating expenses and a drop of more than 5 percent in the traditional public school budget specifically, the Miami Herald reported. Only 79 of the district's more than 300 active campuses met the 80 percent utilization threshold considered healthy, while about 22 were over capacity. Meanwhile, 77 schools — roughly a quarter of those in the most recent report — had utilization below 50 percent.
Enrollment numbers in district-operated schools landed 5,333 below projections as of August, according to usatoday.com. Reassessment, the district has said, is an evaluation of whether a school should keep operating based on enrollment, facility utilization and financial sustainability — not an automatic path to closure.
Vouchers and Private Interest in Public Land
Miami-Dade has pointed to lower birth rates, shifting migration patterns and the region's high cost of living as drivers of the enrollment slide, according to wgcu.org. Florida's 2023 expansion of its Family Empowerment Scholarships made vouchers available regardless of household income, and that universal, state-funded voucher now helps pay more than $8,000 toward private-school tuition. Private schools have seen enrollment increases as a result, and private schools and developers have expressed strong interest in South Florida land potentially freed up by public-school contraction.
Columbus High's bid for Banyan Elementary fits into that broader pattern already playing out elsewhere in Miami. KIPP Sunrise Academy opened last year inside the same building as the traditional public Poinciana Park Elementary School in Liberty City, while KIPP Liberty Academy shares a campus with Madison Middle School, according to chartered.wlrn.org.
Other Florida districts are grappling with similar pressure. Broward County Public Schools proposed closing 10 schools following an 11,000-student enrollment drop this school year, per cbsnews.com. In Pinellas County, officials floated closing two elementary schools, merging two others and expanding a fifth to fend off the state's Schools of Hope law, a plan that would cut $7.7 million in annual expenses while requiring a one-time $2.4 million capital investment, according to wusf.org. Duval County's traditional public-school enrollment, meanwhile, fell 16 percent over the past decade, dropping below 100,000 students for the first time in its modern history, wgcu.org reported.
A spokesperson for Christopher Columbus High School did not respond to questions about the offer as of Wednesday. Miami-Dade County Public Schools has not disclosed what, if any, further action is planned beyond the committee's recommendation to reject the proposal.
