The Future of Education: Schools that ‘Say Something’
By: Charles Flowers
speechwrite@yahoo.com
The future of public education in Miami-Dade is new, different, and by all accounts, far more tricked-out than the past. From the Early Childhood Centers to the new medical school at Florida International University, there is sweeping change afoot. Same-sex schools are making a comeback, as witness The Young Women’s Preparatory Academy opening this August in Little Havana for 450 girls who want nothing to do with boys – on class time, anyway. Next comes the all-boys’ school, grades 6-12, proposed to open in 2007 in a school district-owned building in the Wynnwood Arts District. Both will be rigorous, designed for the no-nonsense child of the future, who, by the way, better be thinking about declaring a major by ninth grade.
The structural differences will be striking to those riding a time machine, or just cruising around the county now. The emphasis in the makeover is now on high schools. Of 18 schools contracted to be built in the 2005-2006 fiscal year, five are high schools, three each are elementary and middle schools, three are early childhood education centers and four are a relatively new type, Kindergarten through eighth grade, or K-8s. A phenomenal 40 new schools will be built in the next five years, many from prototypes and none with portable classrooms -- the stand-alone sweatboxes that suck up land faster than malaleucas -- as Miami public schools experience a building boom of unprecedented size, speed and variety.
The prototypes, as facilities manager Rose Diamond, a former schoolteacher turned architect, says are “wonderful. These are very fine, modern buildings that can be adapted to the neighborhood. We’re looking for well-designed schools that say something to their neighborhoods. They say that we care about our kids and where they go to school.”
Such interest has been lacking at times in Miami-Dade, where Diamond estimates that 33,000 students -- nearly 10 percent of the 372,000 enrolled in the nation’s fourth largest district -- spend their school days in portables, a monument to poor planning, and overcrowding. First to go are the playgrounds, then the athletic fields; pretty soon there’s no place for recess. So the kids get fat. Those little prisons are soon to be gone, replaced with truly visionary designs – Arquitectonica will design one of the five new high schools. The schools will have fewer inhabitants as enrollment is forecast to dip by 5 percent, to 354,500.
On the east side of the county, where development is a vertical issue, schools are planned in new developments, such as Biscayne Shores: “We basically started talking to the developer starting with the land use amendment, “ says Ana Rijo-Conde, planning officer for Miami-Dade Public Schools. “And there’s a covenant to set aside about 37,000 square feet for the District. We have the option of having the developer build or we can build an early childhood center there.”
Other schools are popping up in the strangest places – including bigger schools. The University of Miami is planning a new public high school on its South Campus.
The idea of clustering schools together is not new, but the integration of public with private schools, and working with developers to consider families in their plans, has a futuristic edge.
How does the future look to the School District’s planners: “We have reduced class size, fixed every school, every school will be on a preventative maintenance schedule, instead of the old crisis system,” says Diamond. “We don’t have time to lose a generation. Our five-year plan is to develop these things by 2010.”
The major institutions are not lagging, either. Says U-M’s Shalala: “We’re anticipating a much broader impact of technology, much wider use of computers. The education process will be much more paperless than it is today. The service quality will be better. We will be able to impact students in more ways than we do now, with distance learning and interactive media.”
So why will they come to Miami? “The student body will be more national. Many of them are coming to Miami to study Latin America. We are also making a tremendous investment in bioscience,” she says.
This March, FIU President Modesto “Mitch” Madique landed in Opa-Locka Airpoort with the biggest news since Amelia Earhart took off: the University had been approved to start a medical school on its University Park Campus – just as soon as it can build and open it. Madique says the first class will start in 2008, with start-up costs of $50 million. By 2020, it will have graduated 1,000 new doctors who can be trained for less than $18,000 a year in tuition and intern at area hospitals. Madique called the decision “the greatest moment in the history of our university.
“We import 90 percent of our doctors currently,” Madique says. “This will help greatly to relieve the doctor shortage.” When fully up and running, he says, the FIU Medical School’s $750 million annual budget will equal the current budget of the University, generating 12,000 new jobs with a $1 billion annual economic impact on Miami-Dade.
Now that we have the buildings and the students, how can Miami attract and retain top teachers? It’s the same from top to bottom, says Shalala.
“We can pay competitive salaries. What we can’t do is adjust those salaries for the high cost of housing. Right now if we have an attractive candidate, I ask if there is a spouse. If our candidate has kids and a dog, I say, ‘Oh, no! They’re going to need a house.’ Affordable housing is in short supply in Miami-Dade, so it forces us to get into the housing business. We are planning to build more housing for our faculty because our graduates would love to stay here.”
On the K-12 front, the Florida Legislature recently authorized $147.5 million to pay STAR (“Special Teachers Are Rewarded”) teachers up to 5 percent of their annual bonus. This means that a top performing elementary, middle or high school teacher making near the state average of $41,000 per year could take home a nifty $2,050 bonus. This also helps beginning teachers bridge the pay gap.between themselves and longer tenured teachers. Passed over objections from the teacher’s union, it may not last till 2020. But, for now, it is the law of the land, and it’s helping to lure more teachers to Miami-Dade.
“We’ll be far smarter and better able to organize the schools of tomorrow around the emerging economy,” says Rudy Crew, superintendent of Miami-Dade Schools. And, he adds, by 2020 the dreaded F-CAT tests will be history: “I don’t think it will survive another 15 years.”
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