The Miami-Dade County School Board is throwing its support behind terminating a controversial land deal in downtown Miami.
The question of what should be built at the city-owned Biscayne Park on NE 19th Street is central to the corruption case against former City Commissioner Alex Díaz de la Portilla, who was arrested in 2023 on charges of money laundering, bribery and criminal conspiracy.
In 2022, the Miami city commission voted unanimously to allow a private school run by wealthy conservative donors to build an athletic facility at the city-owned site — sidelining a longstanding plan to let the school district build a new public school there.
“It’s very exciting to see us take this unified stance against an injustice that was done to us,” Board Member Lucia Baez-Geller said of the board's support for terminating the private school land deal.
How the plans for a new public school got derailed
Dating back to 2017, Miami-Dade County schools officials were in conversation with the City of Miami to use the Biscayne Park site to build a new campus for iPrep Academy, a public magnet school serving students in pre-K through 12th grade.
The new building would be just a few blocks away from iPrep’s current location across the street from the school board administration building on NE 2nd Avenue, and would allow the school to double its enrollment.
The plan also called for building on-site affordable housing units for school staff and would set aside outdoor recreation facilities for students.
“As a mother of two children attending Miami-Dade public schools, I wholeheartedly support the proposal to utilize Biscayne Park for iPrep Academy,” said parent and Moms For Libros advocate Lissette Fernandez.
“Public lands must be preserved for community use and this initiative promises significant benefits by expanding educational opportunities rather than privatizing these valuable spaces.”
But then on April 28, 2022, the city commission unanimously approved a different land deal, granting development rights on the Biscayne Park site to the operators of the private Centner Academy.
Instead of paving the way for the long-planned expansion of the public school, the plan granted the private school the ability to build an indoor athletic facility on the site, which the public would have at least some access to.
Centner Academy serves students from pre-K through high school, with tuition costing as much as $36,500 a year. The school rocketed onto the national stage in 2021 when it announced that teachers who received the COVID-10 vaccine could lose their jobs.
Then on Sept. 14, 2023, then-City Commissioner Díaz de la Portilla was arrested on corruption charges, including for allegedly accepting cash for his political support to redevelop the Biscayne Park site.
According to reporting by the Miami Herald, a major focus of the case against the then-commissioner is that he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash and hotel stays in exchange for his vote for the Centner’s land deal.
Díaz de la Portilla has pleaded not guilty. David and Leila Centner, the founders of the school, have not been charged and deny any wrongdoing.
“Today's vote by the Miami-Dade School Board to support the retraction of our agreement with the City only highlights their favoritism of anointed iPrep Academy for its new school building, when so many other existing schools throughout the county are in need of repairs, expansions, and academic improvement,” David Centner told WLRN in an email.
Centner noted that the land deal was unanimously approved and argued that the plan should proceed — regardless of prosecutors’ allegations that his family paid Díaz de la Portilla off to get it passed.
“Clearly one person and any alleged wrongdoing of his was not an outsized factor in the decision making process,” Centner said, referring to Díaz de la Portilla.
“Many individuals within so many City departments were involved in these decisions, and by revoking the deal you bring into question the integrity and competence of the numerous people that were involved along the way.”
“We believe this remains a good deal for the City and its residents,” he added.
‘Public land for public schools’
At Wednesday’s school board meeting, iPrep parents filed into the auditorium in matching bright pink t-shirts emblazoned with the message “Public Land For Public Schools”.
They lined up at the microphone to thank the school board for defending the plan to build the new public school on public land — and for supporting the City’s proposal to terminate the 2022 land deal with the Centner Academy.
“Thank you to all the board members, to [Board Member Dorothy Bendross-Mindingall], for understanding how important this is,” parent Leslie Del Monte told the school board, with her 9-year-old son Mateo standing at her side. “Public entities rarely take a position like this.”
Bendross-Mindingall sponsored the item supporting the Miami city commission proposal to cancel the Centner deal. Seven other board members signed on to cosponsor the item, which was approved unanimously.
“It’s been said it’s unusual for the board to take a position on other governing bodies’ items,” said Bendross-Mindingall. “But we stand together to support what is best for our children.”
Bendross-Mindingall’s item also directs the district superintendent to restart discussions about the iPrep expansion and relocation with the City of Miami.
Parents of iPrep students hope that the show of force at Wednesday’s school board meeting will send a clear message to city leaders. The commission is scheduled to vote on whether to terminate the Centner land deal at a meeting on Thursday — though commissioners have delayed the item before.
“This isn't even about private versus public. This is about wrong versus right. This is about being able to carry forward a plan that thought about the entire community rather than one entity,” Del Monte told WLRN.
“I'm optimistic. I'm hopeful that the commission sees the importance of this.”
