With enrollment dwindling and teacher retention a problem at Key Biscayne’s K-8 Center, the school district offered a unique solution in a sit-down with Village leaders: draft residents to teach classes.
Lourdes Diaz, the chief academic officer for Miami-Dade Schools, was the one who suggested the idea at the June 12 meeting.
“So there may be folks who live here on the Key, who are not full-time teachers that have expertise, that have something that we could leverage so that they could teach a couple of days a week, two periods, of something very special that we could offer here,” Diaz said.
“We have more ways to certify teachers now than we did in the past,” she added.
The idea was endorsed by Vice Mayor Oscar Sardiñas: “I can tell you there’s a lot of people, you know, on this island that could use some ancillary income,” he said.
How many residents are looking to pad their income teaching remains unknown. The median household income in Key Biscayne is $172,604, according to Data USA.
Drafting Key Biscayne residents to teach at the K-8 was just one of the ideas bandied about between Village leaders and School District top officials. The brainstorming session between Key Biscayne leaders and top Miami-Dade school officials comes as enrollment at the lone public school on the island has plummeted – especially in the middle school grades.
According to a presentation by the Village Council last month, the sixth-grade class enrollment at the K-8 dropped 57% — from 66 in the 2020-21 school year to 28 this year. The seventh-grade class saw enrollment drop 45% from 66 in 2020-21 to 36 this year. And the eighth-grade class went from 71 in 2020-21 to a current enrollment of 46, down 35%.
There were about 20 in all who attended the meeting last week at the Village Hall. Sardiñas, Council Member Frank Caplan, Village Manager Steve Williamson, and Communications Director Jessica Drouet represented Key Biscayne. Besides Diaz, attending for the school district were Deputy Superintendent Michael Lewis, Assistant Superintendent Daniel Mateo, and several supporting staff – as well as K-8 principal Julissa Piña.
At a May 22 strategy session, Village leaders indicated the main problem at the K-8 is that families feel that moving to MAST Academy after 5th Grade will ensure placement in the high school there. Sardiñas told school district officials that misinformation on social media chats dedicated to educational matters on the island remain a big problem.
“And so there’s a lot of information out there that is out there, but people are being spoon-fed by chats that don’t necessarily have the information correctly. So I think communication is a huge part,” Sardiñas said.
Caplan said the threat to public schools from Republican lawmakers in Tallahassee can not be underestimated. “I don’t hear this a lot, but I hear it a little, that the vouchers are an example of the perception – maybe a lot of hysterical perception – that the Florida Legislature is actively trying to kill public education,” he said.
“Anti-woke spinning, curriculum controls, book bans and banning what teachers can say in the classroom makes saving public schools a “loser’s end game because the Legislature’s got a different agenda,” he said.
After three hours, the Village and the school district came up with a plan to tackle low enrollment at the lone public school on the island.
The Village and the school district aim to:
- Draft information that will be presented at a K-8 Center open house – they called it a “symposium.”
- Draft questions for a survey for parents of school children on the island.
- Cultivate ideas as to where and how the school can obtain funding for new programming.
Lewis, the deputy superintendent, said the survey was essential.
“We can unpack and talk about everything that’s wrong or things that we would like to see, but without their voices, you know, then we’re just making assumptions,” he said. “And I think that their voices are extremely important as far as part of this particular process as well.”
Teacher shortages are not unique to the K-8 – though Sardiñas has said the commute across the Rickenbacker is a deterrent. In January, statewide teacher vacancies were at 3,197, according to the Florida Education Association.
Sardiñas said the hope is that the new plan will persuade parents to see the K-8 as more than just an ugly stepchild of MAST – where there are 1,100 seats dedicated to Key Biscayne students thanks to an investment more than a decade ago by the Village.
“Look, we do still need you to make a little bit of a leap of faith, but at least we already have the programming here that we’re funding now based on your surveys to get you to stay. And if you stay, and get more of your parents to stay, there’ll be more to come,” Sardiñas said.
