A notable charter school network in New York City is expanding to Miami, further advancing Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature's mission to increase access to school choice for families.
At a Miami news conference Thursday, Success Academy Charter Schools CEO and Founder Eva Moskowitz appeared alongside DeSantis, Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas and FIU president Jeanette Nuñez to announce the plans.
They also announced that Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin is backing the charter school network's move into Florida with a $50 million gift.
“This gift paves the way for Success Academy to provide an excellent education to children of economically disadvantaged families in Miami,” said Moskowitz. “The innovation, choice, and continuous improvement that are in Miami’s DNA have granted us a favorable environment."
“Florida leads the nation in educational freedom, and today we are adding to that promise,” said DeSantis. “With Success Academy opening in Miami, students will now have access to one of the highest-performing education models in the country. Florida’s families deserve world-class education, and we will continue to make it available to every child no matter their zip code.”
Founded in 2006, Success Academy has nearly 60 schools and has educated 22,000 students in New York City, mostly from low-income households in neighborhoods, according to a statement. It notes that 100% of its graduates have been accepted to four-year colleges and universities, and that most are the first in their families to have the opportunity for higher education.
" In public education, we have a crisis in America," Moskowitz told reporters at the news conference on FIU's main campus. "I'm so excited to work with other Miami educators, business and civic leaders, and the diverse set of community leaders here in Miami.
"It's a little emotional. I have been fighting, as the governor said, in a blue state — I'm not used to being welcomed. I'm not used to people liking high standards," she said.
Success Academy will open its first schools in Miami in the 2027–28 school year.
Griffin's $50 million gift to Success Academy fits with the billionaire's interest in public education reform in Miami. He previously supported Success Academy in opening new middle schools in low-income areas of New York City.
Moskowitz told the Miami Herald she hopes to open three to five schools by the 2027-2028 school year, enrolling between 8,000 and 10,000 students in Miami-Dade within five years, and expand further into Florida.
Paving the way for Success Academy's entry into the state is Florida's Schools of Hope program.
Lawmakers created the Schools of Hope program in 2017 to encourage more publicly funded, privately run schools to open in areas where traditional public schools had been failing for years, giving students and families in those neighborhoods a way to bail out of a struggling school.
This year's law loosens restrictions on where schools of hope can operate, allowing them to set up operations within the walls of a public school — even a high-performing one — if the campus has underused or vacant facilities.
"Co-location proposals further strain our schools by forcing us to provide custodial, food, safety, nursing, and transportation services to charters for free, stretching already inadequate budgets even thinner," Tony White, president of United Teachers of Dade, said in a statement to WLRN. "Our students deserve real investment in proven public-school solutions—not experiments that pull resources from the schools serving our communities."
Underenrolled schools
A dramatic decline in public school enrollment in South Florida has forced the state's largest school districts to find solutions for the growing number of empty seats and buildings.
Broward County Public Schools, also facing thinning class counts, recently closed an under-enrolled Lauderhill elementary school and transformed it into an early learning center. The 'Redefining Our Schools' initiative to optimize campus space in the face of tens of thousands of empty seats is advancing, with 34 schools landing on the list of possible consolidations, closures or repurposing.
The Miami-Dade County School Board also flirted with the possibility of transforming underused schools into early learning centers.
The expansion of school choice options in Florida has worried public school educators and advocates, fearing state funding losses to public school districts. The more students opt for charters and privates, the less is allocated for the district based on head count.
As the competition for students has risen, Miami-Dade County Public Schools is pushing back against the perception that more families prefer non-public school and marketing its strengths.
" Miami-Dade County Public Schools will continue to make our brand a stronger brand," Miami-Dade schools Superintendent Jose Dotres said at a recent press conference. The district is "prepared to compete and be innovative and keep our students... because the reality is we're not losing a lot to our competitors."
READ MORE: Enrollment in Miami-Dade schools is lower at the start of this year. Why?
Dotres did not attend Thursday's press conference. Miami-Dade schools did not immediately respond to request for comment from WLRN.
Gov. DeSantis dispelled worries that an increase in charter schools hurt traditional public schools.
“If a charter school is offering better programs, then [traditional public schools] will have to do something to earn the trust of parents back,” he said.
Students lost in mix of hasty school voucher expansion
The speakers at Thursday's news conference stood behind a podium with a banner that read, "school choice success," all praising the strides Florida has made to enable parents — as proponents say — to practice education freedom.
" If a parent has options, that's better than having one option that's not doing well and you have no way to get out of that," DeSantis said.
WLRN has reported the state opened the floodgates last year for any child to use public money for private schooling when it expanded its voucher program to make it easier for parents to opt for school choice. Critics said not enough guardrails were implemented at the time of the bill’s passing to ensure students received the vouchers.
More than 500,000 students use state vouchers today, nearly double what it was two years ago and over 400,000 Florida students are in charter schools.
More than 50% of Florida's K-12 students attended a school of their family's choice during the 2023-2024 school year.
