There are two things the wealthy New Yorkers who have joined the exodus to South Florida desperately need: a bagel to remind them of home and an elite private school for their children.
The former may be possible, depending on who you ask. (I’ve been told Mo’s in Aventura is worth a try.) But schooling is shaping up to be one of the big complications of South Florida’s boom. There simply aren’t enough elite schools to absorb all the children of hedge fund managers and other discerning Manhattanites who have moved to Miami since the pandemic.
Sought-after schools such as Gulliver Prep have set new records for applications each of the past four years. Soaring land prices make land expansion costly. Even if they could, many fear that it will diminish their quality. The situation got so bad that in September, The Real Deal, a real estate industry publication, warned that sales of luxury homes were being held up because children were stuck on private school waiting lists.
“The school problem is huge,” says Danny Hertzberg, a Jills Zeder Group broker. “I have a deal right now that can’t move forward until buyers determine which school their kids are going to.” The deal is in the range of $20 million and the family will walk away if the schools fail. “Schools cost $50,000 a year. They’re going to cost $100,000 before you blink,” a rival broker worries.
Like the surge in traffic and the sudden difficulty of nabbing a restaurant reservation, the squeeze on Miami’s elite schools is a hit-and-miss issue. New options are on the horizon. Avenues of New York plans to open a campus in Miami next year. The North London Collegiate School is also said to explore South Florida. (Note to UK boarding schools missing the Russian oligarch trade: go to Miami!)
The influx, which also comes from California and Chicago, can still benefit everyone. The school considered one of the best in South Florida, Ransom Everglades, was founded in 1903 by a New York lawyer, Paul C Ransom.
In the meantime, there is anxiety, competition and culture shock. The wealth (and sharp elbows) of the newcomers is such that locals will inevitably be squeezed out of the institutions they believed to be their birthright. This may explain a widely held rumor that a hedge fund manager “bought” 10 places in a top school for the children of his employees.
New Yorkers announced their arrival in February 2022 in the best way they know how: Scott Shleifer, a partner at hedge fund Tiger Global, sent a check for $18 million to the Palm Beach Day Academy. It was the largest donation in the school’s 100-year history. “This is just the beginning of many amazing things to come for PBDA,” the school’s director of philanthropy, Meghan Monteiro, said in a statement – presumably while doing cartwheels.
Such wealth has a gravitational pull. Christopher Rim is the founder of Command Education, a company that advises families on college admissions — often starting in college. Two years ago, he followed his clients from Manhattan to Miami. “It was a group of parents who said, ‘Chris, come here! Help us. We will make it worth it,” he recalls.
Many of Rim’s clients worried that even South Florida’s most selective schools would fall short of those they left behind – Horace Mann, Trinity, Dalton, and Brearley. Pretty much or not, Florida has never sparked ideas of academic grandeur in the public imagination. “Then they come here and classes at Ransom are more difficult,” he says.
Athletics tend to be a bigger factor in Florida schools — not the niche sports Manhattanites embrace in hopes of getting their child into the Ivy League. “No one here fencing,” Rim said.
The vibe also tends to be less cutthroat than in Manhattan. That is to say, admission to university is not the only something that parents discuss. (They also talk about real estate.) Some newcomers even expand their search to consider public school, like the excellent Palmetto Senior High School in Pinecrest. (Jeff Bezos, class of 1982, Ketanji Brown Jackson, 1988.)
“I don’t think I have a single student who says, ‘I wish I could go back to New York,'” Rim says. If they did, they might find a few empty desks at their old school.
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