There are two things that 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 might be possible, depending on who you ask. (I’ve been told Mo’s in Aventura is worth trying.) But schooling is becoming one of the great complications of the South Florida boom. There simply aren’t enough elite schools to accommodate all the children of hedge fund managers and other sophisticated Manhattanites who have moved to Miami since the pandemic.
Sought-after schools like Gulliver Prep have each set new application records in the last four years. Rising land prices make expansion expensive. Even if they could, many fear it would affect their quality. The situation has become so critical that in September, The Real Deal, a real estate industry publication, warned that sales of luxury homes were being delayed because children were stuck on private school waiting lists.
“The school problem is huge,” says Danny Hertzberg, a broker at Jills Zeder Group. “I’ve just got a deal that can’t go ahead until the buyers find out what schools their kids go to.” The deal is for $20 million, and the family will leave if the schools fail. “Schools cost $50,000 a year. They’re going to cost $100,000 before you bat an eyelid,” fumed a competing realtor.
Like increasing traffic and the sudden difficulty of getting a restaurant reservation, Miami’s elite school crisis is a problem for success. New options are emerging. New York’s Avenues plans to open a campus in Miami next year. North London Collegiate School is also set to explore South Florida. (Note to UK boarding schools lacking the Russian oligarch trade: go to Miami!)
The influx, which also comes from California and Chicago, could still benefit everyone. The Ransom Everglades school is considered one of the best in South Florida and was founded in 1903 by New York attorney Paul C. Ransom.
Meanwhile, there is fear, competition, and culture clashes. Such is the wealth (and sharp elbows) of the newcomers that locals are inevitably pushed out of institutions they believed were their birthright. That could explain the widespread rumor that a hedge fund manager “bought” ten places at a top school for his employees’ children.
The New Yorkers announced their February 2022 arrival in the best way they can: Scott Shleifer, a partner at hedge fund Tiger Global, wrote an $18 million check to Palm Beach Day Academy. It was the greatest gift in the school’s 100-year history. “This is just the beginning of many extraordinary things to come for the PBDA,” Meghan Monteiro, the school’s director of philanthropy, said in a statement – presumably while cartwheeling.
Such wealth has an appeal. Christopher Rim is the founder of Command Education, a company that counsels families on college admissions, often as early as middle school. Two years ago he followed his clients from Manhattan to Miami. “It was a group of parents like, ‘Chris, come here! Help us. “We make sure it’s worth it for you,” he recalls.
Many of Rim’s clients feared that even South Florida’s most demanding schools would not compete with those they left behind – Horace Mann, Trinity, Dalton and Brearley. Admittedly, Florida has never evoked the idea of academic greatness in the public imagination. “Then they come here and the classes at Ransom are more difficult,” he says.
Athletics tends to play a bigger role in Florida schools, rather than the niche sport that Manhattanites play in hopes of smuggling their kid into the Ivy League. “Nobody fences here,” says Rim.
The atmosphere also tends to be less gory than in Manhattan. That said, getting into college isn’t the only thing parents debate. (They also talk about real estate.) Some newcomers are even broadening their search and considering a public school, such as the excellent Palmetto Senior High School in Pinecrest. (Jeff Bezos, born 1982, Ketanji Brown Jackson, born 1988.)
“I don’t think I have a single student who says, ‘I wish I could go back to New York,'” says Rim. If so, they might find a few empty desks at their old school.
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