Cutler Bay leaders are nearing success in their effort to bring a high school to the town, but some residents who live near the proposed site are worried about how they will be affected.

About 70 people showed up for the Concerned Citizens of Cutler Bay meeting on Tuesday night at Cutler Ridge United Methodist Church to ask questions about a draft agreement between Cutler Bay and the Miami-Dade school board to create a high school in the town.

The draft agreement would convert Cutler Ridge Middle School into a high school, but neighboring residents don’t see how this is feasible.

At the moment, Miami Southridge Senior High School serves ninth through 12th graders from Cutler Bay, but that school is outside the town limits and, although the school received an “A” from the state this week, previous two years were a “D” and an “F.” On the other hand, the town has two middle schools, Cutler Ridge and Centennial, both of which are under-enrolled.

The proposed plan would turn Cutler Ridge into a high school, but since neither of the middle schools is large enough to handle the capacity of a high school the mayor said the grades would be split. Cutler Ridge would take full enrollment for 11th- and 12th-graders. The middle school would take all the seventh- and eighth-graders, while the ninth- and 10th-graders would be divided between both.

At Tuesday’s meeting, residents who live near Cutler Ridge Middle were not against the idea of the town having its own high school but were not excited about the prospect of having two release times for middle and high school students.

One man, who said he has lived near Cutler Ridge Middle for 26 years, told the meeting that a high school on the Cutler Ridge site would mean chaos.

“It’s going to be like taking a bat and hitting a hornet’s nest when those kids get out of school,” he said swinging an imaginary bat through the air. “Nobody’s against a high school but put it in the right place,” said the man, who did not give his name.

Town Council member Peggy Bell said she thought the high school should be at the Centennial site.

Centennial Middle is on a major road, Southwest 87th Avenue, but Cutler Ridge Middle School is in a residential neighborhood surrounded by single-family homes.

Several residents near Cutler Ridge said they already have problems with people parking on their lawns, litter, and school alarms whining through their neighborhood on the weekends. They wanted answers about how the plan proposed to handle parking and traffic congestion.

But Mayor Ed MacDougall said the plan is in its first draft and nothing has been signed.

“I make no pledges or promises on what it will be,” MacDougall told the meeting.

On Wednesday, MacDougall said he doesn’t think traffic will be a big problem at the Cutler Ridge site.

But if it is “the Miami Dade school police and our local department are well equipped to enforce current regulations in order to protect the people and property,” MacDougall said in an email. “I just do not see the potential problem as being much of a real problem.”

If traffic is an issue, the school system will work to address it, said Lawrence Feldman, who represents Cutler Bay and much of South Miami-Dade on the school board.