But this top-of-the-line elementary school isn't located in Weston or Pinecrest or some other well-heeled bit of suburbia. The Pemayetv Emahakv Charter School is on the Seminole Tribe's Brighton Reservation, deep in Florida cattle country, northwest of Lake Okeechobee.
For the Seminoles, proprietors of a gambling empire that includes the Hard Rock chain, this is the school that slot machines built. It's steel-and-concrete proof of how far they've come -- from dismal poverty to great wealth in less than three decades -- and where they plan to go.
Students at the school, which opened in August and cost $10 million to build, are learning how to navigate the 21st century while still retaining their culture. So in one classroom, children learn language arts -- by podcast. Down the hall, others recite words in Creek, the Seminoles' language. Outside, just beyond the school's fence, cattle graze.
Max B. Osceola Jr., Tribal Council representative for the Hollywood reservation, sketched out the tribe's path in a few short sentences during the school's dedication ceremony in October.
''Our elders taught us life skills -- how to hunt and when to plant,'' he said. ``Today we're in the 21st century. The Seminoles have gone beyond the four corners of our reservations. Today we have businesses around the world -- and who's going to run these businesses?''
He turned to the children in the audience, dressed for the occasion in colorful and intricate tribal clothing: ``You and you and you.''
Investing in the next generation was a logical step for a 3,200-member tribe that has seen its gambling empire revenues soar to an estimated $1 billion-plus a year, largely from its seven casinos in Florida. But even as the school provides children from the reservation and nearby communities with an education in the tech-savvy ways of the outside world, tribal leaders are intent on keeping their children rooted in tradition.
''Educating our people is very important to us, but equally important is keeping our language and culture,'' said Louise Gopher, educational director of the tribe and driving force behind the school. 'They're not getting it at home, and they certainly weren't getting it at school. We're teaching the parents, too. When the kids bring home worksheets, a lot of the grandmas are getting calls at night, `How do you spell that? How do I say this?' So everyone's learning.''
KEY TO SURVIVAL
Gopher, who in 1970 became the first Seminole woman to graduate from college with a four-year degree, says keeping the Creek language alive is essential to tribal survival. ''Without the language, we have no tribe,'' she said.
The Seminoles' financial rise began in 1979 with high-stakes bingo games followed, years later, by bingo-style slot machines. This year, after buying the Hard Rock chain for $965 million, the tribe entered negotiations with the state to expand its gambling operations. It hopes to offer Las Vegas-style slot machines and table games such as baccarat and blackjack. In exchange, the state could get at least $100 million a year from gambling revenues.
Though its casinos include the high-profile Hard Rock hotels near Hollywood and Tampa, the tribe does not pay state taxes because it is a sovereign nation.
With success comes the risk of losing the old ways, something tribal leaders have been working to address. In 2002, the tribe won permission from the state to offer a ''pull-out'' program that allowed Seminole students attending nearby public schools to remain on the reservation once a week for cultural classes.
From 40 students the first year, the program -- which the children called ''the Indian school'' -- grew to 80 students by 2006-2007. In late 2005, the Glades County School Board approved the tribe's application for a charter school that would offer the cultural classes as part of the curriculum.
At the school's dedication, Jeanine Blomberg, Florida's former acting commissioner of education and a member of the Chickasaw Tribe, urged the students to ''take advantage of this wonderful opportunity'' to educate themselves on tribal customs and language while also learning to navigate the modern world.
''What we all have in common as natives is pride and undeniable determination,'' she said.
With 147 students at last count, kindergarten through fifth grade, the school is already over-enrolled, with a portable out back and a new building planned for next year.
Preference is given to tribe members and reservation residents, though some of the teachers who drive in from surrounding towns also have enrolled their children. Classes are small -- between 12 and 17 students -- and each teacher has an aide.
In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, average class sizes run from about 17 to 21 children, according to the state Department of Education. Aides are a luxury.
Charter schools are public, operated with the same tax dollars -- about $7,000 per student a year -- as other public schools but run by nonprofit groups that are free of many of the bureaucratic state and school district rules that control traditional schools.
Though students will take the FCAT, an assessment test used by the state to reward schools whose students excel, the state Department of Education does not make charter schools' test scores public. In this case, that helps free teachers to tailor lessons to students' needs.
Pam Hudson, a bubbly teacher with a class of 12 second-graders, said working in a school with the resources to give individual attention to students reaps big rewards.
''It's just amazing,'' she said. ``The kids can't wait to come to school.''
And the technology helps a lot.
''Use of the laptops and the iPods assists in the absorption of the material for the students. When you go into the classroom, you see them working with the technology, and their focus is tremendous,'' said Russ Brown, the school's principal.
To police iPod use, the gadgets are programmed to accept only school-sanctioned material, which includes hip-hop multiplication tables and geography with maps that display on the iPod screen.
The students, Brown said, ``feel as if they're playing with toys at the same time they're learning.''
THE CAMPUS
The name of the school -- Pemayetv Emahakv, pronounced pee-ma-EE-duh ee-ma-HA-gah -- means ''our way'' in Creek. The courtyards are dotted with chickees, the traditional Seminole wooden structures with thatched palm frond roofs. Arts and crafts classes include traditional Seminole beading. When visitors enter a classroom, several girls pull the long traditional skirts over shorts, while one boy quickly stuffs his arms into a colorful jacket.
In front of the school buildings, three flags fly: United States; Florida; and the red, black and yellow Seminole flag. For nine weeks this school year, social studies will be replaced with Seminole history.
'Our battle cry is `one more generation. Let's hang onto our language and culture for one more generation,' '' Gopher said. ``But it's not just us. It's a nationwide Native American problem.''
And if gambling riches have given the Seminoles a greater ability to educate their children and preserve their culture, tribal representative Osceola sees nothing wrong with that.
''I was here B.C. -- before casinos,'' he said. ``We've gone from being dependent to independent. . . . But we've always been rich in culture and history and customs and language. We just didn't have any money before.''
