Hialeah puts proposed charter-school expansion in public park on hold. What’s at stake?
A project to expand a charter school in Hialeah, which could allow it to take over two multipurpose playing fields on public park land, remains very much alive after the city council chose to postpone a vote Tuesday instead of denying it, even though a majority of the council members spoke against its approval.
The City of Hialeah Educational Academy, affiliated with the large charter-school company Academica, is located at 2590 W. 76th St, on a corner of Slade Park. The school has been leasing the land from the city since 2008, when former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina founded it. Shortly after leaving public office, Robaina joined Academica as chief operating officer.
According to the charter school’s website, Robaina’s vision was to open a middle and high school on ground owned by the city that housed a police sub-station, fire station and fire training academy.
The new proposal aims to increase enrollment at the school from 1,000 to 1,250 students in grades 6-12. Currently, three buildings have been constructed on a corner of the park, and the expansion seeks to add two more buildings: a career and technical education center and a gym.
The plan involves building on two park fields — build two new building onto one of the fields and converting the second one into a soccer pitch, along with adding three pickleball courts and more parking. This would leave only one of the park’s three fields, used for baseball, untouched. The charter school’s proposal aims to take over approximately four of the park’s 13 acres.
During Tuesday’s presentation, school lobbyist Hugo Arza said safety is one of the reasons to expansion of the campus. He cited the need to comply with new state safety requirements that mandate that all gates and access points restricting entry or exit from a school must remain closed and locked while students are on campus.
“We are concerned about security. Sadly where we were 17 years ago as a community as a nation and where we are today are radically different points. You know too many stories about incidents at schools and there’s been an evolution over time.... ” Arza said.
Currently, students have to cross the park’s fields and parking areas to access facilities such as the library, recreational center and various sports courts. The proposed expansion, Arza said, would eliminate this need by creating a closed campus.
Several council members told the Miami Herald that before the item came up Tuesday night, Robaina called them in an attempt to pressure them into supporting it. The Herald reached out to Robaina for comment, but he did not respond.
The city council meeting was packed, with over 150 students from the school. Despite the show of support, the majority of the council expressed their disapproval of the plan to build on park land, including Council President Jacqueline Garcia-Roves and members Melinda De La Vega, Monica Perez and Jesus Tundidor.
Garcia-Roves said she doesn’t like the school building on a park. “I’m a mother of three, but if I feel like if my kid is not going to be safe in school. I just won’t place it there. I don’t like building on top of a park.”
De La Vega said the proposal would reduce the size of one of the few of the green spaces Hialeah has. The city is one of the three Miami-Dade municipalities with the smallest urban tree canopy, according to AN Miami-Dade County Urban Tree Canopy Assessment report issued in 2021. “Building on a public park is taking away from residents,” De La Vega said.
Perez, who acknowledged the value the school brings to the community and the educational opportunities it provides, said she was elected to represent the entire city, and that responsibility is critical when it comes to protecting the city’s limited green spaces.
“I wish this expansion were being proposed in a different location.” Perez said, adding that despite allegations that some of the fields the charter school is trying to take over aren’t being used, “we know [they’re] being used and I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me.”
During the Planning and Zoning Board meetings in October and November, school principal Carlos Alvarez had said that the fields the school intends to expand into are rarely used by residents.
Since its founding 17 years ago, the school has expanded twice, in 2015 and 2018. Many residents and council members are concerned that if a third expansion is approved it may not be enough, resulting in further loss of green space.
De La Vega said that the prior expansions showed a pattern that could lead to another expansion in the future “and then we lose everything we had.”
Tundidor said he is concerned that if the city approves the school expansion, it may lead to losing park land elsewhere in the future.
“It’s Slade [Park] today and tomorrow it might be Babcock [Park]. Where do you draw the line?” he said.
Council Member Carl Zogby, who was the only of the seven members who spoke out in favor of the proposal, said every school “in the world” has been built on public land.
“We lost 56 acres to the public school system when Hialeah Senior High was built. I don’t see this as a loss of the park. I see it as an alternate use. We’ve been leasing spaces to parks for ever,” Zogby said. He then proposed that a vote be postponed “because it doesn’t look good for the night.”
The motion to table the proposal was approved 5-2, with Tundidor and Perez voting against it. The proposed expansion will return to the council on Jan. 14.
Council Member Luis Rodriguez, a strong advocate of parks who voted in favor of postponing a vote, later told the Herald that he was against “anybody getting public land.”
Rodriguez said he is open to listening if the school can propose an expansion that doesn’t affect the fields and includes a public gymnasium for every resident.
The family of World War II officer Carl F. Slade, after whom the park is named, sent a letter to the City Clerk expressing their opposition to the school’s expansion. They said that it is “painfully obvious” the school did not plan for its growth when it was built and argued that Hialeah residents should not bear the cost of the private business venture.
“This requested expansion does not serve the citizens of Hialeah who live near Carl F. Slade Park,” the letter said. “Any annexation granted to the City of Hialeah Educational Academy Charter School would deprive the hardworking residents of this west Hialeah neighborhood, and all our residents, particularly our children and grandchildren.”
This story was originally published December 11, 2024 at 4:26 PM.
