![\"Placeholder\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/placeholder.png\")
<\/p>\nBusiness-friendly policies and no state income tax\u00a0aren’t enough to lure out-of-market businesses and their employees to Miami anymore.<\/p>\n
Companies are holding off on expansions in the Magic City\u00a0because employees from other markets\u00a0won’t relocate unless their kids have a guaranteed spot in one of Miami-Dade County’s top private schools, according to one of Miami’s top office brokers.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Bisnow\/Chloe Gallivan\n <\/p>\n
\n Related Group’s Jon Paul Perez, Integra Investment’s Nelson Stabile and Cushman & Wakefield’s Brian Gale\n <\/p>\n
Private school demand in Florida is at an all-time high amid the ultra-wealthy\u2019s descent\u00a0on Miami<\/a>, leading to long waitlists and creating hesitancy for employees with families that can\u2019t get their kids into some of the best private schools in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cThat’s literally the\u00a0No. 1\u00a0thing that is holding our city back from having more positive migration, is our school system,\u201d Cushman & Wakefield Vice Chair Brian Gale<\/a> said Monday at the National Association of Real Estate Editors Conference in Miami.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of these $1M- to $3M-a-year earners, they want to send their kids to private school, and there’s no room,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Gale leads leasing at 830 Brickell, where billionaire Ken Griffin<\/a>\u00a0moved the headquarters of his hedge fund,\u00a0Citadel<\/a>, in 2024. Since then, its headcount has expanded to roughly 400 employees<\/a>,\u00a0and Griffin wants more space. He is planning to start construction this year on\u00a0a 1.3M SF office tower<\/a> in Brickell, but the school system has been a hurdle.<\/p>\n \u201cGriffin has been very open about the fact that he has a plethora of more employees that would come down here if there was availability in schools,\u201d Gale said.<\/p>\n There\u00a0were nearly 500,000 students enrolled in Florida\u2019s private school system as of the 2024-25 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education<\/a>. That’s a record high and an increase of more than 30,000\u00a0from the previous year.<\/p>\n The Sunshine State has more than 3,200 private schools, second only to California. Miami-Dade County has roughly 19% of those facilities, the most of any municipality in the state, and also has some of the highest-ranked, including Gulliver, Ransom Everglades and Miami Country Day, according to Niche<\/a>.<\/p>\n All of them are full, Gale said. The difficulty of finding a seat has led to some hesitancy\u00a0from prospective\u00a0buyers in some of the city\u2019s wealthiest neighborhoods, like Coral Gables<\/a>. At Gulliver, seven students apply for every available seat, according to the David Siddons Group<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many billionaires, including Griffin, are\u00a0investing more to close the gap.<\/p>\n Griffin, a\u00a0South Florida native,\u00a0donated $50M<\/a>\u00a0last year to bring New York-based charter school Success Academy to Miami by 2027.<\/p>\n Miami Dolphins owner and\u00a0Related Ross<\/a> CEO\u00a0Stephen Ross<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 who is\u00a0investing $10B in West Palm Beach to\u00a0attract business from other states<\/a> \u2014\u00a0is\u00a0backing a new private school<\/a> in Palm Beach County that is supposed to serve 1,700 students by 2028.<\/p>\n More schools are trying to meet the insatiable demand for private education and open new facilities in South Florida. Gale said he is working on marketing land to about 14 potential K-12 schools looking to come to Miami.<\/p>\n “I mean, like, aggressively trying to get their school here,\u201d he said. \u201cIt’s unbelievable. The demand and the leverage that you have as a landowner to try and do a school is just incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n While private schools are bursting at the seams, enrollment is shrinking rapidly at Miami-Dade County public schools, which is\u00a0making cuts to its budget as\u00a0a result,\u00a0WLRN reported<\/a>. In the 2024-25 school year, Miami-Dade County lost 13,200 students.<\/p>\n Nelson Stabile<\/a>, principal at Miami-based development firm\u00a0Integra Investments<\/a>, attributed that decline to a\u00a0Florida program<\/a> that offers up to $8K in taxpayer-backed vouchers to put students in private education.<\/p>\n “There’s plenty of capacity in the public school system,” Stabile said. “The challenge … is that the quality of education in the public schools. You have some schools that are of good quality, but definitely not the majority.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Business-friendly policies and no state income tax\u00a0aren’t enough to lure out-of-market businesses and their employees to Miami anymore.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[65888,59597,34099,123871,25607,802,123,125,124,85350,46161],"class_list":["post-293613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-brian-gale","tag-citadel","tag-cushman-wakefield","tag-integra-investments","tag-jon-paul-perez","tag-ken-griffin","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-related-group","tag-related-ross"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}