Private School Shortage Is Still Miami Office Market's Biggest Hurdle
Business-friendly policies and no state income tax aren't enough to lure out-of-market businesses and their employees to Miami anymore.
Companies are holding off on expansions in the Magic City because employees from other markets won'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.
Private school demand in Florida is at an all-time high amid the ultra-wealthy’s descent on Miami, leading to long waitlists and creating hesitancy for employees with families that can’t get their kids into some of the best private schools in the state.
“That's literally the No. 1 thing that is holding our city back from having more positive migration, is our school system,” Cushman & Wakefield Vice Chair Brian Gale said Monday at the National Association of Real Estate Editors Conference in Miami.
“A lot of these $1M- to $3M-a-year earners, they want to send their kids to private school, and there's no room,” he added.
Gale leads leasing at 830 Brickell, where billionaire Ken Griffin moved the headquarters of his hedge fund, Citadel, in 2024. Since then, its headcount has expanded to roughly 400 employees, and Griffin wants more space. He is planning to start construction this year on a 1.3M SF office tower in Brickell, but the school system has been a hurdle.
“Griffin 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,” Gale said.
There were nearly 500,000 students enrolled in Florida’s private school system as of the 2024-25 school year, according to the Florida Department of Education. That's a record high and an increase of more than 30,000 from the previous year.
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.
All of them are full, Gale said. The difficulty of finding a seat has led to some hesitancy from prospective buyers in some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, like Coral Gables. At Gulliver, seven students apply for every available seat, according to the David Siddons Group.
Many billionaires, including Griffin, are investing more to close the gap.
Griffin, a South Florida native, donated $50M last year to bring New York-based charter school Success Academy to Miami by 2027.
Miami Dolphins owner and Related Ross CEO Stephen Ross — who is investing $10B in West Palm Beach to attract business from other states — is backing a new private school in Palm Beach County that is supposed to serve 1,700 students by 2028.
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.
"I mean, like, aggressively trying to get their school here,” he said. “It's unbelievable. The demand and the leverage that you have as a landowner to try and do a school is just incredible.”
While private schools are bursting at the seams, enrollment is shrinking rapidly at Miami-Dade County public schools, which is making cuts to its budget as a result, WLRN reported. In the 2024-25 school year, Miami-Dade County lost 13,200 students.
Nelson Stabile, principal at Miami-based development firm Integra Investments, attributed that decline to a Florida program that offers up to $8K in taxpayer-backed vouchers to put students in private education.
"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."
