Best school zones in Miami area? (Pembroke Pines, Weston: home, neighborhood, to buy)

[sontek]

Hey! My wife and I are looking to buy a home before our kids start elementary school next year and we are trying to find a location with a good school district.

We are fairly new to Florida (been here 7 months) but I'm finding that most of the good schools down here are on a lottery system which makes it difficult to plan where we should purchase. Is there a place that lists which schools have open seats for kids zoned in their neighborhood?

What elementary schools are considered the best for feeding into the better middle and high schools?

Our #1 priority is dual language (We'd like dual immersion where half the week is in Spanish, not extended foreign language which is only 1hr a day) and #2 is STEM. I've created a google spreadsheet documenting the dual languages and where they feed for Broward county but haven't been able to find as good of information for Miami-Dade.

Here is the Broward one:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

As you can see with Broward the only options worth considering are Weston or Pembroke Pines because all the other areas that offer dual language don't have well ranked schools. Hoping to find some areas in the Miami area to consider/compare against. We are looking at $450,000 range.


Thanks,
John

[AnnRyan]

Sontek, schools like MAST have lotteries but there are plenty of local schools. But those local schools may not have the programs you're looking for.

Are your kids already bilingual in Spanish/English? If not, I would be careful about introducing anything other than a very young child into an existing program.

Remember that a high percentage of the population here is already bilingual, so kids entering school will frequently have pretty fluent spanish and at least basic english.

[sontek]

@AnnRyan our kids are familiar with spanish (we lived in Chile for a year) but they are by no means fluent. But the programs I've been looking at in Broward are 50% english speakers and 50% spanish speakers and they spend half of each day in each language. I was wondering if Miami had something similar.

[oronzous]

The list of bilingual programs:

Dadeschools.net

[AnnRyan]

Are you coming down to tour the schools? Honestly, your kids are probably going to pick up conversational spanish at virtually any public school in the area.

[roadtrip75]

Originally Posted by sontek

I'm finding that most of the good schools down here are on a lottery system which makes it difficult to plan where we should purchase.

Yup, there is not one single public high school with a great rating in Dade County. They're all private or magnet. Even Palmetto in Pinecrest has slipped to a 7 rating, which is depressing.

[ruski]

Originally Posted by roadtrip75

Yup, there is not one single public high school with a great rating in Dade County. They're all private or magnet. Even Palmetto in Pinecrest has slipped to a 7 rating, which is depressing.

teh sux0r

[DadEspanol]

Thank you, Sontek...
We have the very situation that you are in...We want a Spanish bilingual school for our daughter. She will start kindergarten in Sept, 2018. We are moving from another state. We can afford to live in these communities, so we want the best bilingual school in the best community. One thing, I noticed that many of the schools have only 1 or 2 classes of per school(approx 20-40 kids). How do I know that if I move to a district that I will get into the bilingual class? Also, do you have more news about the Miami programs...Weston looks pretty good. Where did your kids end up going?