After years of dwindling enrollment, Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida became the third-largest school district in the country last week, surpassing Chicago Public Schools.
That’s according to data released this month by the National Center for Education Statistics, according to the Miami Herald. Miami-Dade Public Schools enrollment hit 319,612, nearly 4,800 more than CPS. This overall number includes charter school students, which make up nearly one-fourth of the district’s overall enrollment, the Miami Herald reports.
“This is a historic milestone collectively embraced by the School Board, school leaders, and the entire M-DCPS community,” Superintendent Jose L. Dotres said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring that Miami-Dade County Public Schools is the best choice for all students.”
New York City Public Schools remains as the country continues to be New York City Public Schools with 804,530 students, according to the NCES data. The Los Angeles Unified School District is second with 435,958.
In the fall of 2022, Miami-Dade led the tri-county area in enrollment totals, Axios reports. This was a welcome turnaround for the district after it lost nearly 12,700 students during the pandemic, according to the Miami Herald, despite declining public school enrollment across the state.
Officials attribute this recent surge in student enrollment to the influx of immigrant students with more than 13,000 having enrolled since October, NBC Miami reports. More than half of the new immigrant students are from Cuba, with others coming from Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.
“Right now we are in a good position to support them because the numbers are not that significant,” Dotres told NBC Miami. Instead, school staff are focusing on ways to support these students.
“So many of these students are coming with issues like not having affordable housing, not having internet, not having computers—those are all areas we can help them with,” M.A. Milam K-8 Principal Anna Hernandez told NBC Miami.
More from DA: ‘A perfect storm brewing’: A review of teacher pay in America
