As finance types move to Miami, school admissions turn cutthroat

Lifestyle

By Jacquelynn Powers Maurice

May 22, 2023 | 3:13pm

Real estate prices are soaring — if you can even find the home you want. Reservations at pricey Avra and Carbone are hard to score. And private-school admissions have become cutthroat.

Miami really is the new New York City.

The Florida city’s top private schools — already bursting at the seams from the throngs of New Yorkers and others who have migrated south since the beginning of the pandemic — are now facing an even bigger shortfall as billionaire hedge-funders and private equity titans compete to enroll their kids.

“I have constant conversations with clients moving here about which school to choose, how they will get in and when their interviews are,” said Cyril Bijaoui, a real estate broker associate and founding partner with Longstead at the Corcoran Group. “There’s a new elite in Miami, and, as a result, private schools are inundated. It’s been challenging with this affluent demographic moving in.”

The school situation, which the Financial Times recently compared to a blood sport, is newly exasperated by corporate offices relocating to Miami — most notably billionaire Kenneth Griffin’s Citadel hedge fund. The company recently moved its headquarters from beleaguered Chicago to Miami and Palm Beach, bringing their families with them.

And the big whales keep coming: Millennium Management, Goldman Sachs Group, Blackstone Group Inc., D1 Capital Partners, J. Goldman & Co and HRS Management have also made the move to South Florida. Silicon Valley’s VC giant, Andreessen Horowitz, also recently opened an 8,000-square-foot office in Miami Beach.

All that wealth means even more type-A families desperate to place their kids in a steadily shrinking pool of Miami’s most elite schools.

“The demand for a Gulliver education is at an all-time high,” said Cliff King, president of Gulliver Prep.

With coveted schools like Gulliver, Ransom Everglades, Miami Country Day and Lehrman already at capacity, the stakes are getting higher: Deep-pocketed execs who aren’t used to hearing “no” have allegedly been offering five-figure donations to lock in admission — and that’s on top of annual tuition of $30,000 or more.

“The early Miami buyers in 2020 were the ultra-high net worth buyers that were able to read the map and make a fast move,” said Stacy Robins, one of the top real-estate brokers in Miami and the owner of Stacy Robins Companies. “They got the best of everything — the best buys on real estate, the best schools for their children, the best golf course memberships. After that, it became all about waiting in lines that are now years long. It’s hard to outbid the guy next in line when everyone is a billionaire.”

Executives from Citadel are quickly earning a reputation for trying to elbow their way in. One source revealed that, last August, the company hired a local education consultant to give its HR team a bus tour of various private schools in the area — all to get a handle on the admissions processes for employees.

Kingpin Griffin is known for being generous to his staff; last December, he treated his employees and their families to an all-inclusive weekend at Disney World, attended by 10,000 people.

But even unlimited money can’t guarantee admission when there are only so many seats. Often situated on campuses with small footprints, the schools are up against soaring limited real estate prices — and a lack of land availability — that mean they can’t expand.

“Each of the last four years has set a new record high for applications,” said Gulliver’s King. “Our enrollment capacity across all grades has not changed; therefore, we only have the same limited spaces available even as applications continue to increase each year.”

That said, famous offspring are still getting desks at the city’s most exclusive schools. Shakira’s sons, as well as Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s kids, have enrolled at Miami Country Day this year. But that school has always catered to the children of celebrities — including actress Zoë Kravitz and singer Emily Estefan.

Many former Manhattanites were pinning their hopes on a Miami branch of Avenues World School opening soon — but the gold standard for NYC’s privileged families is facing delays down south.

“While a substantial investment has already been made to establish Avenues Miami, we have currently paused opening activities until we can identify the necessary financing on acceptable terms,” said Tara Powers, Avenues’ Global Director of Communications. “We are actively pursuing financing and hope to
preserve a fall 2025 opening.”

If and when they do open, tuition will be $48,500 per year, as opposed to $62,700 per year in New York.

And just like in New York, even preschools in Miami are impossible to get into.

Alana Oxfeld, who owns State of Kid, which is known for its posh arts and STEM classes and boasts Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner as clients, is seeing parents with increased anxiety over placing their toddlers into good programs.

“Families are stressing out over preschool,” Oxfeld said. “It’s more competitive than ever … We try to ease parents’ anxiety and direct them to smaller schools that might not be on their radar.”

Something else that may not be on their radar: patience.

Said Robins: “My best suggestion to my clients is to find your house and start working on finding a school. Even if you have to stay in your state and wait a year or two for the seat to open up.”