School Report Card
Say the word Florida and most people will think of sunscreen, old folks or oranges. Seldom will bright young scholars or outstanding schools come to mind. Still, you can find good public and private schools in Southwest Florida if you know where and how to look.
Choices for public schools in Collier and Lee counties continue to expand in step with the rapidly growing population here. In Lee County, the biggest of the three school districts, the number of public schools is slated to increase by about 30 percent in just the next three years, to 80. This academic year, the district opens a new elementary school, middle school and high school. Among the highlights: the brand-new Ida S. Baker High School in fast-growing Cape Coral, which accounts for about 40 percent of Lee's 65,000 public-school students. The new school will emphasize science and technology, joining two other district high schools that offer special programs: Cypress Lake High in south Lee, which specializes in the arts, and Fort Myers High, which offers an International Baccalaureate program that lets top students earn advanced-placement credits for college. That system helped put Fort Myers High at number 32 on Newsweek's list of the nation's top 100 high schools in 2003.
Another trend in Lee: charter schools. Seven have sprung up in the past three years, including five this year. Some parents think that the publicly funded, privately operated schools offer a good alternative to traditional public schools. Lee's popular charter schools are available from Bonita Springs in the south to Boca Grande in the north.
As part of a court-ordered response to school segregation that lasted into the 1960s, Lee's public schools are divided into three zones-east, west and south. Parents of new students register their children at one of two School Choice offices and choose among schools in the zone in which they live.
Like Lee, Collier County's public school system faces rapid population growth. This year brings four new schools to the county's 40 existing schools: an elementary school, a middle school and two high schools.
Collier County enjoys a solid tax base and should be able to meet capital needs for future construction with few problems, school officials say. Although Collier is widely perceived as a wealthy county, the district serves a diverse student population, which is about 37-percent Hispanic and 4-percent Haitian. About 13 percent of students come from non-English-speaking households, and close to half are classified as economically needy.
In academics, Collier County tends to rank highest, followed by Lee, according to Bill King, editor of Expansion Management, a magazine in Prairie Village, Kan., that compares school districts across the United States. (Aimed at business executives contemplating corporate moves, the magazine bases its ratings mainly on College Board scores and school graduation rates; this year, Collier ranked in the 59th percentile of the 2,800 districts surveyed; Lee in the 33rd percentile.) Although Southwest Florida districts don't rank high, King points out that each district is big enough to include some good public schools. Parents trying to pick the best schools for their children should compare national standardized test scores like the SAT or ACT, look for high graduation rates and large percentages of college-bound graduates, and choose schools with few disciplinary problems, he advises.
For those with the means, private and parochial schools offer an alternative to Southwest Florida's public schools. Dozens of options exist in Lee and Collier, including outstanding private schools like the Canterbury School in Fort Myers and the Community School in Naples. Each of these K-12 schools routinely sends graduates to top colleges and universities across the nation. Like local public schools, many private schools are growing. In Naples, for example, 21-year-old Seacrest Country Day School is adding a high school this year. Catholic schools like Bishop Verot in Fort Myers and St. Ann in Naples offer a good education with a heavy religious emphasis, as do the many Protestant Christian schools in the region. Tuitions at local private and parochial schools range from several thousand dollars a year to about $15,000; financial aid is sometimes available.
Southwest Florida also offers several young but growing colleges and universities. The seven-year-old state university campus at Florida Gulf Coast University in Estero, the fastest-growing in the system, has more than 5,000 students in about 50 undergraduate and graduate programs. Edison College offers junior-college courses at Lee, Collier and Charlotte cam-puses. International College, a private college in Naples, caters primarily to older, working students. Ave Maria, a new Catholic university in Florida founded by Domino's Pizza pioneer Tom Monaghan, is scheduled to open a brand-new campus between Naples and the small town of Immokalee in 2006, and is now offering undergraduate and adult classes at a temporary campus in Naples.