Thursday marked a new school year for all Miami-Dade public school students, but for some, it also meant stepping into a school unlike any they had known before.
At Miami Springs Preparatory Academy 6-12, a new crop of middle school students have to integrate into a school that until this year had been a traditional high school. At Venetian Parc Academy, elementary students were starting the year in classrooms without individual desks, working in groups and using artificial intelligence as part of their daily lessons.
The two schools represent very different ways Miami-Dade is trying to adapt its schools to a changing district: one by rethinking how buildings are used as enrollment declines, the other by experimenting with how students learn.
Black and maroon polos: A school consolidates
Last school year, Mauro, an 11-year-old entering 6th grade from Hialeah Gardens Elementary, would have gone to Miami Springs Middle…