Assisted by an influx of Catholic families and the state’s universal voucher system, Catholic schools in South Florida are seeing the highest student enrollment in a decade, according to data from the Archdiocese of Miami. The growth comes at a time when public school enrollment in South Florida has seen a sharp decline.
Enrollment in Catholic schools has gone from 28,760 students in 2015-16 to 31,142 in the 2025-26 school year, an 8.2% increase in schools owned and operated by the Archdiocese of Miami. The growth happened in spite of a steep decline during the pandemic: In the 2020-21 school year, enrollment in Catholic schools had dipped to the lowest in 10 years at 26,677. But in the last five years, enrollment bounced back, increasing by 16.7%.
“We have definitely been in growth mode for the last few years, and at this point, over half of our Catholic schools in South Florida are full with waiting lists, and the remainder, nearly all of them, are growing,” said Jim Rigg, superintendent of Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Miami…