The first thing you notice at the SEED School of Miami is that the classes are really small, and the boys are separated from the girls. What really makes the school stand out, however, is the concept: SEED is Florida’s first public boarding school. The students check into their dorm rooms every Sunday afternoon, and don’t see their families again until Friday night.
“We get to see the whole child, not only in our academic setting, but also in their evening activities, afternoon activities,” explains school psychologist Gustavo Saravia. "They might come in afraid, they’re missing mom or dad, and within a couple of weeks they flourish.”
The public charter school opened in August, with 30 girls and 30 boys, all sixth graders. The plan is to add one grade each year until a 6 through 12 high school is established, with a maximum enrollment of 400 students.
With students in their control literally all day long, the staff at SEED says everything about a child, from academics to character, can be molded and polished.
“Yes, I get more support here,” says student Eduvina Bueso. “They help me finish my homework and bring my grades up.”
Alecia Tramel-Mathis says her son, Kobe, has already changed dramatically.
"He’s mature now, he reads like crazy. Kobe wouldn’t pick up a book, he’d pick up the Playstation remote,” Tramel-Mathis said.
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“I see them also grow socially and emotionally which is really important, especially at middle school age,” said school counselor Latrice Thomas. She says SEED emphasizes character development.
“You treat other people how they’d want to be treated, it’s really key and something we talk about all the time here at SEED,” Thomas said.
There’s a lottery to get into SEED. Applicants have to be at least 200 percent below the poverty line. These are kids who sometimes need intense intervention, who are usually from single-parent homes, who often have a range of family issues to deal with at home, but the principal says don’t call them “at-risk kids."
“They deserve the opportunity for people to start by looking for the promise that they each have, rather than starting by looking at the risk, and so we like to call it at-promise, because our kids really are, they’re phenomenal,” said Kara Locke, the Head of School at SEED Miami.
The goal of the school isn’t just to get students through high school, SEED thinks higher than that. They want all of their graduates to succeed in college.
“Our students, because of SEED, when they go to college they’ll know what it’s like to live away from home, they will have benefitted from character lessons where they learn about tenacity, compassion, respect and perseverance and as a result of that they’ll be able to go on and have that confidence that maybe some other kids might not have,” Thomas said.
Right now, SEED Miami is housed on the campus of Florida Memorial University, but ground will be broken soon on its own facility, to be built in Kendall. Today’s sixth graders will be the growing school’s first graduating class. The seeds of success, one hopes, have already sprouted.
