Miami Springs Senior High School is a secondary school located at 751 Dove Avenue in Miami Springs, Florida, United States; its principal is Nelson Gonzalez (2022–Present). The school is part of Miami-Dade County Public School's nationally accredited magnet program, specializing in travel and tourism, the oldest of its kind in the state of Florida (established in 1987).
As of 2011, Miami Springs offers IGCSE (International General Certificate of Secondary Education) courses and the iTech academy; hosting advanced computer programming and mechanical engineering courses.
Miami Springs serves ninth through twelfth grade students in the city of Miami Springs, the village of Virginia Gardens, the town of Medley, the southern portion of the city of Hialeah (south of 29th Street, and south of 25th Street after Hialeah Park) and a small unincorporated residential neighborhood east of Miami International Airport. It used to serve the western Miami suburb of Doral until 2006, when a new high school was built in that area.
Beginning in the 2007-2008 school year, the opening of Westland Hialeah High School in the southern portion of Hialeah removed the entire portion of southern Hialeah served by the school and located West of Palm Avenue; however, all portions of the boundary located east of Palm Avenue in Hialeah remained served by the school.
History
Construction at Miami Springs Senior High School began in 1963 with the clearing of a large wooded lot at the site of the current campus. There were no homes built directly on the site, which was one of the last areas of thick jungle growth in the incorporated Miami Springs. The first day of classes at Springs was delayed due to Hurricane Cleo striking Miami on August 27, 1964. Springs first opened its doors after Labor Day the following week, in September, as an overcrowding reliever for nearby Hialeah High School. The first school year, 1964–65, served 9th 10th and 11th grade students, and the second, 1965–66, offered classes for 10th, 11th and 12th grades. Therefore, the first graduating class of Miami Springs was the Class of 1966.
This was one of three high schools in the district seriously affected by overcrowding in the early 2000s during the county's largest population growth since 1980. Its student population in the 2001-02 school year peaked at 4,750. The same year, it implemented a "split shifts" schedule in which 9th and 10th grade students would attend classes in the afternoons, while 11th and 12th grade students, as well as student-athletes, attended in the morning. Despite being the third most populous school in the district after G. Holmes Braddock High School and Barbara Goleman Senior High School, Springs was considered the most overcrowded, as its capacity was only 2,500 students, while Braddock and Goleman's capacities each surpassed 4,000. The school resumed a regular schedule for the 2003-2004 school year as overcrowding was relieved upon the opening of Ronald W. Reagan Doral High School, a school in the nearby suburb of Doral that was previously served by Miami Springs.
Miami Springs Senior High has been a Title I school since the program was expanded to Miami-Dade Public Schools in 2002, due to its extremely high rate of foreign-born students (66.9% in 2013, 70.7% in 2005 and 52.2% in 1997). In 2013, Miami Springs was ranked as the public high school with the highest proportion of foreign-born students nationwide, followed closely by Ronald W. Reagan Doral High School at 65.8% and Miami Senior High School at 61.2%.
This exceptionally high rate makes Miami Springs one of the most unusual public schools in the US, with over 70% of its course offerings either in Spanish or reformulated in English for Spanish speakers. This has been a boon to its extensive Advanced Placement program, and Springs was ranked among the top 10 high schools nationwide for Hispanic students performance in the AP program - 65% passing rate across all subjects - with first-generation immigrant Hispanic students receiving the highest scores.
The school has a strict policy to remove students not living within its boundaries. As a result, the school's overcrowding has been significantly reduced. This policy may have helped improve Miami Springs' test scores, helping raise it from a D rating in 2003 to a B rating in 2005 and 2006. As of 2013, Miami Springs is an A school.
In 2009 Hialeah Gardens High School opened, taking attendance boundary territory from Barbara Goleman High School and Miami Springs High School. In turn, Goleman took territory from American High School.