School board votes on MAST Academy expansion

With a unanimous vote, the Miami Dade School Board settled the dilemma over MAST Academy’s expansion Wednesday.

Parents of students at the science and technology magnet school have resisted the plan to allow Key Biscayne students to attend classes on their campus.

Last month, the school board voted to allow the expansion, but the details had yet to be worked out.

The main items in the MAST Academy Expansion Plan include:

• The school will now be called MAST Academy at Virginia Key.
• The district-wide lottery to enter MAST would stay the same.
• Two academies will be added to the campus, with 1,100 seats.
• Key Biscayne residents will have priority for those spots.
• The city of Key Biscayne will also split the building costs for renovating buildings, building new ones and adding new recreation fields.

Still, parents, including Sean Schwinghammer, are not pleased.

"(It's) the best of a bad situation. Key Biscayne wanted something; they had the money. MAST is a victim. Two schools would have saved MAST Academy. This is going to dilute it, but it is better than destroying it," he said.

Key Biscayne residents are excited to give their children something they never had, a local high school.

"There was no local high school for me, so I moved away. Today, (my) two boys do not have a public high school that’s close to home," said Allison Eng-Perez.