Miami Central Senior High School is a secondary school located at 1781 NW 95th Street in West Little River, Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. Its current principal is Gregory Bethune. Miami Central opened in 1959. Its school mascot and colors were chosen in honor of NASA and the inception of its space program, which was an event at the time of the school's opening. In the early 1990s, the school acquired a computer science magnet program, placed as part of the district's initiative to devote school space to certain magnet programs so as to attract minority students to less diverse schools. The school serves most of the northern fringes of the city of Miami, as well as parts of North Miami, Opa-locka, the village of Miami Shores, and the village of El Portal.
History
Kathleen McGrory wrote in 2009 that Miami Central was "historically beset by chronic truancy, declining enrollment, dispirited staff and general disrepair". That year the school was under threat of being closed and/or having special programs taken away under federal mandates that would penalize the school for a sixth failure on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test ; for the five previous consecutive years it had received "F" grades. In 2009 Doug Rodriguez, who previously served as the principal at Ronald W. Reagan/Doral High School, volunteered to become the principal of Miami Central. In 2010 the school was chosen to receive an American Recovery and Investment ActSchool Improvement Grant, because it had mostly ethnic minority children and had a low academic performance. President Barack Obama visited the school when he presented the SIG program to the American people.
Demographics
The demographic breakdown of the 1,926 students enrolled for the 2012-2013 school year was:
Male - 55.3%
Female - 44.7%
Native American/Alaskan - 0.1%
Asian/Pacific islanders - 0.3%
Black - 79.4%
Hispanic - 19.7%
White - 0.5%
multiracial - >0.1%
80.7% of students were eligible for free or reduced lunch. Miami Central has a large Haitian student population. As of 2009 there were 1,600 students, with 14% in special education and over 50% from low-income families.
Notable alumni
Academics Warren Bailey, Class of 1990, Photographer, Miami Dade CollegeNorth Campus Alumni, Currently South Florida artist having participated in many local and national art exhibits. William Cordova, Class of 1988, Contemporary Visual Artist. Studied Studio Arts at Miami Dade Community College, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University. "Cordova is an internationally accomplished visual artist having exhibited in major Museums all over the world." William Cordova'a a Miami Central Alumni Association member and lives between Miami Gardens and New York City.
Athletics
The school's main rival is Miami Northwestern High School. In 2009 McGrory stated that the football games, especially those against Northwestern, are well-attended, and that the students at Central "take pride in their marching band".
As part of the state's Accountability program, it grades a school by a complex formula that looks at both current scores and annual improvement on the Reading, Math, Writing and Science FCATs. These are the school's grades by the year since the FCAT began in 1998:
