CALUSA ELEMENTARY SCHOOL vs ACADEMIR CHARTER SCHOOL PREPARATORY

Calusa Elementary School and Academir Charter School Preparatory sit 6.4 miles apart in Miami and earn nearly identical overall ratings — 9.2/10 versus 9.1/10, a 0.1-point gap — but their state ranks tell a sharper story: Calusa Elementary School lands at #41 of 3,777 Florida schools while Academir Charter School Preparatory comes in at #68 of 3,777. Both finish in the top 2% statewide, meaning parents are choosing between two genuinely high-performing schools, not between strong and adequate.

The academic and growth scores diverge in opposite directions, and the split is meaningful. Calusa Elementary School scores 9.7/10 on academics versus Academir Charter School Preparatory's 8.9/10 — an 0.8-point advantage that reflects higher current proficiency levels. Academir flips that dynamic on growth: its 9.8/10 growth score outpaces Calusa's 8.8/10 by a full point, indicating that Academir is accelerating student progress at an exceptional rate. Families weighing where students test today against how quickly they improve will find a genuine trade-off here.

The demographic and structural differences between the two schools are substantial. Calusa Elementary School enrolls 754 students against Academir Charter School Preparatory's 1,148 — a 52% larger student body at Academir. Calusa's student-teacher ratio is 16.0:1 versus Academir's 16.9:1, a modest difference. The free and reduced-price lunch gap is far wider: 38% at Calusa versus 82% at Academir, reflecting meaningfully different socioeconomic compositions. Academir's strong growth score in the context of serving a higher-need population makes that 9.8/10 figure especially notable.

Programmatically, the two schools serve different grade spans. Calusa Elementary School covers prekindergarten through 5th grade as a traditional public school, while Academir Charter School Preparatory runs kindergarten through 8th grade as a charter — giving Academir families a single-school pathway through middle school that Calusa does not offer. Parents with younger children starting in pre-K will find only Calusa accommodates that entry point.