04/30/2026
The children of South Florida’s new tech titans and hedge-fund managers are overwhelming the area’s school system. Most of the private schools are full. Many are expanding but still lack even enough desks for all the children of recently relocated executives.
Now, the uber-wealthy are reshaping the educational landscape to meet the needs of their children, and those of people like themselves.
Billionaire real-estate developer Jeff Greene created his own pre-K to 12th grade campus. Real-estate developer Stephen Ross and former WeWork chief executive Adam Neumann are also springing for new campuses in the area.
It is a long process that often involves contending with local bureaucracies and dueling with community opposition.
“You can’t just write a check and magically have a great school,” Greene said.
Securing land is the opening move. Developers must also recruit top-tier faculty, design a new curriculum and prove the school’s worth in a marketplace dominated by Northeastern private and boarding schools founded more than a century ago.
In Miami Beach, tech entrepreneur John Marshall built an elementary school that is expanding into a middle and soon a high school, called BaseCamp305, that he says instills an entrepreneurial spirit. Students work with robotics and 3-D printers, and those as young as kindergarten used both techniques to create toy race cars.
Marshall’s school charges about $30,000 a year in tuition and has around 50 students. His costs include teacher salaries above $80,000, at the high end of what private schoolteachers in the area make. And Marshall’s school also serves organic meals, including Thai bowls and mango sticky rice, which students help prepare. Those outlays exceed the school’s income by a couple million dollars a year.
“This is how private schools have historically been founded,” said Marshall. “By families looking to fulfill a need, and then expanding over time.”
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