BHA Celebrates as Mater Brickell Preparatory Academy is One Step Closer to Reality

BHA’s October membership meeting gave cause to celebrate with an exciting announcement. BHA neighbors learned that the Warrant Application with the City of Miami for the Brickell area’s first new school in over 30 years, Mater Brickell Preparatory Academy, had been approved.

Mater Brickell Preparatory Academy will be a state-of-the-art K-12 academic campus in the heart of Brickell.  The Mater Brickell urban campus design will bring together components of the existing neighborhood while incorporating elements of the newer, more contemporary developments of the Brickell area. As a free public charter school, it will provide Brickell families a neighborhood alternative where few upper school options exist and often private school enrollment or moving out of the area are the most viable options.

BHA’s President Ernesto Cuesta echoed the excitement and enthusiasm of the meeting attendees and the Brickell community when he stated: “Yesterday in the evening, I received a fabulous notice, that the warrant has now been approved for the Brickell School Project, and now its developers can move ahead with it. To my recollection, eight years has passed by with many challenges to overcome, but what counts, the final result. Once my grandmother told me: ‘Winners never quit, quitters never win,’ so true. I will never, ever surrender to nothing less than principles, values and justice. It is time to celebrate!”

The completion of this process, which took the better part of a year, means the Mater Brickell project can move into the final stages of the approval process. Once the project receives its permitting from the City of Miami, Mater officials have assured BHA and the community that the school will be ready for opening within 18 months of groundbreaking. Both Mater Academy and the City pledge to work together to expedite the permitting process to ensure the timely start of this much-needed project. BHA and the residents of Brickell wait with great anticipation for opening day in 2020-21 at our new “A-rated” state-of-the-art neighborhood school, Mater Brickell Preparatory Academy.