Rachel Rodriguez, Head of School, Ransom Everglades School

Rachel Rodriguez, head of school at Ransom Everglades School, spoke to Invest: about the multitude of educational opportunities at the educational institution that has been serving the community for over 100 years. “Education is one part of what we do, but a school defines itself on its mission and core values. Our mission is very different from that of most schools,” she said.

What have been some of the main highlights and milestones for Ransom Everglades School over the past year?

Some of our highlights have to do with community – we offer a comprehensive community experience with a first-rate education grounded in our core values. We have consistent full admission and full enrollment. That’s important because it ensures that people in Miami and those moving to Miami have an understanding of the quality of education that students receive at Ransom Everglades School. Our inquiries this year are up about 6% and our applications to date are up 15%. We have the ability to offer mission-aligned families in Miami an outstanding educational experience for their children.

We also have continued success in college counseling. Even though Ransom Everglades serves students in sixth through twelfth grades, we know as a school that college counseling is very important to our families and our students in terms of their next steps. For the Class of 2024, our graduates went on to 73 different colleges and universities in 21 states. They went to six different countries as well, and last year was the first year we saw our students begin to apply to and consider a wider range of international opportunities. Our students received acceptances to all the Ivy Leagues, MIT and Stanford. 

How does the curriculum change at Ransom Everglades?

We are constantly evolving our curriculum. We go beyond what’s known as AP, or advanced placement. Having courses that are relevant to our students, such as multivariable calculus, which is beyond AP, or a data science course, and beyond AP courses in humanities, is important. Those are things that characterize a Ransom Everglades education, as we continually work toward excellence in the curriculum offerings.

What are your core values and what do they mean?

Education is one part of what we do, but a school defines itself on its mission and core values. Our mission is very different from that of most schools. Our founder, Paul Ransom, said that we needed to train a leadership class that gives more back to the community than it takes from it. We ask our students to be really thoughtful of that, and we make sure that our families are mission-aligned as well. We want students to understand their place in a community, and give back to it. Based on that mission, our core values are support, community service and outreach, diversity and inclusion, joy and wellbeing, and honor and excellence.

Honor and excellence are what we’ve thought about for the last 120-plus years that we’ve been a school. When you think about education, honor and excellence are among the constants; people understand those values. The other core values are what speaks to our community values, our shared values as a community, not only from our families and our students, but from our professional community as well. 

How are you promoting an interest in arts and culture as it relates to coursework and co-curricular activities? 

I could speak to you probably for about an hour just on that question. All our students have an arts requirement that is dependent on grade level. In the sixth grade, all our students must take an arts elective. Middle school is the time for students to try different things. Upper school or high school is the time for students to develop their passions regarding the things that they became interested in through middle school.

When we think of the arts, we offer a variety of different courses. Certainly, we offer opportunities in drama, music, singing and the visual arts, and we also offer a dance program. Our dance team has really expanded in the last few years to become an integral part of school events. Our goal is to ensure that both our scholar-athletes and scholar-artists are engaged in the community. 

Our music program is prominent and not only performs in concerts and attends competitions but uses the community as a venue to educate. In addition to that, we offer classes that many schools don’t, such as architecture. We have four levels of architecture, including sculpture and design. We offer ceramics, photography, painting, and more. In middle school, we also have a jewelry-making class. We have a comprehensive arts program. 

In addition to that, we have a speech and debate program where our students compete. While that is not considered an art class, we do have performance speech and debate.

That is award-winning. We had a student who came in fourth last year in the national tournament, which is spectacular.