Builders, District at Odds in School-Starved Dade

By Lonnie Harp

The Dade County, Fla., school board is expected to begin dealing this week with its staggering school-building crunch, an issue that in recent years has practically swallowed up the nation's fourth-largest school district.

Recent figures show that the 315,000-student district, which includes Miami, would need to build five elementary schools, two middle schools, and a high school each year to accommodate its annual enrollment growth of about 10,000 students. The district, however, has not been able to come close to keeping that pace, and recently the backlog has forced local officials to begin rethinking housing in certain areas.

The Metro-Dade Commission this month denied a request to build 320 houses in the West Kendall area, a section of the county west of Miami that is attractive to developers but where school officials have had disagreements over the district's intention...