North Miami Senior High School is a secondary school located at 13110 NE 8th Avenue in North Miami, Florida, United States. The school opened as Edward L. Constance Junior-Senior High School in 1951, with 1,500 students in 7th, 8th and 9th grades. Another grade was added each year for the next three years. The class of 1955 was the first graduating class. Early in 1955 the name of the school was changed to North Miami Senior High School. In the fall of 1955 the 7th, 8th and 9th grades were moved to the new North Miami Junior High School.
History
After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, North Miami High enrolled 88 survivors, the largest number of any MDCPS school. North Miami is a center of middle class Haitian Americans and most of the survivors who came to the Miami area were middle class. Michael Winerip of The New York Times interviewed 10 survivors at North Miami. They all indicated that the academic work at North Miami was less rigorous than the work at their private Haitian schools. After the earthquake, eight of the interviewed students reached Miami by flying on commercial airline services out of airports in the Dominican Republic. All of the students had visas to reside in the U.S., and many had previously spent summer vacations in Miami.
Since January 1990, North Miami has offered the International Baccalaureate program. This international non-profit educational foundation was founded in 1968 in Geneva, Switzerland. The organization administers programs for elementary, middle, and high schools, providing an international curriculum intended to be acceptable to universities around the world. North Miami Senior High hosts a magnet program that offers a rigorous diploma curriculum approved by the International Baccalaureate Organization, based in Geneva. The IB Magnet Program consists of approximately 250 students divided between pre-IB in grades 9 and 10, and IB in grades 11 and 12. Students are selected based upon academic achievement, previous advanced coursework and promise. The North Miami IB program is culturally and ethnically diverse due to the fact that students are transported throughout Miami-Dade County. IB diploma candidates are assessed at international standards in six areas with three exams taken at a higher level and three exams taken at a standard level. IB diploma candidates must also complete a 150-hour creativity, action and service requirement, write a 4,000-word independently researched Extended Essay, and complete a Theory of Knowledge class. North Miami Senior High also has an International Affairs program, which focuses on languages and international studies. This rigorous course of study offers the IB certificate in the chosen fields of study, while offering a variety of IB and AP courses to meet students' needs.
Controversy
On Wednesday, June 9, 2015, the Miami-Dade County Public Schools removed Alberto Iber from his position as principal of North Miami High for making a comment online supporting the actions of McKinney, Texas police officer David Eric Casebolt during a 2015 Texas pool party incident. Iber participated in an online, racially charged national debate over police treatment of African-Americans, by defending a white Texas a police officer who was recorded on video restraining an unarmed fifteen-year-old girl on the ground, and who later drew his handgun during the incident. The school district cited a violation of its core values as reason for Iber's reassignment.
Band
North Miami's Auxiliary was awarded a Superior rating.
Notable graduates
Carlos Alvarez - consensus All-American college football player
