As soon as I step onto South Florida Autism Charter School’s (SFACS) sprawling campus, nestled in the outskirts of Miami, I’m greeted by the school’s principal, Tamara Moodie. She’s overseeing one of the school’s three different arrival schedules, split between its elementary, middle, and high school grades. Moodie exerts a calm yet commanding presence in the hallways of SFACS. She asks a high schooler named Chase, along with a staff member, to guide me on a short tour of the school.
Chase, wearing the school’s red uniform hoodie, sports a paper crown adorned with the words “King Chase.” As he leads us up the staircase, he tells us about a ring he won at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant the previous weekend. We make our way through the hallway, and I notice I can see inside of each classroom through large clear windows—transparency is a hallmark here. Another student, emerging from an elementary class with his teacher, tells us he won the recent school spelling bee with the word “giggle,” which he then proudly spells.
SFACS’s facilities include a large therapy area filled with play equipment, a dance room, and, so that students can practice life skills, a model studio apartment complete with a fully equipped kitchen, bed, TV, and closet.
Later I visit a 12th-grade classroom, where the students have recently returned to their desks after leading the annual senior parade. SFACS adheres to a three-to-one student-to-staff ratio; its classrooms are permanently staffed by three instructors—one primary teacher and two paraprofessionals—overseeing nine students.
Today, they’re learning about the difference between “wants” and “needs.” Their teacher reads short stories with examples such as “Ryan needs a coat” and “Ryan wants to play video games.” The young people assigned to this classroom, like all the students at SFACS, occupy the severe end of the autism spectrum. Their IQ scores are below 68 and they live with various cognitive, speech, or mobility impairments. Many have difficulty sitting at a desk for extended periods of time. From my vantage point in the back of the classroom, the instructors’ unwavering dedication to their students, who require nearly constant one-on-one attention, is on full display. As the lesson progresses, the assistant teachers shift from desk to desk, eliciting example sentences and providing encouragement to each student. When one nonverbal student grows restless, one of the teachers guides him to a chart on the wall where he uses pictures to convey various emotional and physical needs.
Moodie, along with a group of community leaders, founded the school in 2009 to provide families in South Florida with the region’s first public school for students with autism. First housed in a library and enrolling 81 students, the charter school moved into its current two-story facility in 2021 and now serves nearly 300 students. With the help of a fundraising arm and multiple related nonprofits, including an adult center housed within the school building, SFACS also provides resources and services, from housing to employment, for people with severe autism. Students can remain at the school through age 22, after which they have the opportunity to transition to the adult center.
“We treat the whole family,” Moodie likes to say. She even hosts and often personally leads family learning sessions on Saturday mornings on topics affecting the autism community. The school’s cafeteria, meanwhile, is partly staffed by parent volunteers. Because of its tight-knit community and wraparound model—they now serve individuals as old as 40—enrollment at the school is especially limited.
SFACS is one of at least 36 charter schools in Florida dedicated to serving students with special needs, the highest number in any state. While some schools only require students to have an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to enroll, others, like SFACS, further limit eligibility to students who are taught through a modified curriculum, have a specific diagnosis such as autism, or have additional cognitive or behavioral differences.
Florida, long a self-professed haven for education choice, specifically allows charter schools to focus on special needs students, or “exceptional students,” in their enrollment process (across the country, states vary widely on the permissibility of enrollment preferences for charter schools). Some of Florida’s earliest charter schools, like Princeton House Charter School in Orlando, were private schools for students with disabilities that took advantage of the law and converted to charter status in the late 1990s. For decades, families of students with special needs in Florida have also benefited from a specialized education savings account for exceptional students, which can be used to cover private school tuition or services such as therapy.
