Coral Shores High School

As an honors student in a very small town, I was really frustrated at the treatment of the students during my time at Coral Shores. This school feels very much like a prison. The dress code during my time was ridiculously strict for a mostly outdoor school in the hottest part of the state where hallway temperatures could reach 100 degrees (no shorts, no shirts without sleeves, no pants made of light material and no layering of clothes in case you decided to remove one layer during the day – so basically jeans/khakis and thick t-shirts/polo’s without the need for undershirts). The entrances were locked with gates at the beginning of the school day and the faculty, who often times had been tenured for decades, felt like prison guards, yelling unnecessarily to usher us from one class to another. The bathrooms were often locked for fear of misbehaving so your only access to a restroom was downstairs and across the building by the cafeteria which, mind you, could only be used during the 7-minute class transitions.

The policies were unwaveringly strict, regardless of circumstance. If you weren’t in the doors before the gates were closed on the 1st bell, excuse or not, you were sent to in-school-suspension for the entirety of first period. If you weren’t in your classroom by the second bell, you were given a detention, regardless of a bathroom emergency or otherwise. On the first day of a school year where they changed the start time to 15 minutes earlier without any real notice, they still strictly enforced this policy and dozens of confused students were forced to miss their first class of the day.

Depending on the year, you got very little say in your schedule and in some cases would spend weeks in study hall waiting to be given a formal schedule. Some teachers would grant grades at a whim without giving any concrete reason behind them. Unless you had parents willing to go to bat for you during cases like this – for instance, an art teacher changing a disfavored student’s grade from an A to a D on the last day of the school year, these teachers would not be held accountable.

While the students as a whole performed well on standardized tests, the grade reflections were extremely politicized. Students with parents in the administration had the highest GPAs in their classes and often ended up as valedictorians, even if other students completely matched, or exceeded, their GPAs. The administration would implement last-minute rules days before graduation that would affect everyone's rankings - "oh, we aren't counting duel-enrollment classes towards ranking GPAs anymore because it's unfair to the students who didn't take them." Very biased. The guidance counselors made frequent mistakes that would affect students' chances at college acceptance and wouldn't correct them until after it was too late - often after the end of the school year even.

Some members of the community might argue that for troubled students, the policy structure is an experience for growth because it strictly enforces respect for rules, discipline and structure, but based on the drop-out rates, I’m more inclined to believe that the administrative treatment of the students is more disheartening than encouraging.

For any parents of honor students considering Coral Shores, I would recommend their students do free online schooling and partake in the many community college courses offered at Florida Keys Community College on Coral Shores’ campus instead. This will grant them a much better chance at a fair GPA, a curriculum of their choosing and acceptance from private/ivy league schools should that be an aspiration of theirs.