RE Log Spring 2018

26 Ransom Everglades LOG SPRING 2018 schools, private schools, universities and colleges, is key to the quality of commu- nity and how we grow our community. A community builds, and builds well, based on its education, and its level and quality of education. Ransom Everglades plays a major part in education throughout our entire community. It’s not only educating our kids, it’s reaching out to the communi- ty, it’s helping inner-city kids, it’s creating collaborative partnerships with universi- ties and other pieces around our overall community. We have in our budget every year $5 million in financial aid that goes out to balance our student body. The board is consistently raising that budget so we bring people from all walks of life and all financial places into Ransom Everglades. That’s really a goal and something the board is tuned into and wants to make sure happens. We’ve seen it happen. The Ransom Everglades community has changed and evolved over the years. I have been directly involved with RE for over 40 years. Our board chair, Rudy Prio Touzet ’76 , may have been the first, or one of the first, Cuban-American families at Ransom. Today, Ransom Everglades is over 50 percent Latin American and, really, what has evolved is diversity, diver- sity on every front. It really is a microcosm of what Miami-Dade County is as a whole. We represent all facets of life whether it be cultural, religious, lifestyle. It’s something that we embrace. Constance: When I was at the University of Michigan’s business school, all of my friends were from out of the country, international students. I did not have one friend from the United States of America. That really opened my world at a pivotal time in my life. It added to my learning experience, and it also showed me that the world was bigger than I had previously understood. I had friends from Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong. International exposure is built in to Ransom Everglades, because of its location in the heart of such a diverse city. Jeffrey: South Florida has obviously increased in diversity, but it’s also changed in other ways. It’s interesting, when I graduated and went to college, many of my fellow students and fellow classmates went off to college and never came back to Miami. There wasn’t tremendous op- portunity down here. Right now, Miami is an emerging scene of business. Miami has always been a real estate mecca, but there is so much more now to Miami, whether it be around technology, whether it be around the medical community. Constance: As more and more compa- nies relocate to Miami or start businesses here, they come with families and children who are concerned about education. I speak from experience; we were one of those families! As Miami continues to grow in sophistication and culture – we’ve seen the rise of the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Frost Museum of Science, and the Institute of Contemporary Art – our This is an investment in Miami. We believe this transformation will reach far beyond the gates of Ransom Everglades School and into the City of Miami.” – Constance “