School overview
Somerset Preparatory Academy at North Lauderdale
Who decides things at this campus, where the money comes from, and what the public record actually shows.
Who actually decides things here?
Somerset Prep North Lauderdale is a tuition-free public charter campus at 7101 Kimberly Boulevard. It is legally two schools sharing one building, one principal, one phone number and one website: a K-8 school (Broward number 5003, about 704 students) and a high school (number 5006, about 335 students). Neither is its own school district. Both charters are held by Somerset Academy, Inc., a Florida non-profit whose board of four unpaid, appointed directors also holds the charters for roughly a hundred other schools in Florida, Nevada, Texas and Arizona. That board meets about eleven times a year, usually for an hour on a weekday morning over Zoom. Broward County Public Schools is the authorizer: it grants the charters, reviews them, and can refuse to renew them. Day-to-day business management is done under contract by Academica Broward LLC.
Two charters, one campus
The K-8 school and the high school hold separate contracts with Broward and file separate budgets and audits, but share the building, the principal and the staff. Costs are split between them by student numbers.
An appointed board, not an elected one
Families cannot vote for the four directors. The board fills its own seats, and its page states directors do not answer emails, calls or messages outside public meetings.
The board rarely talks about this school
Across the ten board meetings held in the year to October 2026, and the 105 items those meetings approved, not one named this campus.
Broward is the authorizer, not the operator
Broward reviews the charters and holds the renewal vote. Its last review of this campus was in 2024-25, and for the K-8 school the next one is not due until 2040.
None of this means the school is badly run. Both audits for 2024-25 came back with no findings and no recommendations, the K-8 school has been graded B in three of the last four graded years, and Broward's reviewers found the school met the standard on nine of fifteen measures, including finance, facilities, governance and enrolment.
What is on the public record
Calculated: $12,464,146 of budgeted income for both schools divided by the 1,060 students the two budgets assume. Charter income is mostly state FEFP money that follows each child, plus capital outlay, Title I and grants.
Counted across the ten board meetings held between October 2025 and October 2026 in the minutes the board publishes. For scale, the same meetings approved building projects of $475,000, $350,000 and $2,276,150 at other Somerset schools.
Below the 41% federal threshold for the fourth year running. Every other student group at the school is above it.
Calculated by adding the two audited balances: $1,967,940 from the K-8 school and $543,781 from the high school. A year earlier the same two balances were $1,500,000 and $300,000.
Calculated by adding four audited figures: $336,774 and $163,876 in Academica Broward LLC fees, plus $106,276 and $68,900 in Somerset Academy, Inc. assessments.
Major projects
The K-8 school's 15-year charter
In forceBroward granted the K-8 school a 15-year charter starting 1 July 2025. Florida law allows a 15-year term only for a school graded A or B in its most recent graded year that is not in financial trouble. The practical effect is that the district's full renewal review of this school, the one that produced the 2024-25 ratings, is not scheduled to happen again until 2040.
- Broward opens the renewal review for school 5003.
- District reviewers finish their ratings: nine sections meet the standard, six partially meet it.
- School Board approves the 15-year renewal on its consent agenda.
- Charter expires.
Funding
No direct cost to Broward; the school is funded through the state FEFP formula
The high school's five-year charter
In force, renewal due by 2030The high school was renewed for five years, not fifteen. It was graded C in each of the last three graded years, and its maths achievement sat at 25% of students at level 3 or above in both 2022-23 and 2023-24. Its reported graduation rate moved between 83.7% and 98% over five years. Broward will run a full renewal review again before the charter ends in 2030.
- Broward reviewers begin rating the high school's renewal submission.
- School Board approves a five-year renewal to 30 June 2030.
- Charter expires unless renewed.
Funding
State FEFP formula, capital outlay and federal grants
Federal improvement plan for students with disabilities
Under way, unfunded beyond the grant the school is eligible forThe K-8 school is identified for Additional Targeted Support and Improvement because its students-with-disabilities group has been below the federal threshold for four straight years. The school is eligible for a Unified School Improvement Grant. Its 2025-26 improvement plan is the document that has to set out what changes, and Broward's own renewal review rated the school's special education and English-learner programmes as only partially meeting the standard.
- 2025-26 improvement plan published recording the ATSI identification.
- Board adopts the 2026-27 budgets without a separate line naming this work.
Funding
Title I and eligibility for a Unified School Improvement Grant
Recent news
Built from what the two governing bodies actually publish: the minutes, meeting calendar, budgets and audits that Somerset Academy, Inc. posts for this campus, the policy and plan documents on the school's own site, and the Broward County Public Schools charter renewal file, including the executive summaries, the signed charter agreements, the district's renewal program reviews and the executed approval forms from the 17 June 2025 School Board meeting. Figures are quoted from those documents; where a number is added up or divided it is marked as a calculation.
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