Global Citizenship Academy is a proposed bilingual charter high school. The charter application is under review, there is no opening date, and no one is being enrolled. These are the questions families and educators actually ask, answered without spin.
No. GCA is a proposed school, not an operating one. Our charter application is under review with the Florida Charter School Review Commission, and a decision is expected in November 2026.
There is no opening date, there is no enrollment, and there is no application for families to fill out. The only thing you can do today is join the interest list so that you are told when the decision comes.
Yes — if approved, GCA will be a tuition-free public charter school. Florida charter schools are public schools funded through the state's per-student funding, and they do not charge tuition.
As with any public school, some optional activities may carry their own costs, but attending the school itself would not.
Any student eligible to attend a Broward County public high school, through an open lottery. Florida law requires public charter schools to be open to all students and to use a random lottery when applications exceed available seats.
There is no entrance exam, no audition, no interview, and no language requirement. If the charter is approved, we will publish the lottery process and timeline in English and Spanish before it opens.
No. The Grade 9 program has two tracks precisely so that a student who has never studied Spanish is not shut out. Track 9A, Preparatoria, begins at Spanish 1 and builds proficiency from there; Track 9B, Full Bilingual, is for students who arrive with substantial academic Spanish.
Both tracks aim at the same graduate profile. A student who starts with no Spanish is a student the school is designed for, not an exception to it.
By a Spanish proficiency assessment given after a student has already enrolled. It determines which track a student starts in — nothing else.
Placement testing is never part of admission. It cannot affect whether a seat is offered, it is not something a family can prepare their way past, and a student placed in Track 9A is not in a lesser version of the school.
You can see both track sequences on the academics page.
The Florida Seal of Biliteracy is a designation added to a student's high school diploma and transcript recognizing demonstrated proficiency in English and in at least one other language. Florida awards it at a Gold and a Silver level, based on approved assessments.
At GCA it is not meant to be a distinction a few students chase. The four-year program is built so that earning it is the ordinary path — which is also what makes the AP and dual-enrollment Spanish sequence worth taking.
Core subjects are taught in both languages under a structured language-allocation plan — a written plan for which subjects, units, and portions of instruction are delivered in each language, rather than a teacher-by-teacher choice.
This is content-based instruction: academic Spanish is built inside biology, history, and mathematics, where the language is actually used. It is a different thing from adding a Spanish class to an English-language school.
English Language Learners would receive ESOL services as required under Florida's Consent Decree, the state's framework for serving ELL students in public schools.
Beyond the legal obligation, the bilingual model serves these students by design rather than by accommodation: a school that treats Spanish as an academic language is a school where a Spanish-dominant student's existing knowledge is an asset in the room, not a deficit to be managed.
As a public school, GCA would serve students with disabilities under IDEA and Section 504, with services determined by each student's IEP or 504 plan.
Bilingual instruction and special education services are not alternatives to each other. A student's IEP governs, and the language-allocation plan is implemented within it.
Because as AI handles routine and transactional work, work itself becomes more international — teams, clients, and markets cross borders by default. What gains value is what translation software does not confer: bicultural fluency, and the ability to build trust, negotiate, and read context across two languages.
AI can translate a sentence; it cannot earn trust in two cultures. In South Florida — the business gateway of the Americas — that is a working advantage, not a philosophical one.
In Broward County. A specific facility would be secured upon approval, which is the normal sequence for a charter school — a site is not committed before there is a charter to operate it.
We are not going to name a location we have not secured. When there is an address, it will be published here.
Cemran Biricik, M.A., a career world-language educator. Thirty-plus years teaching Spanish and Italian; sixteen years as World Language Department Head at Lincoln High School in Jersey City; five recent years at a Broward County charter middle school.
Earlier career: teaching Turkish and Spanish at the United Nations International School, and English at Uceda Institute, following work as Administrative Assistant to the Ambassador at the Embassy of Chile from 1976 to 1979. M.A. in School Administration from Saint Peter's University, with New Jersey principal certification.
Languages: English, Spanish, Italian, and Turkish at a native or professional level, and conversational French.
Write to [email protected] and ask to be added to the interest list. We send fewer than one message per month, in English and Spanish.
You will hear from us when the charter decision is made, and — if it is favorable — when there is something concrete to say about a facility, a timeline, or a lottery. We would rather send nothing than send filler.
There is a page written specifically for you: for middle school leaders. It describes four independent, optional modules — a course-credit upgrade, a proficiency-exam pathway, an after-school cohort paid for by families, and an optional content-in-Spanish course — that add on to an existing school without replacing anything.
None of it is binding, none of it costs the school money, and a school can adopt one module or all four on its own timeline. Write to [email protected] and we will start with a thirty-minute conversation.
Join the interest list for updates on the charter decision and, if the school is approved, on information sessions. We send fewer than one message per month, in English and Spanish.