The Pine Crest private school plans to open a West Palm Beach campus, marking its third South Florida location.
The exclusive K-12 school announced the move on June 2 in a letter to its community.
Helping make the move possible is a large but undisclosed gift from real estate developer Stephen Ross, West Palm Beach’s dominant developer and a major owner of offices, high-rise residences and hotels.
Ross, the billionaire owner of the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins, lives in Palm Beach, just across the bridges from West Palm Beach.
Why is a premier private school expanding to West Palm Beach, and when will it open?
Here are five things to know about the emerging plans for a third Pine Crest campus.
What is the Pine Crest School?
Pine Crest is an independent, nondenominational school.
The school has a Pre-K through 8th grade campus in Boca Raton, and a Pre-K through 12th grade campus in Fort Lauderdale.
Pine Crest is a leading private school in Florida. In 2023, it was ranked the No. 1 private school in the country by The Washington Post’s Jay Mathews Challenge Index.
Pine Crest is known for its academic rigor, regularly placing graduating high school students in top universities nationwide.
Pine Crest’s classes contain between 15 and 18 students. This year, the Fort Lauderdale school’s graduating class totaled 211.
How much does it cost to attend Pine Crest private school?
For the 2026-27 academic year, annual tuition ranges from $39,010 for Pre-K to $49,670 for the upper grades.
The nonprofit school relies on both tuition and philanthropy. The school also provides need-based financial assistance to students, awarding $10.6 million to families during the 2025-26 school year.
Pine Crest does not participate in the Florida voucher program, which makes private school vouchers of about $8,000 a year available to all K-12 students regardless of family income.
Why Pine Crest decided to expand to West Palm Beach
On and off in recent years, Pine Crest has considered but then rejected a West Palm Beach campus.
But school officials said this expansion was approved because of West Palm Beach’s recent growth.
Much of this growth was spurred by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the migration of financial firms and new residents to the city. This expansion, in turn, has helped attract institutions eager to join this newfound center of entrepreneurship, wealth and philanthropy.
One is Nashville-based Vanderbilt University. The private university plans to build a private graduate business school in West Palm Beach. Another is Cleveland Clinic, which plans a new hospital in West Palm Beach.
Ross’ undisclosed financial gift is key to advancing Pine Crest’s new campus, the school said.
In addition, Ross’ donation also will boost the Pine Crest campuses in Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale. This includes helping advance academic programs, faculty recruitment and the school’s overall financial well-being.
Why did Steve Ross get involved in private school expansion?
A top K-12 private school is important because it helps make up the infrastructure of a growing community, Ross has said many times during the past several years.
Ross said company executives are more likely bring their companies to West Palm Beach if they know their children can attend a top private school. “It’s all about getting into great universities,” Ross said.
Ross, who has lured a number of finance and technology companies to West Palm Beach, is making a big bet on bringing more businesses to the city.
He’s in the midst of building two new high-rise office towers at CityPlace. One will include expanded medical offices of Cleveland Clinic, and the other will host ServiceNow, a Silicon Valley-based AI software firm.
What will the new West Palm private school campus be like?
The West Palm Beach campus location, planned opening date and the grade levels offered are not yet decided, according to Pine Crest Chief of Staff Christine Dardet.
She said the school expects to know more details of the campus in the coming months.
In April 2025, the city of West Palm Beach nearly sold 55 acres of city-owned land to Related Ross for a private school and housing. The land is north of Okeechobee Boulevard and east of Florida’s Turnpike, near Roebuck Road. The sale price was $6.6 million, or $120,500 an acre, a price that some real estate experts called surprisingly low for the location.
In January 2026, Mayor Keith James said an undisclosed private school would not be built on this city-owned parcel. He didn’t say where the school would be built.
Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. X: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Pine Crest private school is expanding to West Palm. What to know
Reporting by Alexandra Clough, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Alexandra Clough, Palm Beach Post | USA TODAY Network
