The McCartney Academy

A school is not a building. It is the catalyst of a community — the thing that makes a people proud, and capable, and whole. Overtown had one. In the 1960s the highways came, scattered the neighborhood, and the school was phased out. What was taken was not just brick; it was the engine of a people.

The McCartney Academy rebuilds that engine. It is named for Ralph McCartney — a son of Overtown who spent his life keeping children in school and out of jail, and who fought, and won, to help rebuild the very school the system let decline. His grand-nephew, Israel Lee Armstead, founder of E5 Enclave, carries it forward.

The case, in one sentence: a generation of Liberty City children needs the catalyst their grandparents were denied — and for the first time, Florida law has reopened the door to reclaim a public facility and put it back to work. We intend to walk through it.

Ralph McCartney was the youngest of eight children born to a Bahamian family in Overtown, in a home that ran like a community center — where, in his telling, "never did a hungry person cross that door and leave out that same way." He graduated Booker T. Washington in 1952, served his country, and gave his working life to his community: the Urban League, the Community Relations Board, and finally the county jail, where the man who had spent years trying to keep young people out of it now met them inside.

The record honors him. The City of Opa-Locka proclaimed "Mr. Ralph McCartney Day" in 1997. The United States Congressional Record carries a 1994 tribute from Rep. Carrie Meek naming his work behind the scenes: the Edison Park I-95 overpass he fought to build so children no longer risked their lives crossing the highway to reach school; his role, with the community, in the rebuilding of Booker T. Washington School; and his service to the Department of Defense Race Relations Institute.

Overtown was the Harlem of the South — a dense, self-sustaining Black community of churches, businesses, theaters, and schools. In the 1960s, Interstates 95 and 395 were routed directly through its heart, bisecting a community of roughly 40,000 residents into four severed fragments. Then the schools were phased out. McCartney called it "the Big Monster."

This was not an accident of geography. It was a decision. Naming it plainly is the first act of repair.

We are building two things under one roof. First, a STEAM core — science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics — that prepares Liberty City's young people not for the margins but for the frontier. Second, a Doula and Black-maternal-health track that trains and credentials community birth workers, because in this country a Black mother dies in childbirth at more than two and a half times the rate of a white mother, and trained community support is among the most direct answers we have.

A school on one side; economic and human capacity on the other. Education and a business center, together — one ecosystem.

Program specifics — curriculum, cohort sizes, enrollment timeline — are in development and finalized with our district partners.

For the first time, Florida law makes this reclamation possible. The 2025 "Schools of Hope" reforms, effective July 1, 2025, reordered who gets first claim on a community's surplus schools:

• Right of first refusal (HB 443) Before a district may sell, lease, or transfer any school property, it must offer it to public charter schools for educational use.
• Tax exemption (HB 443) Any facility housing an approved charter school is exempt from ad valorem taxes.
• Zoning preemption (HB 1255) Local building, site, and land-use barriers that single out such schools are void and unenforceable.
• Conversion pathways (HB 1105) Parent-initiated and municipal "job-engine" routes open existing schools to community-led, workforce-focused reuse.
• A funding floor (SB 2510) The Schools of Hope program is held at $25 million or more annually.

The Florida Department of Education's Miami-Dade Vacant & Underused Facilities report is the live inventory — the exact pipeline these laws were built to channel. E5 Enclave intends to use this framework to secure a permanent home for the Academy in District 2.

This is strategic analysis; current statute text is verified before any action.

The business-center half of the ecosystem has a name and a form: The Lotus Gate Forum — a civic ark of memory, council, and transmission. A place for the community the highways scattered to gather, decide, and pass its inheritance forward. It is the room where a neighborhood becomes a people again.

Concept design shown; capacity and program in development.

There are four ways to build this — choose yours.

A steward — "Joseph" — will soon live on this page as your point of contact: the coalition, personified.

The McCartney Academy is a program of E5 Enclave Incorporated — a Florida 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 99-3822441; §509(a)(2)), based in Liberty City, Miami.

In the spirit of the work, the record is kept honestly. Figures here are either verified or marked in-development. Ralph McCartney's words are Fair-Use excerpts from his oral-history interview (Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, University of Florida, August 14, 1997) and the Congressional Record (February 1, 1994). The historical Overtown photographs are shown for this preview with their sources noted; final image licensing will be cleared before public launch. The Schools of Hope summary is strategic analysis, verified against current statute before action.