This Pembroke Pines school ranks among the top 50 in Florida. What sets it apart?
The results are in: Pembroke Pines Charter High School is one of the top 50 public high schools in Florida, according to Niche.
The popular rank and review site broke the news Sept. 29 in its annual Best Schools and Districts in America report, which highlights educational institutions that excelled in categories such as academics, extracurriculars, diversity and location.
Pines Charter High proved itself an above-average qualifier for Florida’s finest schools. The school serves students grades 6-12 and had a roughly 2,170-student enrollment last year, according to the Florida Department of Education.
The home of the Jaguars, which opened in 2000 and is owned by the city, scored an overall grade of “A+” on Niche. It also raked in an “A” for academics and diversity and an “A-“ in teachers, some of the most heavily weighted categories on the site’s rubric.
“At the end of the day, it’s really the students that make the difference and can tell you the true value of the school,” Peter Bayer, the school’s longtime principal, told the Pembroke Pines News on Sept. 30. “I think that (the ranking) really embodies our tone. Of course, it’s important to be smart and ambitious, but you also have to be a good citizen.”
Clubs and activities, resources and facilities, and food landed the Jaguars several Bs, but the school earned 4 out of 5 stars from its 949 reviews listed on the site.
Niche considers itself a “market leader in connecting colleges and schools with students and families,” with over 200,000 profiles on schools and the neighborhoods that surround them, as well as 50 million users in the last year, according to the company.
To calculate its top public schools reports, Niche combines data from government sources including the U.S. Department of Education, Civil Rights Data Collection and National Center for Education Statistics, as well as ratings collected from user reviews. The top four categories schools are graded on are academics (60%), culture and diversity (12.5%), parent and student surveys on overall experience (10%), and teachers (10%).
Around 79% of Pines Charter High’s students scored at or above proficiency level on Florida standardized reading tests and 62% fared the same in math, according to the school’s report card on Niche. The average SAT score is a 1210, while 30% of student are enrolled in Advanced Placement courses and 99% of students graduate, Niche users from the school reported.
Its student-to-teacher — 22:1 — is higher than the national average of 16:1, and 79% of students and parents that responded to a Niche survey “agree that the teachers genuinely care about the students.”
The Jaguars also excelled in culture and safety, with 79% of students polled saying “they feel safe at their school,” and 71% saying “they like their school and feel happy there.”
An annual “shirt throwing ceremony” — where graduating seniors throw their uniforms into trees on campus — was ranked by students as their school’s favorite tradition.
Bayer added that the “rite of passage,” which started in 2003, is symbolic of the Jaguar culture.
“It’s become a big party, and we play music and we shoot up streamers, and the band plays, and kids hug,” he said. “Kids all dream about the day that they’ll stand in the courtyard and throw the shirt in the tree more than they dream about crossing the stage of graduation.”
This story was originally published September 30, 2025 at 5:15 PM.
