Leading the nation’s third-largest school district since 2022, Dr. Jose Dotres is in the last year of his contract as superintendent. Now the Miami-Dade County School Board is officially beginning the process of searching for his successor.
“Our goal is to have a smooth transition, where the incoming superintendent will be able to work hand in hand with him,” said board member Roberto Alonso.
“You know, it’s our greatest education leader in the whole county, and it’s the most important job that school board members have, to select our next leader so the discussion begins today,” board member Luisa Santos said.
School board members are deciding on the timeline of the search. They say there is no short list of candidates, but some say a frontrunner should be chosen by next August. They’re also deciding on whether to hire a consulting firm to manage the search.
“In general, we’re moving in the right direction,” said board member Joe Geller.
Does he favor hiring an outside consultant?
“No, it’s a waste of money,” Geller said. “If anybody wants this job, if anybody who’s interested in this job and anybody who’s qualified for this job, is gonna know it’s open.”
The public is watching. Justin DeLeon is with the Partnership for Miami, a group of business leaders that advocates for education, especially student outcomes. DeLeon told us the Partnership wants a superintendent who will focus on dealing with underenrolled schools.
“There’s no question that our district is facing declining enrollment; we have over 130,000 empty seats, and that matters because when we have underenrolled schools, that means those schools are getting less resources,” DeLeon said. “So we need a leader who can be really clear-eyed about where we are today as a community, lead us through that change, and reinvest those resources to strengthen schools and better support teachers.”
Also on the agenda Wednesday, the board is once again asking voters to approve continuing the extra teacher pay and security referendum, which they approved in 2018 and then again in 2022.
“We want to be able to retain, recruit, and reward out teachers for the tremendous work that they’ve done,” said Dr. Steve Gallon, the school board member who proffered the item. “We are asking the community to continue to support our teachers and continue to support our efforts to make sure that our schools are safe.”
Gallon says with the affordability crisis facing South Florida, it’s absolutely crucial that voters reapprove the referendum in November.
Editor’s note: The school board was scheduled to discuss the superintendent search at Wednesday’s meeting, but at the time of this writing, at 7:25 p.m., they had not yet begun that discussion, nor had they gotten to the referendum renewal issue.