Leading the nation\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur goal is to have a smooth transition, where the incoming superintendent will be able to work hand in hand with him,\u201d said board member Roberto Alonso.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, it\u2019s our greatest education leader in the whole county, and it\u2019s the most important job that school board members have, to select our next leader so the discussion begins today,\u201d board member Luisa Santos said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u2019re also deciding on whether to hire a consulting firm to manage the search.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIn general, we\u2019re moving in the right direction,\u201d said board member Joe Geller.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Does he favor hiring an outside consultant?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s a waste of money,\u201d Geller said. \u201cIf anybody wants this job, if anybody who\u2019s interested in this job and anybody who\u2019s qualified for this job, is gonna know it\u2019s open.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s 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,\u201d DeLeon said. \u201cSo 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be able to retain, recruit, and reward out teachers for the tremendous work that they\u2019ve done,\u201d said Dr. Steve Gallon, the school board member who proffered the item. \u201cWe are asking the community to continue to support our teachers and continue to support our efforts to make sure that our schools are safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gallon says with the affordability crisis facing South Florida, it\u2019s absolutely crucial that voters reapprove the referendum in November.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leading the nation\u2019s third-largest school district since 2022, Dr. Jose Dotres is in the last year of his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124,373],"class_list":{"0":"post-242637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-miami","9":"tag-miami-headlines","10":"tag-miami-news","11":"tag-miami-dade-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}