as reported by WLRN<\/a>. That is not how school decisions should be made, and it is only a preview of what the next superintendent will face.<\/p>\nWhoever takes this job needs to resist that pressure, not have a career spent riding along with it.<\/p>\n
Before anything else, every finalist owes this community a direct answer to one question: If you have spent your career shrinking or taking over traditional public-school systems, why should Miami-Dade now hand you the keys to one of the largest in the country? That is not an unfair question. It is the only one that matters.<\/p>\n
Public schools do more than chase enrollment numbers and test scores. They strengthen communities, prepare citizens and change children\u2019s lives. They open their doors to every child, regardless of ability, language, income or circumstance, a duty charter and private schools don\u2019t share. They anchor neighborhoods together.<\/p>\n
Miami-Dade has already proven educational choice doesn\u2019t require abandoning that model. The district offers magnet programs, IB, Cambridge, AP, dual enrollment, career academies and dozens of other pathways. The next superintendent\u2019s job is to strengthen what works, not compete against it.<\/p>\n
The Board owes the public straight answers on two more fronts.<\/p>\n
State advocacy<\/p>\n
Tallahassee\u2019s decisions on funding, charter expansion and local control land directly on this district. The next superintendent must fight those battles publicly. A leader who benefited from that pressure elsewhere has no credibility here.<\/p>\n
Measuring success<\/p>\n
Budgets and test scores aren\u2019t the whole story, no matter how the district\u2019s challenges look from a boardroom. Public trust and real community partnership matter just as much, and a candidate measured by how fast they could privatize a public system shouldn\u2019t be trusted here.<\/p>\n
These are not political questions. They are questions of loyalty to the students who depend on this district to stay public and staying theirs.<\/p>\n
Great superintendents do not manage decline. They inspire educators, build real partnerships with families and fight for students when it costs them something.<\/p>\n
That is the standard Miami-Dade must demand, not the standard outside interests have already tried to write for it. The Board should choose a superintendent who genuinely believes in public education, not one who has spent a career shrinking or replacing it, and who will keep Miami- Dade\u2019s public schools strong for years to come. Anything less is a betrayal of this community\u2019s trust, and that trust is not the Board\u2019s to spend alone.<\/p>\n
Every parent or family with a child in a Miami-Dade public school should make their voice heard before this choice is made, not after.<\/p>\n
Crystal Etienne is president of EDUVOTER Action Network and a Miami-Dade public school teacher, though she is not currently in the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Miami-Dade County School Board is\u00a0choosing a new superintendent. Daniel A. Varela dvarela@miamiherald.com Its Public Schools The Miami-Dade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336850,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-336849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336849","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=336849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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