No threat will stop Miami-Dade Schools from doing the ‘right thing,’ Carvalho says
Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho during his annual back-to-school address on Friday said that threats made by the state to stop schools from mandating masks will not stop the district from “doing the right thing.”
The district is expected to make a decision on whether it will require masks or not next week after its task force of medical and public health experts convenes.
“I will never leave this job but there’s no guarantee that this job will not leave me ... no matter what steps we take, there will be condemnation, accusation, demands, threats of consequences for nothing more than attempting to do the right thing,” Carvalho said. “And that’s what we will do. The right thing, not the popular thing.”
He added: “There is no threat, at least to me, to my paycheck, to my salary, that will force me to abdicate from doing the right thing. Our students’ lives, the lives of our teachers, your lives, are too important.”
State officials earlier this week threatened to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members of public school districts that make a mask mandate with no opt-out option. The governor’s office is now saying the state has no direct control over administrators’ pay.
Miami-Dade Schools will decide next week if it plans to follow Broward’s lead in making masks mandatory, despite the new state rules. What’s clear right now is that this won’t be the start of a normal school year.
Even Carvalho’s address, which was originally set to be held at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Miami, was relocated to the recently renovated auditorium of Miami Senior High due to COVID-19 concerns as the delta variant fuels the rise of new cases in the state.
“The challenges we all faced will mark us deeply and shape our community for many years to come,” said Sandra West, the president of Miami-Dade County Council PTA/PTSA. “It is our job, our duty to give our students the education they need, the education they want and the education they deserve.”
Carvalho on Friday largely spoke about how the district’s students and staff, its “heroes,” found ways to be successful, with a 93.1% graduation rate, and for the first time, having no schools rated “F” or “D,” despite a challenging year full of quarantine and personal struggles.
He encouraged people to get vaccinated and found ways to mention successful alumni including Westland Hialeah High School graduate Ariel Torres, who won a bronze medal in karate during the Tokyo Olympics, and Vivek Murthy, who attended Miami Palmetto Senior High and is serving as U.S. Surgeon General again.
The pandemic usurped everyone’s plans, but it also showed that there are “heroes among us,” Carvalho said.
There are educators like the 2022 Teacher of the Year Teresa Murphy, a Spanish Lakes Elementary teacher who was diagnosed with breast cancer before the start of school last year and used Zoom backgrounds and Snapchat filters to hide her treatments. Kevin Lawrence, principal of Booker T. Washington High School, learned one of the school’s star seniors was working full time at McDonald’s to help support her four siblings. Her family was homeless and she felt like college would be impossible. School officials helped her get a scholarship to Florida International University.
There are students like a group from Miami Jackson Senior High who launched a petition to help save the Allapattah library. Students like 17-year-old Steven Ferreiro of Miami Arts Studio 6-12 at Zelda Glazer, who replaced the flowers at the Surfside memorial and worked with companies to help get food to first responders while they tirelessly searched through the rubble of the collapsed condo.
And staff members, like John A. Ferguson Senior High School Cafeteria Manager Rosalia Navarrete, who helped served more than 30 million meals to students in schools and through weekly curbside food drives, and workers like Alonzo Henley, a custodian at Brownsville Middle School, who helped keep schools cleaned, during a time when it was most critical.
“As we truly embark on the 2021-2022 school year, let us recognize collectively that this is in fact a new day,” Carvalho said. “And that what you do is what legends are made of.”
When Miami-Dade students return to school for in-person learning on Aug. 23, many walking into a classroom for the first time in 18 months, there will still be COVID-19 protocols in place.
Some of the rules will be familiar to those who attended in-person school last year like socially distanced eating inside the cafeteria or eating inside classrooms or an outdoor patio. Other protocols are expected to be more relaxed. One big change: Entire classrooms will no longer have to quarantine if someone tests positive for the disease.
This article was updated to clarify a quote Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said.
This story was originally published August 13, 2021 at 4:09 PM.
