Why are 15,000 Miami teachers getting $100 gift cards? They beat a pandemic deadline
After nearly a year of waiting, Miami-Dade County Public School teachers are finally receiving their promised $100 gift card for setting up their online classes before the first day of school on K12’s glitchy online learning platform.
Teachers who met the deadline should have received an email from Giftogram this month containing their “token of appreciation” from the school district, United Teachers of Dade said in a newsletter to its members. Teachers can select one vendor for the entire $100 gift card or select multiple cards for a total of $100.
Gift cards began arriving into inboxes on Aug. 9, nearly two months after the Office of the Inspector General of Miami-Dade County Public Schools concluded its investigation into the $1.57 million donation solicited by Miami-Dade School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho from for-profit company K12.
School district investigators found “no actual violations” though they did say there was an appearance of impropriety and recommended that the donation be returned to K12, now known as Stride, Inc.
Last month, the board of the Foundation for New Education Initiatives, the district-run nonprofit founded by Carvalho, which received the K12 donation, unanimously voted in July to keep the money and give it to teachers. Carvalho, the foundation’s chair, abstained from voting.
K12 donated the money, $1.57 million, for the gift cards last year to the foundation while its contract was still pending. The Miami-Dade school district used My School Online, the online learning platform powered by K12, at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year but quickly scrapped the system within the first two weeks of virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic due to an array of technical issues, best symbolized by the infamous Banana Dog error page.
The school district has about 19,200 teachers and 15,761 of them met the deadline needed to get the $100, as the Miami Herald has previously reported. But even with the donation, the foundation was still $6,100 short of being able to pay all 15,761 eligible teachers. A board member agreed to donate that sum to make up the difference.
Miami Herald staff writer David Goodhue contributed to this report.
