Here are the three finalists vying to become Miami-Dade’s next school superintendent

After a tense, five-hour meeting, the Miami-Dade School Board Tuesday narrowed the pool of 16 superintendent candidates to just three: Jose Dotres, Rafaela Espinal and Jacob Oliva.

Assuming the board hires one of the three, one of them will replace Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, whose last day in the district is Feb. 3. He announced in December he was leaving Miami-Dade Public Schools after 14 years as superintendent to lead the Los Angeles Unified School District. Carvalho, 57, began his career as a physics teacher at Miami Jackson Senior High in 1990.

The top candidates come from different backgrounds and bring various experiences to the table. Here, then, are the board’s three finalists in alphabetical order.

Jose Dotres

If selected, Jose Dotres would be returning to Miami-Dade Public Schools, where he spent more than three decades. In Miami, he was a teacher and reading coach at Frederick Douglass and South Pointe elementary schools, an assistant principal at M.A. Milam K-8 Center and a principal at Hialeah Gardens Elementary. At the administrative level, he served as a regional superintendent, chief of staff and most recently, as head of human resources for the district.

Last February, Dotres left Miami to become the deputy superintendent of Collier County Public Schools in Naples on the state’s southwest coast. The Collier County School District serves 48,000 students in 31 elementary schools, 10 middle schools, eight high schools, 1 virtual school, and a PreK-12 school. By contrast, the Miami-Dade School District, the fourth largest in the nation, has a $7 billion budget, nearly 400 schools and 335,000 students.

His name has been floated by various board members as the top contender for the superintendent’s job. On Tuesday, Miami-Dade School Board Vice Chair Steve Gallon III went so far as to nominate him as the district’s next leader before withdrawing his proposal after receiving criticism from fellow board members who said they had already agreed on a process and interviewing the top candidates.

Rafaela Espinal

As the assistant superintendent in the Office of Talent Management and Innovation for the New York City Department of Education, a role she’s held since 2018, Rafaela Espinal is the only non-Florida resident the board is considering. She’s also the only female candidate.

Her career has spanned nearly three decades with the NYC education department, including serving as a regional superintendent in the South Bronx, per her résumé, where she oversaw 33 schools and about 15,600 students, according to the school district. She’s also served as a principal and bilingual classroom teacher.

In 2018, Espinal was removed from the superintendent’s position without explanation after “refusing to do the ‘Wakanda Forever’ salute,” a cross-arm salute featured in the film “Black Panther,” according to a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Feb. 3, 2021, as reported by the New York Post.

Jacob Oliva

A more than 20-year education veteran, Jacob Oliva sits as the senior chancellor of the Division of Public Schools for the Florida Department of Education, a department tasked with providing training for teachers and principals across the state. In his resume, he marked as one of his key accomplishments leading the team that eliminated Florida’s common core and implemented the new B.E.S.T. Standards for English language arts and mathematics.

Recently, he was involved in a bidding case involving the Florida Department of Education, brought to light by reporting from the Miami Herald and the Tampa Bay Times. Oliva and two others, including another member of Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran’s team, formed a company and submitted a competing bid for a multimillion-dollar state contract over Jefferson County School District, a district in northern Florida that has been under charter school control since 2017. The two state employees resigned under fire; Oliva stayed, saying he was not aware that his name was listed on the proposal.

Prior to joining the state’s education department, Oliva was the Flagler County School District superintendent in northeast Florida for four years. The district serves nearly 13,000 students and 2,500 teachers, according to the district. He’s also been a principal, assistant principal and teacher, according to his résumé.

He was born and raised in the Perrine and Richmond Heights area in South Miami-Dade and graduated from Miami-Dade Public Schools.

Miami Herald staff researcher Monika Leal contributed to this report.

This story was originally published January 19, 2022 at 6:00 AM.