School Board’s rush to pick new superintendent deliberately shuts out the public’s voice | Opinion

While football fans bemoan the lack of a Miami Dolphins ground game, the Miami-Dade School Board displayed their rushing attack on Wednesday at a special meeting where they determined the timeline for selecting the next superintendent.

You might think picking the leader of a 335,000-student district that is the largest employer in the county and has a budget of $7 billion would take some time and careful deliberation. Maybe install an interim leader and conduct an extensive search and screening process? Take a year? A semester? A quarter? No, no, no and no.

Apparently, since Superintendent Alberto Carvalho is scheduled to leave on Feb. 3, less than a month away, everything must be signed, sealed and delivered by then. Why? Because the School Board has “been preparing” for this shock announcement, and we are at too “critical a time” to wait. I find it hard to imagine a $7 billion corporation without — or in the Board’s case, ignoring — a succession plan and deciding to pick a new CEO in less than 30 days.

What would shareholders say? Wait, we, the public, are the shareholders, and there’s more than just our money at stake. Our children’s and our community’s future are at risk. We are the stakeholders and must use our influence to end this madness.

The madness escalated as Wednesday’s meeting went on. Given the short window until Carvalho’s departure, Board Vice Chair Steven Gallon III proposed that all candidates’ resumes and letters of intent should be submitted to the Board attorney in the following seven days. That’s a week for every qualified and interested person meeting the minimum requirements to do their soul searching, talk to their families, possibly decide to move, make their biggest career decision, prepare, proof and get in all their paperwork.

Does that sound like a recipe for attracting the best and brightest?

We are still trying to find qualified teachers five months into the school year, but a seven-day search is good enough to find the next superintendent of the nation’s fourth-largest school district? The motion passed with only Board member Marta Perez dissenting. When Board member Christi Fraga questioned her affirmative vote and asked to reconsider the motion with an expanded time frame, Gallon responded, “We don’t have the luxury of exhausting the process. I am not for a change to 14 days.” As if taking an extra week to find the person that could be responsible for our children’s education for the next decade was exhaustive and akin to fiddling while Rome burned. The motion to reconsider failed 3-6.

But don’t worry, the Board does want to hear from us. They had public comments at the beginning of this special meeting. Representatives from the teacher’s union, the NAACP and several community organizations spoke. They asked for transparency, community involvement, youth involvement, parent involvement, staff involvement and teacher involvement. They voiced their concern about curriculum, procurement, hiring and equity. When Board member Luisa Santos questioned if it would be possible to find the person “that our community has asked of us” in such a short period of time, Gallon was quick and sharp. He said, “The community is not involved in naming a person. The community is involved in establishing certain criteria for input.”

Since “the Board has already decided” that criteria, he thought its website for community comments could be used for validation.

Here is some input from one stakeholder who’s a teacher: Get input, not validation. The world will not stop spinning on its axis on Feb. 3. Our educational system did not survive 22 months of a pandemic to pick its next leader in less than one!

Russ Rywell is a teacher in Miami-Dade County Public Schools and former School Board candidate for District 3.