I am really enjoying this challenge to blog a post once a day. I didn’t know I had so much I wanted to share with the world. It’s very therapeutic.
Last night, I couldn’t take reading The Miami Herald online articles anymore. Its one sided reporting on the issues regarding Miami Dade County Public Schools, its school board and its Superintendent Alberto Carvalho were sickening.
The people who were reading these articles probably believed all of these untruths. There was no way that I could reach them with the truth as fast as the newspaper. It was like yelling into an empty room. Very frustrating.
I know I have better things to do with my time than focus on a system that is too corrupt to know the difference between right and wrong. But I do it because I can’t help not to do it. I can’t watch something wrong happen and stay quiet.
But I am thinking that if I share what I know with all of you, I might feel better. Maybe one day someone will stumble upon my blog and say, “Hey! Look! Someone was speaking the truth!”
So here goes.
The Miami Herald receives an average of more than $10,000 per month from Miami Dade County Public Schools. This is public knowledge but no one knows it’s available. Who will inform the public if the media is the one being bought?
When asked by the school board about these large sums of money going to The Miami Herald, the answer is that it is for educational purposes. I read The Miami Herald to find these educational purposes but I don’t find any. Isn’t the newspaper’s job to report the news without getting paid by the people who they are reporting on? Why are they getting paid to report the news? Does a criminal pay The Miami Herald to write about his crime? NO!
As a matter of fact, why do we rarely see any investigative reporting showing some wrong doing by the school system? It’s out there! A group of us continuously contact The Miami Herald and local news stations but nothing happens.
A supporter of Carvalho who shall be nameless until I can get confirmation from her to use her name, claims that the money given to the newspaper is for advertising. According to her, The Miami Herald and Miami Dade County Public Schools have a joint department where MDCPS pay the reporters to write about MDCPS. Now this makes perfect sense. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has bought The Miami Herald for an average of $16,000 per month.
Is this ethical? Has The Miami Herald lost all of its journalistic ethics to report the untruths of Miami Dade County Public Schools? No one questions this at all? Strange.
So now, there’s much hype about the bond referendum. Yet, The Miami Herald and local news stations won’t discuss the hot buttons. Why don’t teachers support a bond that supposedly will help the schools? Why are questionable methods being used to inform voters about the bond? How will the technology be used if the bond passes?
For example, school libraries are being closed to check out books because they are being turned into virtual classroom labs. One of the courses offered online is physical education. Your child will learn PE from a computer. Can you imagine how healthy your child will be by the end of the grading period? Your child’s fingers will be extra strong from the keyboard workouts.
How much do they care about our students when they take away books and PE in order to place them in front of a computer screen? Shouldn’t they be reading and actually participating in athletic activities? Don’t they do enough sitting in front of a computer at home? Where is the local media on this topic?
You won’t find them because our school district pays them really well to only print how wonderful of a messiah our superintendent is for our city.
Ceresta Smith, a veteran teacher in Miami, is against the bond and she cites many valid reasons on my FB page. I will put what she said here.
Ceresta Smith Can we trust them to deliver?
No – The school board has wasted lots of capital improvement money previously given by the state and have not accounted for money spent under the 1988 bond set to expire in 2017. Money for school improvement can be obtained by a wise use of already available funds.
No – Allowing more funds to come into a system with no real checks and balances for accountability is a waste of resources at a time when taxpayers are hurting.
No – Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has not been forthcoming; the Bond Referendum includes setting up a computerized data base that will include names, addresses, attendance records, student test scores, grades, special education status /Individual Education Plans (IEPs), and disciplinary records that will be available to for profit entities. Without prior consent of parents or teachers, our children’s data and teachers’ information used for evaluations will be exploited for private profit with no consideration of the risk to student or teacher privacy, and many brick and mortar students will face an increasing number of core subjects and or electives taught online with non-certified personnel monitoring classes.
No – They have secured livable wages for administrators while exploiting an inequitable pay grade system and job retention system that in six years netted one salary increase that unfairly impacted some educators and support staff salaries and sent many others into home foreclosure, bankruptcy, and social services offices.
Vote 223 – No!
This post goes back and forth between the bond and the school district’s use of The Miami Herald. The one thing they both have in common is that they are not being used for their rightful purpose.
If you haven’t voted yet, vote #223 and don’t allow a future financial fiasco to repeat itself again in Miami.