5 reasons to vote Sevi Miyar for Miami-Dade School Board

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It’s been difficult to jump on the Miami-Dade School Board races because it’s a territory that Ladra doesn’t walk often, and we’ve been busy with a congressional and county races as well as a recall and funky county budget.

There is likely good reason to replace both incumbents who were challenged. But Ladra thinks its a little bit more clear in one case than in the other. And I can name five good reasons to vote for schoolteacher Duysevi Miyar Tuesday.

Reason Number 1: To unseat Empress Perla Tabares Hantman, the board chair for the past four and a member there some 18 years, that’s five terms señores y señoras, which seems like it ought to be enough. Whatever we were going to get from Tabares, we got it already. Or, in other words, if you ain’t done what you came to do, move over and let someone else try. She has now become a professional school board member whose job is to keep her job rather than take any risks or do anything out of the box to benefit the students and teachers and parents under her purview. There really ought to be term limits at the school board. And Miyar said she would advocate to bring that kind of reform to the body.

Reason number 2: Vote out the special interests. With any 18-year incumbency comes relationships and connections (read: ties to special interests) that become more important than others. Tabares, as the incumbent, has a campaign war chest of more than $140,000. She’s done that by getting contributions, including bundles from the construction industry firms, lobbyists and charter school interests. Demetrio Perez, Jr., a former School Board member who runs Lincoln-Marti Charter Schools — which gets millions in taxpayer dollars to run charter schools — gave her at least $7,000 bundled in different donations of $500. The Munilla family of MCM Construction bundled at lest $3,750. Can anyone tell me why the owner of All American Amusements, a tragamoneda or maquinita distributor in Miami Lakes, would donate $2,000 to a school board candidate? Also in the contributions list: Former State Rep. Ralph Arza and Ana Carbonell, a former Lincoln Diaz-Balart staffter turned consultant who lost former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina‘s post-recall county mayoral bid in 2011.

Reason number 3: Vote out corruption. Tabares is in el grupito de los Hialeah hoodlums. Among those that support her: Former Hialeah Mayor Julio Robaina, who was acquitted of tax evasion but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a loanshark, gave her $1,000. Replacing Tabares would be one step in the right direction and indicate to others that these are not politicians for life who designate their own successors.

Reason number 4: But of course Robaina and Arza and the maquinita people support her. Tabares hired Absentee Ballot Queen Sasha Tirador, Robaina’s campaign guru, to guarantee 99 percent of those Hialeah Housing ABs that Sasha is so good at collecting. What else do you think she pays $12,500 in consulting fees for? Oh, that and the $8,000 in “grassroots” efforts. Nothing grassroots about having a professional fundraiser like Brian Goldmeier, who made his claim to fundraising fame with Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez’s first election, which only goes to show that he’ll work for anybody.

Reason number 5: Miyar is a schoolteacher who just wants a chance to represent students and teachers and parents at the school board. And, more importantly, she has the courage to be independent. Miyar has dared to run against an entrenched incumbent even though she has been discouraged at every turn. Her own union endorsed Tabares. Her own PTA, of which she has been a member for years, asked her to resign. She refused. Her own administrators tried to talk her out of it. She stayed strong.

Miyar’s campaign is a totally grassroots campaign on a shoestring budget. She loaned herself $15,000 out of the $17,000 she’s collected in contributions. So it’s been an uphill battle.

Sure, Miyar is an underdog. But she’s the right underdog. So what if she’s not an experienced politician? Maybe that’s what we need. The school board has an experienced staff and the nation’s best superintendent, allegedly, to run it. The policy makers should not be there for decades.

Ladra is a mama dog with a pup in public schools. The system is in desperate need of fresh blood at the school board, which is filled with too many old fogies. Like Tabares, who uses an old picture of herself on her website to try to fool people who might not remember how long she’s been there.

Because even she knows it’s long enough.

  Duysevi Miyar, Miami-Dade School Board, Perla Tabares Hantman