Way too much attention these days is heaped upon paying teachers. Look deeply into the Miami-Dade County Public Schools budget and you'll see that a potentially more disastrous problem lies in the condition of the buildings where our kids study.
Later today, on our website and in this week's print edition, I'll publish a column on North Dade Middle School and the Center for Modern Languages. Schools superintendent Alberto Carvalho abruptly shuttered most of the campus just north of Opa-locka where they were located earlier this month.
The reason: Huge concrete walkways could have collapsed.
But documents the school board handed over in response to a public
records request show corrections should have been made years ago --
a report done in 2006 pointed them out.
Carvalho, who was appointed in 2008, blames the administration of his
predecessor, Rudy Crew. Director of facilities Jaime Torrens points
out that more than $2 billion in work is needed across the county --
and that increasingly tax money has been directed toward operating
expenses rather than repair and new construction.
Click here to view the the documents.
