Tea & Scoop: Community Members feel County Mayor and Superientendent are Trying to Screw the Black Community

Miami Northwestern and Miami Edison Senior High Schools Could be Affected by the Proposed Charter School in New Liberty Square

Warning: Adult Language

Blogged by Janey Tate (hylonews@gmail.com)

Yesterday I was strolling through Facebook as usual and I came across the post below and I knew I wanted to share it with my readers. According to some community members, they feel the Miami-Dade Mayor and the Miami-Dade Public Schools Superintendent are up to no good. I’ll definitely look more into this and update you all on what I learn. In the meantime, get into the post. ICARE member (ICARE is an acronym for Inner-City Alumni for Responsible Education) and former Miami Central Senior High Alumni President, William “DC” Clark, posted this strong open letter– straight with no chaser.

Are Mayor Carlos Gimenez and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho fighting to see who can fuck the Black community the most?

Do you remember all the planning, preparation and anticipation you went through on Sunday in order to get ready for the Super Bowl? Well you better muster up the same kind of energy for this fight we have that is being played out right before our very eyes. From the looks of things we are being gashed with no vasoline.

Fact: The new Liberty Square $250 million development project is destined to have a new Charter School placed right smack in the middle of it. It will be a K-12 school that will negatively affect the enrollment of Northwestern and Edison and their surrounding feeder patterns which includes Holmes, MLK, Allapattah and others. What will happen to those schools would be worse than what happened to Central once Turner Tech was placed literally in our backyard.
It will also be the first leg of gentrification.

But wait, it gets worse. There is speculation that Superintendent Alberto Carvalho and the District was in on this plan all along. From the looks of things, they partnered up with the University of Miami to form a team by the name of Miami Waymark 2.0. That team was the third highest bidder and was recently eliminated from the process. Related Urban Development Group and Atlantic Pacific Communities are the two groups remaining in the Bidding process. Carvalho said his team signed his name to this bidding process and he had limited knowledge of it. Of course many people that I talked to think this is total bullshit.

The Miami Herald recently reported that after Miami Waymark 2.0 was eliminated, the Superintendent paid Miami Dade Mayor Carlos Giminez a call and wrote him a letter which he, the Mayor, reported to the Ethics committee. A Cone of Silence was put into place so that participants of the bidding process could not openly discuss the bid. This is particularly troubling because it appears that District personnel reached out to ICARE to condemn the Charter school only after they were eliminated. If this is true, then they have some explaining to do.

Bottom line is it appears a K thru 12 Charter school will be placed right in the middle of the new Liberty Square development. It will have a negative affect on many of our schools that have been long standing institutions in our community. Many of those schools will face closing. This without any input from the community. Before ICARE renders it’s final conclusion on this matter, we are demanding a copy of the letter sent to the Mayor by the Superintendent and we are also seeking the letter detailing the District’s involvement in the bidding process. Both are public record and we expect to have them soon. In the meantime, weve got to get off our asses and let our voices be heard. Stay Tune

Woah!!! Well we’ll keep you guys informed on what becomes of this issue. I’d like to know what you think so far, especially if you live in the Liberty City area and attended one of the schools listed above. Do you agree or disagree with what was said?