Miami-Dade Public Schools asking voters to renew funding for teacher pay and school safety

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – With less than a week until the Midterm Elections, Miami-Dade school officials want to make sure voters don’t miss an important item on the ballot.

The school district is asking voters to renew funding for teacher pay and school safety.

The referendum renewal would help raise the average teacher salary and keep police officers in every school.

“We have to have well-educated students and we have to have safe schools,” said Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Jose Dotres. “It’s important that we have the same because that individual becomes very intimate with students, familiar with the students, familiar with the community.”

He’s talking about school resource officers, who in case of an emergency know the layout of a school campus, which the superintendent says would create a faster response time.

Voting yes does means a slight increase from the last referendum, so for the typical homeowner in Miami-Dade County that’s about six extra dollars a month in property taxes.

“Now the law requires us to include Charter Schools which are also considered public schools,” Dotres said.

That means 80,000 additional students are now being included, so the increase, they say, is trying to make up the gap.

In the recent primary, voters in Broward County approved a similar referendum by almost 60 percent.

Meanwhile in Miami-Dade, the superintendent says they’re trying to remain competitive with Broward and Palm Beach when it comes to salaries for police officers and teachers.

“We are not funded sufficiently to be able to compete at the level that we need to compete in order to retain the talent that our children in this community deserve,” Dotres said.

It has been recently reported that the Miami-Dade County Republican Party is telling voters to vote no on the referendum.

Given record high inflation and a housing crisis, Local 10 News asked the superintendent how he convinces voters to support this.

“We are a school district that adds a lot of value to this community,” he said.

Dotres reminded that this is an A-rated school district with a 90.1 percent graduation rate, the highest it has ever been.

The superintendent argued a community needs good public schools because they improve home values and attract businesses.

“When you have strong public schools, even crime rate declines,” Dotres said.

The school district is hosting a town hall to discuss these issues and more. It is being hosted by Local 10′s Hatzel Vela. More information on the meeting can be found in the tweet below: