Dr. Jose Dotres has been chosen as the next leader of Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
The school board selected Dotres, an assistant superintendent in Collier County, late Monday after an hours-long public meeting where Dotres and the other two finalists were interviewed.
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WATCH HEREDotres will succeed outgoing Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is leaving to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District. Dotres is a Miami Senior High School graduate and has been a teacher, a principal, a regional superintendent, and chief of staff to Carvalho.
"Dr. Dotres is a committed educator with more than 30 years of extensive experience in multiple leadership roles encompassing the school site, region, and district office levels at M-DCPS," the district said in a statement Monday night.
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Dotres began his educational career in 1988 as a teacher and reading coach at Frederick Douglass and South Pointe elementary schools. He was an assistant principal at M.A. Milan K-8 Center, the principal of Hialeah Gardens Elementary, and also had a brief 11-month stint at Broward County Public Schools as chief academic officer.
The school board gave potential new superintendents one week to apply for the job and received 16 applicants, which was whittled down to three finalists last week.
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The other finalists were Jacob Oliva, who works for the Florida Department of Education as the chancellor for the division of public schools, and Dr. Rafaela Espinal, an assistant superintendent in the New York City public school system.
Miami-Dade is the nation's fourth-largest school district, and teacher's union president Karla Hernandez-Mats said whoever is chosen should be ready top handle the diversity of the district.
"We are the most diverse district in the entire state, so there’s a lot of components that are very heavy in our community because Miami Gardens community is not the same as the Redlands community and there’s multiple nuances in between all of that, so it’s going to be a tough pick but I think they have very qualified candidates," Hernandez-Mats said.
Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated Dotres' time spent with Broward County Public Schools.
