A year and a half ago the state legislature reacted to the school board’s tendency to overpay for land and construction by imposing a state oversight board on Miami-Dade’s school district.   

So this is it – a showdown – between the Miami-Dade school district and a state-imposed oversight board.  At issue: $22 million in capital improvement funds meant to be used for 12 schools across the county.  The school board wants it.  The oversight board won’t let them have it.  The school board is afraid billions of dollars in matching funds will disappear if they don’t get it.  The oversight board doesn’t think this is likely.  Etc., etc., etc.

There is a simple solution to this mess. The school board gives the oversight board what it wants: information. 

Actually, the oversight board exists to obtain information.  A year and a half ago the state legislature reacted to the school board’s tendency to overpay for land and construction by imposing a state oversight board on Miami-Dade’s school district.  On the surface things may have improved since that time: the longtime “yes man” of the school board, for instance, has been replaced by accomplished local civil servant Merrett Stierheim. But the mission hasn’t changed: the oversight board has to know how the school board intends to spend the $22 million.  Failing that, they need to provide documentation as to why $1 billion in “matching funds” is in jeopardy when, as oversight chair Edward Easton put it, “over $400 million… in cash or cash equivalents [is] easily accessible and subject to designation changes that are made by the district whenever it deems necessary.”

Surfside Mayor Paul Novack, who is also a member of the oversight board, said the special committee is tired of millions of dollars being spent merely on studies and consultants.  “They get into this never-ending process of plans and studies and studies to make plans and plans to make studies,” he said.  Case in point: Miami Beach Senior High.  There have been 13 plans on the high school – and yet barely any work has been done, Novack pointed out. 

Yet, even with all the studies, public schools are still being built with structural flaws. Schools constructed in the past ten years, some as recently as 2001, don’t seem to have the ability to resist rain. They “have serious water intrusion” problems, according to Miami-Dade Schools Maintenance Operations.

Perhaps things have changed.  Perhaps the school board has evolved in its ability to properly build schools and buy land.  And maybe all those studies Novack and other oversight board members have complained about are necessary for more than just the benefit of consultants and architects.

Just give the oversight board, and the public, the darn information, school board.  There isn’t any reason to drag this out any longer.