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Yeah, look, the only choice here so far, from this list anyway, is Ms. Blanco. 
She’s the only educator in the group (unless you count the as yet unnamed charter school administrator), teaching 2nd and 3rd grade but also teaches ESE classes for special needs kids. A voice like that will be sorely needed on the board when Member Raquel Regalado — who first ran, in part, to ensure that education applied equally, including to children like her autistic daughter — flies off to be the mayor of the city of Miami or (please, please, please) the county.
Unlike Bell and Danny Boy, Blanco was elected by a great number of people — by 10,621 voters, to be exact — when she won a community council seat in District 11 with 68% of the vote over an incumbent in 2012. She did it with $5,000 and no major donors, lobbyists or otherwise, in plain sight. So she seems to have no baggage and owes no political favors.
Oh yeah, and Blanco lives in the district with her husband, a Miami-Dade firefighter, and their two children — an 11-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl — who go to public school. Blanco herself is a graduate of Braddock High, class of ’97.
As a member of the teaching leadership, she has experience in administration also, but she would bring a classroom perspective to the school board.
“I’m on the front line between the teachers, the administrators, the parents and the students,” Blanco told Ladra. “And I can close that gap.”
How is this not heads and shoulders above the rest of the shortlist? Oh, right… that not owing political favors thing? Right?
Maybe Scott just needs to remember her. They met her during a photo op 
after her boy won a scholarship for having the best essay statewide on Hispanic Heritage. Maybe it doesn’t matter because this was during Jennifer Carroll‘s time as LG (before she resigned under pressure when her client was accused of illegal gaming), not Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who is said to favor Danny Boy or the charter school ghost.
But precisely because C-Lo is our local channel to the Guv, we should appeal to him to help Scott make the right decision — which is Blanco. All things considered, from this list, right now.
In fact, residents of the School Board’s District 7, where Ladra lives too, ought to email both Lopez-Cantera and the governor and tell them that we won’t accept carpet baggers who want a GOP consolation prize. We want a real educator who lives in the district.
Scott is not expected to take long to name his choice. Since Curbelo is sticking around through the last meeting in December, he may wait until right around the holidays so as to catch everybody unawares.
The real shame here is that there really ought to be a special election to fill a vacancy that is going to exist for almost three quarters of the term and that the only reason the School Board won’t do it is because it costs millions of dollars (remember the Dolphins were willing to pay for their own). They will piggy back on other county elections, but there isn’t one of those ’til 2016. And then the seat would be open again in 2017, so how does that make sense?
Is there a PAC for that?
Why don’t the attorneys that raised millions for the courthouse tax PAC and the builders and philanthropists who raised millions for the FIU expansion PAC and the better schools tax PAC and the better Jackson Hospital tax PAC and all the other candidate PACs that they contribute to — why don’t these same people raise the funds for an election that serves the people and the children of our community through nothing more basic than public education?
Or what if we had someone in the community — oh, maybe a meddling auto mogul, or, perhaps a collaboration among the Marlins, the Heat and the Dolphins — pay for it. Or better yet, a media effort with the major TV stations and newspaper.
Imagine the publicity: “This slice of democracy brought to you by X, Y and the letter Z.”
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Hopefuls jostle for Carlos Curbelo’s school board seat added by Ladra on
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