Miami-Dade Public Schools’ wildly popular Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said on Thursday, in a very dramatic fashion, that he turned down a job leading New York City’s public school system to stay with the district where he began his career as a physics teacher at Jackson High.
Wide speculation Wednesday that Carvalho was taking the School Chancellor position offered by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio prompted a special emergency meeting Thursday of the School Board to discuss  “the stability of the executive management leadership.” After pleas from board members, students, teachers, parents and people from the community, Carvalho took a short break, purportedly, to think about it.
When he came back, he announced that “the decision that I have made about that position is, however, a decision I can no longer sustain.” Yeah, that’s how he talks.
“I am breaking an agreement between adults to honor an agreement and a pact I have with the children of Miami. I just don’t know how to break a promise to a child, how to break a promise to a community,” Carvalho said, adding that the decision weighed heavily on him “over the last 24 hours like nothing has weighed on me before.”
Related: Alberto Carvalho to leave Miami-Dade Schools for NYC — at the worst time
Um, 24 hours? He’s purportedly known about this for days, weeks even. He was gonna break the “promise” yesterday. The announcement had been reportedly delayed because of the Parkland shooting and the resulting political fallout. So he decided right there? On the spot? Were the hugs that convincing?
Here’s another scenario:
Carvalho — who is known for his fiery speeches, staunch defense of immigrants and public dollars for public schools and opposition to guns in the classroom — has been under fire in recent months, mostly for the management of the $1.2 billion general obligation bond that voters passed to modernize schools and bring in new technology. He’s got Board Member Steve Gallon beating him up on the regular and enlisting cohorts, principally Maria Teresa Rojas, to question and dog him. The board recently asked for an outside audit of GOB monies spent so far and Gallon — who notably skipped the emergency love fest meeting — has questioned whether the bond program has included a sufficient representation of minority contractors.
So, Carvalho pretends to take the New York job offer more seriously. He never really wanted it. Think about it. Even though the New York Times reported that de Blasio promised to match his $352,874-a-year salary (the current chancellor makes $234,569) the job was still a bear. New York City has a $30 billion budget and 1.1 million students, compared to Miami-Dade’s $4.3 billion budget and 365,000 students. It’s daunting, even for a superstar like Carvalho. Which, by the way, he wouldn’t be in NYC. The 2014 national Superintendent of the Year is a big fish in a small pond here but there? He’d be, like, a guppy. Fishbait. De Blasio would not let him just have press conferences on his own agenda whenever he wanted.
Frankly, he’d be de Blasio’s bitch. And Ladra doesn’t think Carvalho relished that thought.
He also wouldn’t have an entire squad of media professionals dedicated entirely to positioning him and creating that darling image of the man so many love. He wouldn’t have his dream team of administrators who actually do all the work — he is a man of vision — behind him. As chancellor, Carvalho would be executing someone else’s vision, with people he doesn’t know or trust. And he would not be able to just flash that smile and talk his way out of anything in New York. Fuggedaboudit.
In this scenario, Carvalho turned the job down almost instantly — only he didn’t tell anyone. He let everybody believe that he had one foot out the door. He went to New York City to meet with de Blasio twice. He met with other city leaders. You know, just to make it stick. Plus Manhattan is an awesome place to spend a few days. Which means he also fooled de Blasio. And that’s the gist you get from the NYC mayor’s press conference Thursday afternoon, where he said he was “very surprised” by the news.
Related: Alberto Carvalho drops mayoral hopes for UM dreams
De Blasio told reporters that Carvalho had taken the job and then “changed his mind,” quoted the Village Voice. We know that he spoke to the Sup during that half hour or so break because the visibly pissed off de Blasio said Carvalho called him with “second thoughts.” But, again, Carvalho is someone who likes theatrics. To pull it off, he would have had to fool de Blasio and his people, too. He may have planned it like this all along. And just look at the number of impressions he’s gotten: It’s been in all the major networks. Not just Channel 7 locally, but CNN and Fox News and every single media outlet in New York has been on it all day (not favorably).
Even his Wikipedia page was already edited to include today’s news. Like his team was ready to do it.
In this scenario, dangling this job before the community and the School Board was a trick, a ruse to get his nine bosses to (1) change the narrative and bring back the love fest (2) offer him a 3-5 year extension on his contract, which expires in 2020.
Ladra doesn’t think they’ll offer him a raise. Carvalho already makes more than any Superintendent in the world. And it won’t be “politically correct” while teacher pay is still an issue. But look for an item at the next school board meeting or two where he gets an extension on his contract and maybe something else. Like more staff to make him look good.
Or was it all a ruse to raise his profile another notch for a mayoral run in 2020 or a bid for Congress, after all?
One thing is for sure: He’s not gonna tell us right away.

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Most of us have been preoccupied — perhaps obsessed is a better word — with the presidential or the Miami-Dade mayoral election. But there were a lot of other races that culminated with Tuesday’s vote. Here are some highlights:

Sen. Marco Rubio beat Congressman Patrick Murphy back to gain another six years in office. He has said he will serve all six years. And that is probably true — especially now that Donald Trump won the presidency. If he likes it and wants to stay, the Republican Party will have to back The Donald in 2020. So this means we will have to wait until 2024 to have our first Hispanic president. Good thing Marquito is a young man.

Rubio’s onetime BFF, former Congressman David Rivera lost his bid to go back to the State House — by 45 votes. Isn’t that close enough for a mandatory recount? His 49% showing is much better than he fared in his bid to get back into Congress in 2012, where he lost the primary with just 8 percent in a five-man field (even Joe Martinez beat him). But still, we have a new face in Tallahassee: Robert Asencio, a former Miami-Dade Schools Police lieutenant won one of two House seats that turned blue. Rivera had waged a negative campaign, calling Asencio a child abuser based on a 2003 complaint from the mother of a student who was physically pulled off a bus for acting inappropriately. The investigation was closed without any findings.

Read related story: ‘Child abuser’ allegations in House 118 race ring hollow

But 118 is the second of two local House seats that turned blue Tuesday after Democrat Daisy Baez eeked out a victory over Republican John Couriel to replace termed-out State Rep. Erik Fresen (who is rumored to be after J-Rod’s new Senate seat). Both of them had run previous campaigns and had the benefit of having some name recognition, despite never holding office. But Baez got just under 51% and a lead of 1,301 votes.

Former Congressman Joe Garcia lost his own bid to get his own seat back, but not as closely. There’s a glaringly wide 11-point gap between U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo‘s 52% and Garcia’s 41% performance. Ladra suspects that when the numbers are crunched, we’ll find a bunch of Democrats who voted for Curbelo because of his liberal ways marriage equality and sea level rise and his early rejection of Donald Trump. And I bet Garcia is rethinking those ads that compared Curbelo to Trump, who is the apparent winner of the big POTUS prize. Anyway, that giant gap in the year that Curbelo would be allegedly vulnerable — because that’s it, folks, he is welded into that seat now like IRL — should certainly encourage Garcia to stay in the private sector. Ladra said it long ago. The only person that could have beat Curbelo was Ana Rivas Logan. Too bad she decided to run for state senate. Now we’re stuck with him.

Senator Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, a former Miami-Dade Commissioner and flagship of a political dynasty, lost a heated battle with State Rep. (now Sen.) Jose Javier Rodriguez, 46 to 49% — and turned the longheld Republican seat (brother Alex Diaz de la Portilla sat there for a decade before DLP took over in 2010) blue. The senior DLP outspent J-Rod more than 2 to 1, which almost proves that it is worth more to knock on 150,000 doors than it is to buy slick commercials that tries in vain to cast a liberal onetime legal aid attorney as beholden to special interests. It’s too bad. Miguel DLP was my favorite senator and, while J-Rod will likely be stymied, the incumbent actually did some good as a senior member of the majority party and may have better represented the district. Oh well. Maybe DLP will run for Coral Gables mayor next year.

Ending another political dynasty in the other really heated and mostly negative state senate race — and flipping the seat the other way — State Rep. Frank Artiles will move to the other chamber after he beat incumbent Sen. Dwight Bullard, 51% to 41%. Guess all that business about Bullard being a terrorist worked. It’s scary to think we may see a resurgence of Artiles’ ugly bathroom legislation targeting transgenders. But does this mean he can move back into his Palmetto Bay house? He was forced to move out after Ladra caught him living outside his state House district in 2010.

There will be two runoffs for the mayor’s seat in Doral and in Miami Lakes, where none of the candidates were able to garner 50% of the vote.

Read related story: It ain’t over in Doral, Miami Lakes with mayoral runoffs

There was a big upset in the Miami-Dade School Board race where Steve Gallon III beat incumbent Wilbert “Tee” Holloway III with a resounding 61%. Gallon got a lot of the community support in a district — which includes Miami Gardens, Carol City and North Miami — where Holloway was cast as an empty suit. And it earned him a 22-point lead Tuesday. The other school board seat went to Gimenez in-law Maria Teresa Rojas, as expected. Not just because she is a longtime teacher and school administrator but also because the voters in that district probably reacted vehemently to a negative campaign in which her challenger was cast as a Fidel Castro sympathizer. Look soon for an announcement of Political Cortadito’s expansion into school board coverage.

We can also smoke pot to relieve certain debilitating conditions and chill out about having our own solar energy one day as voters approved the medical marijuana constitutional amendment but rejected the amendment on solar energy choice that would have basically limited our choices and allowed Big Energy to control everything. Voters were not fooled by that one — except in Miami-Dade where we actually had a majority vote yes on this wolf in sheep’s clothing (56 to 44%). Shaking my head.

There were also a bunch of questions in municipalities from Homestead to Sunny Isles Beach and we will get to those individually if they warrant it in the next few days. Some notable examples: Voters in Palmetto Bay rejected a proposal to annex a part of West Perrine. In South Miami, they gave the green light for the building of a new City Hall. And, in North Miami Beach, voters approved a slew of charter changes, including term limits and one that makes it easier for the council to fire the city manager. Please feel free to make suggestions/ask questions.

In fact, Ladra has a feeling we will be writing and reading about the results of this ballot for weeks to come.