Superintendent Alex Marrero said Wednesday that he remains “unapologetically committed” to his district’s students after failing to land the top job at in Florida.
Marrero was one of 21 applicants for Miami-Dade County’s superintendent position, but was not one of the six semifinalists identified Wednesday by Gabrielle Acosta, the Florida district’s community outreach specialist, in an email to The Denver Post.
Those semifinalists — Jose Bueno, Ernie Lozano, Sylvia Mitchell, Carlos Perez, Christopher Ruszkowski and Rafael Villalobos — are largely from Florida, with two currently working in Texas.
The that Marrero, one of the more high-profile applicants, did not appear to meet the Miami-Dade school board’s requirement that candidates have “public school classroom teaching experience or equivalent instructional experience.”
Marrero, in a statement addressing his “former candidacy” for the Florida job, touted DPS’s increasing graduation rates and improving academics under his leadership. He noted that the district welcomed immigrant students and their families, supported Black, Latino and LGBTQ communities, and “made equity inseparable from excellence.”
“I recognize that these values may not align with the increasingly conservative ideology shaping public education in certain parts of this nation,” Marrero said. “If that made me less attractive to Miami-Dade, I can live with that. … I will not retreat from equity because it has become politically inconvenient. I will not rewrite my leadership to fit a political moment.”
The Miami-Dade district is seeking a successor to current Superintendent José Dotres, whose contract ends in February. He was paid $370,000 when first hired.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools enrolls 385,000 students and is significantly larger than DPS, which had 89,210 students during the 2025-26 school year.
Last year, Marrero was considered a finalist to lead , but he withdrew after news reports revealed he was up for the job.
Following his bid for the Florida position, Marrero said DPS’s progress is real, worth celebrating — and not finished.
“I remain here. I remain focused,” he said. “And I remain unapologetically committed to the students of Denver.”
