School Board trailblazer known as ‘very soul of decency’ dies at 88 in Miami
Plenty of people live by the golden rule, abide by rules or break rules.
In Miami-Dade, Janet McAliley had a rule named for her: The McAliley Rule.
McAliley, who died suddenly on Sept. 23, at 88, of natural causes, her children said, proposed a rule in 1990 that the Miami-Dade School Board, for which she served as chairman, should keep its western boundary line for siting new schools. The board agreed not to build new public schools on the county’s western fringes paralleling the county’s development boundary beyond Krome Avenue.
McAliley made the proposal 10 years into her 16-year tenure with the School Board. And though it was ultimately breached, she made an impression.
“When you think about the very real possibility that we will run out of water, it will be a very bad idea if any branch of government accelerates that development to the west,” McAliley told the Miami Herald when there was movement to develop beyond the boundary in 1996. “The very children we are building schools to benefit in the long run will be damaged by growth that is not carefully planned.”
She liked the term “the school development boundary” perhaps more than the “McAliley Rule” because credit wasn’t so important as the overriding principle.
“Mom fought hard for this, and as I recall she led the School Board to set its own line, east of that boundary, beyond which no public schools would be built. She understood that if schools were built at the line, that it would force a westward push of the line,” her daughter Chris McAliley said in an email to the Miami Herald.
FIGHTING FOR IMMIGRANTS
In addition to her 16-year, four-term tenure helping lead the School Board in Miami-Dade, McAliley joined the board of The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, now known as Americans for Immigrant Justice, legal services association in January 1996, alongside its founder Cheryl Little.
McAliley was its longestserving member, Little said.
“Janet was a true trailblazer and staunch defender of the underdog. Her passion for justice was palpable, including for immigrants who too often are discriminated against. She always gave generously of her time and almost never missed a board meeting, no matter the challenges. She even participated in last Wednesday’s monthly Zoom board call. That’s the Janet I knew and loved, giving of her time for others until the very end,” said Little, retired founder and director of Americans for Immigrant Justice.
As McAliley’s daughter Chris said, her mother “passionately supported efforts to welcome poor and desperate people to this country and to treat them with dignity.”
That point was echoed by another partner on the immigrant justice board, David Lawrence Jr., retired publisher of the Miami Herald and chair of The Children’s Movement of Florida.
“Thinking back over the last third of a century, coming to Miami when Janet was on the School Board and in more recent years serving with her on the board of Americans for Immigrant Justice, I came to think of her as the very soul of decency pushing for what is right and just for everyone. She led a remarkable life of example for the rest of us,”
Lawrence said.
NEW YORK-BORN, MIAMI-RAISED
McAliley was born Janet Richards in New York City on Jan. 29, 1934. She moved to Miami when she was young, graduated from Miami Jackson Senior High School where she excelled in debate, and never left the multicultural city, save for studying and graduating from the University of Florida.
“I serve on AI Justice’s board because due to my experiences growing up, I have a soft spot for people who are experiencing tough times,” McAliley said on her bio on the organization’s website.
According to her family, McAliley first became a passionate advocate for civil rights in college in the
1950s, and was involved in many civil rights organizations in leadership positions in the 1960s. Her husband, civil rights attorney Thomas McAliley, was her partner in social justice causes. The couple met while undergrads at the University of Florida and were married for 37 years until his death from an aneurysm at age 62 in 1994.
WINTER IN A TENT ON BISCAYNE BOULEVARD
McAliley would tell you her advocacy for students and immigrants and her reputation for giving — she was a longtime donor to the Miami Herald’s Wish Book holiday campaign — were inspired by her earliest experiences on the Miami streets.
“My family arrived in Miami in 1936 after my father lost his job in New York in the Depression,” McAliley told the Herald from her home in Grove Isle in 2019. “We spent that first winter in a tent on Biscayne Boulevard near where the Broad Causeway is now. That experience and others that followed sensitized me to the struggles of others.”
Her father was a World War I veteran and had a small disability pension of about $40 a month. “That was what we had,” McAliley remembered. Her older sister was 4, she was 2 and her younger brother, 1. The family tied his crib on top of an old Packard and that’s how the McAliley family found Miami. “That’s why I always loved ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ and always identified with the Joads,” McAliley said at age 85.
The family moved around town frequently, mainly in Allapattah and the northwest section of Miami.
“As a young child, I saw my father arrested a couple times because of arguing with the landlord,” McAliley told the Herald. “This made me very aware of the struggle of people who have difficulties in life because they are poor. So Wish Book was helpful to me in trying to address those longstanding concerns that developed in my childhood.”
ACTIVISM
In the 1970s, McAliley was a proud feminist, marching and lobbying for women’s rights. She fought for gay rights, arguing against singer Anita Bryant’s controversial “Save Our
Children” campaign against a gay rights ordinance in Miami-Dade in 1977. And she was an environmentalist who fought hard to conserve South Florida’s natural beauty.
McAliley’s campaigns for her four terms on the Miami-Dade School Board between 1980 and 1996 also cemented her concerns for the generations behind her.
“I have a great memory of being 4 and going to a civil rights demonstration in downtown Miami where my mom taught me a chant: ‘2, 4, 6, 8 — we want to integrate!’” her son Kevin McAliley recalled.
ON THE SCHOOL BOARD
As a staunch supporter of the public school system — where the McAlileys’ daughter and two sons received their education — McAliley pushed often against detractors to promote causes she believed in.
Among them: desegregation of public schools and students’ First Amendment rights. McAliley also aimed to eliminate corporal punishment in Miami-Dade schools, which, in 1980 when she joined the board, was a common form of meting out discipline in the schools.
“As I recall, school principals had broad discretion to administer physical punishment to wayward students,” her daughter said. “This was permitted by state law, thus the School Board could not ban the practice in our county. Mom convinced the Board to require all principals to keep public records of their use of corporal punishment. She figured that shining a light on the practice would build opposition and it worked. This led to changes to the law that, as I understand it, dramatically reduced the use of corporal punishment.”
She also lobbied for school clinics, a controversial position given opponents claimed their children would get sex counseling and birth control without parental knowledge or approval. But McAliley was outspoken about the need to offer at least some healthcare for the many students who had access to none, and that kids needed to be able to learn, her daughter said. “She prevailed, and took a lot of abuse in the process.”
MENTORING ELECTED OFFICIALS
McAliley also promoted candidates for elected office that she believed in, whether they were popular or not, as in the case of Urban League of Greater Miami’s longtime president and CEO T. Willard Fair.
Fair entered the Miami mayoral race in 1993 and McAliley publicly supported his candidacy.
Fair ultimately didn’t win the seat but he was a winner with McAliley and that mattered to her.
“As I look back over my 60-plus years in this community, if I had to list those persons who made outstanding contributions toward the progress of my community, Janet would be in the Top 5,” Fair said on Tuesday.
“She had the courage of her convictions and I will always be grateful,” Fair said. “I was perceived as being the Muhammad Ali: the anti-Black person. The anti-white person. The antieverybody except pro me. The mere fact that she said publicly that she supported what I stood for, not what other people thought of me, showed tremendous courage back in those days.”
Along the way, McAliley mentored other elected officials years before they sat in office.
“Janet was the first elected official who was my friend,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told the Herald. “I worked at Legal Services representing children in the school system and she was our go-to School Board member for our student advocacy. She helped us to achieve major milestones for student services and parent involvement. She was a fierce public education advocate and was truly a role model for me in my early career. Since then, she has been a friend and mentor, always standing up for civil and human rights, environmental protection,and government integrity.”
Former Miami-Dade Commissioner Katy Sorenson also had an ally in McAliley.
“I first met Janet from afar,” Sorenson said. “I was in attendance at a School Board meeting — the first of many I would attend as a PTA president — when I became aware of a presence who stood out. Strong, calm, articulate, dignified and compelling. Janet only spoke when she had something to say. And her comments were always well informed and well reasoned. She exuded intelligence and integrity. And she was passionate about public education and steadfast in her responsibility to the children of Miami-Dade County.”
The two enjoyed a friendship that lasted 31 years since that initial meeting, Sorenson said. “Janet was my friend, my mentor, my collaborator, my first backer when I ran for the County Commission and my ethical barometer. Sometimes when I faced a difficult decision at the County Commission, I would think, ‘What would Janet do?’’ And I had my answer,” Sorenson said. “Janet was a true public servant and a stellar role model for elected officials and citizens alike.”
A MOTHER’S GUIDANCE
First and foremost, McAliley was a mother.
“Mom was extraordinarily strong, principled and generous. She had great compassion for people who are poor and marginalized, and actively worked to better their lives. She also cared deeply about our democracy, and believed that as a citizen, it was her duty to fight hard to protect it. In these and in countless other ways, she was my guiding light,” said her daughter Chris.
SURVIVORS, SERVICES
McAliley’s survivors include her three children, Chris, Kevin and Neal McAliley and her four grandchildren, Ben and Daniel Kleiman, and Jackson and Ava McAliley.
A Celebration of Life will be at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, at Plymouth Congregational Church, 3400 Devon Rd., Coconut Grove.
Donations in McAliley’s honor can be made to Americans for Immigrant Justice, Women’s Emergency Network and the American Civil Liberties Union. A private burial for immediate family will be at Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery in Gainesville at her wishes — “a green burial,” her daughter Chris said. “Just another example of mom being out ahead of most of us.”