Educator, publisher and former Miami commissioner Demetrio Perez Jr. dies at 77

Educator, journalist and Miami politician Demetrio Perez Jr. — whose complex and complicated legacy includes the founding of Lincoln-Marti Schools and LIBRE, a publication founded in the 1960s to serve Miami’s growing Hispanic population — died Friday morning at his home following a long illness, his family said.

Perez, who also served as a Miami city commissioner in the early 1980s and five years as a Miami-Dade County School Board member, was 77.

“I salute my father on an exemplary life and I will miss him dearly,” his son Demetrio J. Perez told the Miami Herald. “To me, he was an example and part of the greatest generation of Cuban immigrants in the United States, who earned their success with tireless work and dedication to things greater than themselves. I will do my best to carry on his life and legacy. The only thing I may not miss are his relentless 7 a.m. calls from his desk at the office.”

Perez’s son wasn’t the only one to field early morning calls from his busy father.

“I’d receive text messages from him at 4 a.m.,” said former State Rep. Ralph Arza of Hialeah. “He was a tireless worker and advocate for our children. He provided school choice for children and parents who didn’t have a lot of choices.”

Perez defeated Arza for the School Board seat in 1996, but the two bonded, Arza told the Herald.

“If you look at his agenda when he was on the School Board and the current agenda in Tallahassee, they’re almost identical — vouchers, individual choice, principles that made America great. He was ahead of his time in so many ways. People went crazy when he first talked about things like school uniforms and vouchers, but history has proven him to be on the right side of all those issues,” Arza said.

Highs to lows

Perez had plenty to talk about.

There are his three decades as a talk show host on Radio Mambí. A fruitful run as an educator that brought him statewide recognition for his creation of a curriculum that taught the contributions of Hispanics to the United States.

And that single Lincoln-Marti School he established in Miami in 1968 grew to 46 for-profit schools and childcare centers serving 6,500 students from Miami to Kissimmee.

There were stunning high-profile failures for Perez, too.

In 2002, Perez entered a guilty plea to five charges including mail fraud and making false statements from a 21-count indictment that included conspiracy related to the Section 8 rent subsidy program.

Perez collected the Section 8 rent subsidy allotted to tenants at a property he owned in Little Havana and charged some tenants hundreds of dollars more than they were required to pay, the court said.

Perez was sentenced to six months of house arrest and two years of probation, the Miami Herald reported at the time.

In 2020, Perez’s publication LIBRE was discontinued as a paid insert in el Nuevo Herald after readers complained about anti-Semitic content. Perez said at the time that the Miami Herald Media Co. had the right to review all LIBRE content a day in advance of publication and reject any content it found unsuitable, but never exercised the option, the Herald reported in September 2020.

Arrival in Miami from Cuba

Perez was born in Matanzas, Cuba, on Aug. 7, 1945. At 16, he migrated to Miami without his parents, as part of Operation Pedro Pan. That program had brought Cuban children to the United States after Fidel Castro’s takeover.

In 1964, Perez was reunited with his parents two years after his arrival in Miami. He studied at Miami Edison Senior High School while selling newspapers and doing other jobs common to teenagers.

Perez’s role in education

By 1968, less than a decade after arriving in exile, Perez, with his family’s support, opened the first Lincoln-Marti School in Miami.

In the 1970s, years before she sought office and later represented Florida’s 27th congressional district from 1989 to 2019, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was an educator who yearned to run her own private school. At the time, Perez was the leader of what became known as BIPRISA, the Bilingual Private School Association.

Through shared time and insight, Perez motivated Ros-Lehtinen and her family to open their school, Eastern Academy in South Hialeah, she said. Ros-Lehtinen later assumed leadership of BIPRISA from Perez, she told the Herald.

“I was quite honored,” she said. “My school would compete with other private schools, including Demetrio’s successful Lincoln-Marti Schools, in athletic games, such as volleyball and basketball. Demetrio and I collaborated in putting together school parades to honor both American heroes and those of Latin America. Our favorite heroes were obviously President Lincoln and Jose Marti, the father of Cuba. It is so apt that Demetrio named his school Lincoln-Marti.”

The pair, she said, stressed bilingual education. “The parents, both of his schools and mine, appreciated the emphasis on a back-to-basics curriculum,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

When she was elected as a state representative, Perez bought her school. Perez and the former congresswoman remained close.

“Dexter and I will miss Demetrio greatly and we were proud to call him our amigo,” she said, also speaking for her husband. I am sure that he is organizing school parades in heaven,” Ros-Lehtinen said.

“Demetrio was an innovative and equal opportunity educator,” Dexter Lehtinen added. “Many of his schools which he founded and managed — both public charter schools and private schools — have very high percentages of children eligible for the school lunch program, sometimes as high as 90% or more. ... Yet those very same schools, with economic disadvantaged students, regularly scored very high on standard state evaluations. Poor children have always had a real chance in Demetrio’s schools.”

Miami City Commission

In 1979, Perez, at 34, made his first attempt at a seat on the Miami City Commission against Joe Carollo. He handily lost in a runoff.

Two years later, in 1981, he ran again, defeating Xavier Suarez in a runoff. He served on the commission until his defeat by Rosario Kennedy in 1985.

School Board

“This era of improvement begins today,” Pérez said when he took the vice chair’s seat after his election to the Miami-Dade School Board in 1996.

“Demetrio was a pioneer in education in South Florida,” said former Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Roger Cuevas in a statement provided to the Herald. “He created day care programs at a time when Miami had a lot of immigrants who desperately needed that service. He initiated policies that we now take for granted,” Cuevas added, citing Perez’s push, and the board’s acceptance, of school uniforms and the development of a bilingual curriculum.

“He was one of the first board members who focused on school security issues and insisted that the system have plans for security incidents — he was far ahead of his time with progressive policies that are now commonplace. And he created the largest private school program in South Florida. No one can match Demetrio’s contributions to education over the last 50 years,” Cuevas said.

Survivors, services

▪ Perez’s survivors include his son Demetrio J. Perez; grandchildren Sofia Perez, Demetrio “DJ” Perez and Nicolas Perez; and his companion, Maria C. Rodriguez.

▪ A public viewing will be held from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday, March 17, at Caballero Rivero Woodlawn Westchester Funeral Home, 8200 Bird Rd., Miami.

▪ Funeral Mass at 11 a.m., Saturday, March 18, at Trinity Cathedral, 464 NE 16th St., Miami.

▪ Burial to follow at Woodlawn Park Cemetery, 3260 SW Eighth St. Miami.

▪ Donations in Perez’s memory may be made to the Lincoln-Marti Community Agency at www.lincolnmarti.com/donate “to support its mission to provide high quality educational services to under served populations,” his family said in their obituary.