Merri Mann
Merri Mann has been involved in education from 1964 to the present. She began work at North Miami Senior High School in 1964 and has worked with United Teachers of Dade(UTD) since 1985. She has had primary responsibility for many of UTD’s educational reform and restructuring projects. These included School Based Management/Shared Decision-Making, a process which involves teachers and parents in the development of school improvement strategies. This process was later mandated by the state of Florida and was renamed School Advisory Councils. Ms. Mann was on the planning committees for several other projects including Satellite Learning Centers, a program which brings schools to the workplace; Saturn Schools project, a plan which invited educators and others to submit joint labor-management proposals for the design and operation of Miami-Dade County public schools; Dade Academy for the Teaching Arts (DATA) which afforded teachers the opportunity to pursue exciting and creative independent activities and to explore and apply state-of the art educational research and techniques. DATA provided for the kind of collegial interaction which is seldom possible within the isolation, demands, and confines of the classroom.
Mann is a founding member of the Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN), a group of teacher union leaders from both the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. TURN acknowledges the unions’ responsibility to collaborate with other stakeholders in public education to improve the quality of the teaching force; seek high levels of student achievement; promote in public education, and in teacher unions, democratic dynamics, fairness and due process to all; and improve on an ongoing basis the terms and conditions under which both adults and children work in schools.
In October, 1986, Ms. Mann co-chaired the Committee for Economic Development’s Teacher Business Roundtable. From 1983 through 1986, she hosted the television series “Inside York Schools” which appeared on Channel 17 and local cable access stations. She has been a speaker at a number of educational conferences throughout the United States including Harvard Law School, I/D/E/A Fellows Program and The Principal’s Center at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Mann taught English and Death and Dying at North Miami High School for 22 years and served as the Chairperson of the Language Arts Department from 1976 through 1985 when she left to work with UTD. During several summer breaks, she worked in the Hospital Homebound Program and in programs for emotionally disturbed teens at Jackson and Highland Park Hospitals. She was a charter member of the Forum for Death Education and Counseling.
In addition to her work in education, she has served on a variety of Boards including Temple Israel as a Director and as Secretary; Alexander Muss High School in Israel; Jewish Federation Women’s Professional Organization and of her condominium, Costa Brava.
Mann is married to Harris Reibel, a CPA, and has a daughter Alexandra Baltodano, currently teaching English at Lambert High School in Suwanee, Georgia and 4 stepsons, Jimi, Paul, Kenny and Mark Reibel and seven grandchildren.
Merri has been a member of Temple Israel since her family moved to Miami from Newton, Massachusetts. Her parents, Ettabelle and IZ Mann, joined the Temple in 1956 and Merri was confirmed by Rabbi Narot in 1957 and her brothers Michael and Peter were Bar Mitzvah’d here and together with sister Wendy were Confirmed here as well.
