The Dade County, Fla., school board has chosen Octavio Visiedo, deputy superintendent of administrative services, to be the new superintendent of the district, the fourth largest in the nation.
Mr. Visiedo, 39, is the youngest person ever to head the 295,000-student district.
He succeeds the late Paul Bell, who died last month, only seven months after taking over from Joseph A. Fernandez, who left to assume the chancellorship of the New York City public schools.
Robert E. Boose is the new executive director of the New Jersey School Boards Association.
The deputy director of the association since March 1986, Mr. Boose was commissioner of education in Maine from 1983 to 1986.
He succeeds Octavius T. Reid Jr., who resigned last spring following a state investi and charges that he improperly used and mishandled association funds. (See Education Week, Oct. 10, 1990.) He has been acting director since Mr. Reid’s resignation.
David A. Micklos, a former high-school teacher who directs the DNA Learning Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, is the recipient of a 1990 Charles A. Dana Award.
Mr. Micklos was awarded the $50,000 prize for creating a program that gives high-school biology teachers hands-on experience with recombinant D.N.A. technology.
The program, begun in 1984, has become the nation’s largest teacher-training program dealing with D.N.A. science, the foundation said, and more than 1,400 teachers have attended the workshops. Follow-up studies show that many teachers have incorporated the D.N.A. experiments into high-school curricula, according to the foundation.
The awards, given annually since 1986, recognize innovative ideas in health promotion, disease prevention, and education.
Maurice Sendak, the scenic designer and highly awarded author of children’s books, is planning a new national children’s theater.
The non-profit company is to be called “The Night Kitchen,” after In the Night Kitchen, one of Mr. Sendak’s most acclaimed books.
Initial funding for the company was provided through a $1 million, four-year grant from HarperCollins, which has published many of Mr. Sendak’s books. The occasion for the grant was the 20th anniversary of the surreal tale of Mickey who fell out of bed and into a bowl of cake batter one night.
Mr. Sendak’s associate in the project is Arthur Yorinks, also a renowned children’s author.
The company plans to commission new works and develop new productions of existing works in collaboration with existing theaters, but will not have its own stage.
