Puerto Rican teachers start school year with one-day strike, stranding thousands of students

Puerto Rican teachers strike over staff, funding

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Teachers walked off their jobs Thursday in a one-day strike over staff and funding levels in Puerto Rican schools, giving students an unplanned day off barely three weeks into the new academic year.

The Federation of Teachers said it paralyzed 90 percent of the 1,500 public schools in the U.S. island territory. Education officials said 30,000 teachers stayed away from their posts, while about 13,000 teachers went to work.

“The effect? Devastating, definitely,” Interim Education Secretary Jesus Rivera Sanchez told reporters at a school that stayed open.

Several thousand marched under the tropical sun to the governor’s office in Old San Juan to protest a shortage of personnel and supplies. Teachers say the education department has failed to fill at least 1,000 positions, depriving students and placing extra burdens on educators who are also contending with shortages of such basic materials as textbooks and photocopies.

“We have always had problems in previous years, but this year has been the worst,” said Maria Melendez, a teacher who is vice president of the Federation of Teachers, the island’s largest educators’ union with a membership of about 42,000. “This has broken all records.”

The walkout was the largest labor action in public schools on the island since a 10-day strike in 2008 as teachers demanded improved wages and working conditions. Pay for teachers in Puerto Rico ranges from $20,000-$28,000 per year, according to the Federation of Teachers.

Edda Rivera, a second-grade teacher in the northern town of Toa Alta, said her students don’t have anyone to teach them English and she has come up with extra work for them when they are supposed to be learning the language.

School administrators dispute some of the teachers’ central claims, insisting that only about 330 positions remain unfilled. The interim education secretary said the government is trying to improve conditions.

“I cannot resolve in two months all the problems in the education system that have been there for years,” said Rivera, who was appointed in late May. “I recognize that there are working conditions that have to be improved.”

Rivera said a lack of qualified teachers is part of the reason positions have not been filled. But Miguel Rivera, a physical-education teacher at a San Juan school, said teachers were not hired in June and July as is customary so the government could save money.