By The Star Staff
Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia on Thursday countered statements made by Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its Spanish initials) President Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez, who alleged that only 30% of schools were ready for the start of the school year.
“That’s totally out of proportion, [and] it’s to some extent disrespectful,” the governor said. “It is disrespectful to the Department of Education team and to yours truly,” Pierluisi said in response to reporters’ questions.
Bonilla Sánchez, who heads the island’s main teachers’ union, responded in a written statement that “[t]he photographs we received from the teachers and our coordinators do not lie and serve to document what this start of classes has been.”
The background to the confrontation has to do with tension surrounding the preparation of public schools for the new school year and the poor physical condition of many schools this week, as noted in a report that appeared in Thursday’s STAR. Classes started on Wednesday.
Bonilla Sánchez invited the media to visit the schools and document the reality that he said the AMPR has been denouncing for some time.
“We are not going to remain silent and we will continue our denunciations until we have suitable public schools of quality and excellence, as our country deserves,” he said.
Governor Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia is disingenuous and disrespectful to the children of Puerto Rico, the parents of the children in Puerto Rico, the support staff of the public schools, the teachers, the administrators, and the news media. I do not make the above statement lightly. I have followed the blatant, willful, deficiencies in the Puerto Rico public school system from my home in Pennsylvania through the San Juan Daily Star, WAPA TV, and Telemundo. Technology is a wonderful thing. I can even get Puerto Rican talk radio digitally broadcasted from Humacao in Pennsylvania. I find it highly insulting to the intelligence of the people of the world that Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia would tell us to not trust our eyes, e…