By The Star Staff
The Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its Spanish initials), which exclusively represents the island’s public school teachers, on Thursday demanded participation in the executive committee in charge of designing public policy for the decentralization of the Department of Education (DE), as established in Executive Order 2023-014, signed by Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia.
AMPR President Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez said in a letter that although they support the decentralization of the DE, there is concern about the absence of participation of teachers in the composition of the executive committee.
“We are the organization that has firsthand knowledge of the needs of our school communities: teachers, students, employees and family members,” Bonilla Sánchez said in the letter.
AMPR Local Union General Secretary Ángel Javier Pérez Hernández emphasized that the inclusion of the AMPR in the committee is crucial to “guarantee the transparency and credibility of this governmental process.” However, AMPR Vice President Raúl González warned that decentralization could open the door to privatizing schools by allowing alliance schools to become local education agencies, or LEAs.
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