By The Star Staff
The Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its initials in Spanish), led by President Víctor M. Bonilla Sánchez, announced its third lawsuit against the Department of Education (DE) during the association’s 112th Annual Assembly in San Juan on Monday.
The lawsuit calls for the DE to adhere to the processes stipulated in Act 9-2022 and the Regulations of the Teachers’ Career Program.
The AMPR is seeking a court order or “mandamus” to compel Education Secretary Daniel Vélez Cabrera to initiate processes for teachers to submit their requests for level recognition and salary reviews for the year 2025 by Jan. 15, as required by law. Bonilla Sánchez stated that the DE’s failure to enable the portal for these requests in December demonstrates a continued pattern of negligence toward the teaching profession.
The latest legal action follows two previous lawsuits filed by the AMPR against the DE in 2024. The first lawsuit resulted in retroactive payments of nearly $1.4 million to around 2,900 teachers, while the second lawsuit sought to address over $30 million in outstanding payments to some 8,000 teachers over the past decade.
“The public teaching profession continues, until the last day of the current administration, to be a victim of the inaction of the Department of Education, which insists on not complying with Act 9-2022 and its Regulations for the Teaching Career,” Bonilla Sánchez said in an aside with the press. “The duty of Secretary Vélez Cabrera is unquestionable; it is clear and specific; the processes for processing requests for level recognition and salary reviews for the 2025 Teaching Career must already be underway so that teachers can make the corresponding arrangements on or before January 15.”
He added that the new legal action against the DE arose after the AMPR demanded, as exclusive representatives of the teaching profession, that the portal be enabled during December, through which teachers can request that a new level be recognized in the Teacher Career Program and that their salary be adjusted accordingly, as established by law and the Teacher Career Regulations.
“Since last November, we have made this demand to the Department so that our teachers have sufficient time to carry out the corresponding procedures,” Bonilla Sánchez reiterated. “However, once again, the agency is acting negligently with regard to the attention that this fundamental matter for our educators deserves.”
Коментарі