The hashtag “#JuliaGoHome” is probably one you are not familiar with. Angry teachers, students and parents in Puerto Rico have been fighting—albeit unsuccessfully—to rid the island of Julia Keleher, the education secretary appointed by Puerto Rico’s Gov. Ricardo Rosselló a little over a year ago.
AJ Vicens, writing for Mother Jones in “Puerto Rico Is Trying to Overhaul Its Public Schools and Teachers Are Furious” describes Keleher’s background and the outrage about her appointment (and hefty salary):
A business consultant by trade, who advocates of public education accuse of pushing a mass privatization of the education system, is supposed to receive $80,000 (plus bonuses) by law. But when she was appointed in 2017, she signed a consulting contract with an arm of the island’s government for more than $20,000 per month, or $250,000 annually—which is nine times larger than the average teacher’s salary of $2,325 per month.
As if the power and water situation post hurricane in Puerto Rico isn’t bad enough, the continuing attacks on public education on the island will have long term effects as well.
Seizing Upon Post-Hurricane Damage, Puerto Rico's New "Education Reform" Law Paves Way for Charters, Vouchers:
Roughly six months after Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico, the island's governor signed into law "education reform" legislation that he says "puts our students first" but that critics say stinks of a privatization plan that will do nothing to help students.
The plan will consolidate schools and allow for charter schools and vouchers—ideas that are not endorsed by the Puerto Rico Teachers Association (Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico).
Another teacher's union, the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, vowed that it, alongside teachers, parents, and students, would "defeat the false reform with the struggle on the street and in schools."
Offering background, education historian Lauren Lefty wrote at Jacobin:
In the wake of twin disasters—one man-made in the form of a vulture fund-fueled debt crisis, and one natural in the form of last September's Hurricane María — Puerto Rican leaders are attempting to implement a vast austerity program, claiming it will solve the island's economic woes. In the eyes of many Puerto Ricans, however, this is textbook "disaster capitalism": capitalizing on a moment of crisis, when the population is weak and unable to mobilize, to ram through pro-market austerity measures.
Although the government has slowly been rolling out austerity measures since the debt crisis began, post-hurricane, it's doubled down. And the island's public school system is one of the leading targets.
Among critics' targets is Julia Keleher, Puerto Rico's non-Puerto Rican Education Secretary, who, in the wake of the hurricane said the storm was a "real opportunity to press the reset button." Her role, Lefty argued, "highlights the island's precarious colonial status and harkens to even less sovereign days."
"Puerto Rico is now open to edupreneurs, no-excuses charters, and corporate exploitation of its children."
Just another face of the plague of profiteers swarming to pick the bones of an island knocked to its knees by back to back hurricanes and U.S. corporate greed and inflicted debt.
The issues involved are being covered, by some mainland liberal media outlets. However, they could use broader distribution.
6 Months After Maria, Puerto Ricans Face a New Threat—Education Reform.
Colonialism and disaster capitalism are dismantling Puerto Rico's public-school system.
By Yarimar Bonilla, Rima Brusi and Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan
Six months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans are understandably frustrated with their government officials. One might expect discontent to center around the head of the power company who oversaw months of blackouts or the governor who awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in private contracts with little or no oversight. But instead it is the secretary of the department of education, Philadelphia-native Julia Keleher, who has become the focus of people’s anger. In the past few weeks, Puerto Ricans have been calling for her resignation, making her the object of a viral hashtag campaign, #JuliaGoHome. On Monday, the school system was paralyzed by a strike as thousands of teachers protested the education-reform bill her office has spearheaded.
For observers from the 50 states, it might come as a surprise that Puerto Rico’s secretary of education hails from Philadelphia. Indeed, it is the first time a non–Puerto Rican has held the job since the colonial appointees in the period after the US took possession of the island in 1898. But in the four years leading up to her appointment, Keleher’s education consultancy firm, Keleher & Associates, had been awarded almost $1 million in contracts to “design and implement education reform initiatives” in Puerto Rico. The results of those efforts were never described to the public, but when Governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares tapped Keleher for the position in January 2017, the selection was initially met with some guarded optimism. Some hoped that a non–Puerto Rican would be able to rise above local politics, end corruption, and lead the agency with professionalism and expertise.
From the beginning, many critics expressed concerns about her sizable salary, which at $250,000 is more than 10 times the average salary of a teacher in Puerto Rico. In an island beset by an unpayable debt and austerity measures, Keleher has managed to secure an income that is more than double that of her predecessors and over three times that of Rosselló, the governor that appointed her. It’s even 25 percent greater than that of Betsy DeVos, the secretary of the US Department of Education, and larger than that of 95 percent of education leaders around the world.
The article takes a look at the knee-jerk, whining responses to calls for her to be ousted. (I would argue that there is racism involved—the racism and prejudice against Puerto Rico which we see in the historical and present treatment of the island and our citizens there.)
Keleher and her supporters accuse her critics of prejudice—of not liking her because she’s a white American or of not understanding her because Spanish is not her first language. Her defenders stress that she is trying her best, and that it is as discriminatory to suggest that a person from Philadelphia could not run the department of education as it would be to suggest that someone from Puerto Rico could not do the same in one the 50 states. These claims gloss over the power differentials between Puerto Rico and the United States: It would be unthinkable for a Puerto Rican to be appointed to run a state’s department of education without perfect English fluency and knowledge of US history and politics. Given her own admission of cultural incompetency, Keleher is perhaps unaware that the United States initially deployed US teachers to the island in the 1900s with the explicit intention of altering local language, culture, and historical memory to transform Puerto Rico into a more palatable “Porto Rico.” Local teachers were central to the resistance against the imposition of English-only education and were key to maintaining Puerto Rican history and cultural traditions within the curriculum.
Any appointment of a person from the mainland to a position of power on the island sends a message that Puerto Ricans suffer from native incompetence, a lack of preparedness, and faulty ethics, and that the solution to these deficiencies is having someone else—preferably someone from the United States—come in to fix the mess that Puerto Ricans have supposedly created for themselves. Lately, the message that Puerto Ricans are unable to govern themselves has been repeated frequently, from the imposition of the federal fiscal-control board to Keleher’s department recruitment of senior managers directly from the continental United States. It’s important to see how Keleher and her policies fit within the landscape of post-Maria Puerto Rico. Although her nomination raised some eyebrows, it also paved the way for other less debated appointees, such as Walter Higgins III, recently chosen to lead the power authority down the road to privatization, and Brad Dean, who was named CEO of the island’s new Destination Marketing Organization, nonprofit private agency that does work previously done by government-sponsored tourism agencies. The creation of this agency speaks to the broad transfer of responsibilities and resources from the public to the private sector that is taking place following the storm.
The authors may not be names you are familiar with—but these are three women who you should get to know:
Yarimar Bonilla is an associate professor of anthropology and Caribbean studies at Rutgers University and a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. She is the author of Non-Sovereign Futures: French Caribbean Politics in the Wake of Disenchantment and a founder of the Puerto Rico Syllabus.
Rima Brusi is an advocate, educator, independent scholar, and essayist. Formerly a faculty member at the University of Puerto Rico and an applied anthropologist at The Education Trust, she and her family now live and work in The Bronx.
Natasha Lycia Ora Bannan is an associate counsel at LatinoJustice PRLDEF and president of the National Lawyers Guild, the nation's largest and oldest progressive bar association. (note: featured in Women of Vieques, here at Daily Kos)
Two months ago, in “Privatizing Puerto Rico: DeVos clone Julia Keleher and Gov. Rosselló push charter schools,” I cited education advocate and “Gadfly on the Wall” Steven M. Singer, who wrote:
Crippled Puerto Rico Offered School Privatization as Quick Fix for Woes
You’re Puerto Rico’s school system. More than five months since a devastating hurricane hit the island’s shores, some 270 schools are still without power. Roughly 25,000 students are leaving with that number expected to swell to 54,000 in four years. And that’s after an 11-year recession already sent 78,000 students seeking refuge elsewhere. So what do you do to stop the flow of refugees fleeing the island? What do you do to fix your storm damaged schools? What do you do to ensure all your precious children are safe and have the opportunity to learn?
If you’re Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello, you sell off your entire system of public education. After an economic history of being pillaged and raped by corporate vultures from the mainland, Rossello is suggesting the U.S. Territory offer itself for another round of abuse.He wants to close 300 more schools and change the majority of those remaining into charter and voucher schools.
That means no elected school boards. That means no public meetings determining how these schools are run. It means no transparency in terms of how the money is spent. It means public funding can become private profit. And it means fewer choices for children who will have to apply at schools all over the island and hope one accepts them. Unlike public schools, charter and voucher schools pick and choose whom to enroll. Make no mistake. This has nothing to do with serving the needs of children. It is about selling off public property because it belongs to poor, brown people.
I happened to see a short article on Chalkbeat, about Keleher’s “contacts” last month, “Top school choice group advising Puerto Rico on controversial efforts to expand charters and vouchers.” They reported:
EdChoice, a group that backs school vouchers, is preparing to help Puerto Rico officials expand school choice, or what critics there have called “privatization.”
Robert Enlow, the group’s president, told Chalkbeat the request came from Julia Keleher, Puerto Rico’s secretary of education, and that EdChoice would “provide some technical assistance.”
“They’re brand new at this and we’re trying to help them understand what’s been going on in other states, how states have run [choice programs], what the rules are, what the benefits and the challenges have been,” said Enlow, who spoke to Chalkbeat in Austin at SXSW EDU. “It’s really around policy advice and fiscal expertise.” (EdChoice is a funder of Chalkbeat.)
SourceWatch lists EdChoice as:
EdChoice (formerly the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice) is an Indiana-based nonprofit devoted to the privatization of schools through the promotion of an educational voucher system. The right-wing 501(c)3 is an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN).
EdChoice was founded by right-wing economists Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman in 1996. Milton Friedman is regarded as one of the most influential proponents of neo-liberal market economics. According to the organization's website, the foundation's mission is "amplifying the national call for true education reform through school choice." The organization provides research and marketing services to local and national organizations promoting the educational voucher system among legislators and the public.
Digging deeper into the muck (why am I not surprised) they link ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC):
The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), along with the Alliance for School Choice to develop model legislation to be introduced into state legislatures across the country. The organization was a "Chair" level sponsor of the ALEC Annual Conference in 2016, which equated to $50,000 in 2010, and was one of around 60 organizations represented at the exhibition hall at the ALEC annual meeting in 2011. Matthew Ladner, an EdChoice Fellow and Koch Fellow at the Charles Koch Institute, is the co-author of ALEC's "Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform."
While many of us have declared Puerto Rico “Trump’s Katrina,” with good cause, there are other parallels to New Orleans we should be aware of. Public education advocate and Betsy DeVos critic Enrique Baloyra reported on this back in November of 2017:
Transcript:
Teachers and communities in Puerto Rico have been working hard to reopen their schools since consecutive major hurricanes hammered the island two months ago. PR Federation of Teachers President Mercedes Martínez, who was arrested this week during a sit-in at the PR DOE, has documented teachers repairing roofs, helping clear highways, and distributing food, water, medicine, and baby essentials. So why are officials there refusing to allow some schools to reopen?
Enter: US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.“The billionaire heiress who has long funded schemes to privatize public education met with Puerto Rico’s education secretary Julia Keleher, who is looking at post-Katrina New Orleans as the model for the US territory. The Bush administration and local Democratic Party authorities used the 2005 hurricane to lay off thousands of teachers and transform New Orleans into an all-charter school district.” Neither education secretary met with teachers during the trip. Keleher — whose own consulting firm landed a questionable $230,030 contract with PR Governor Rosselló in the months leading up to her appointment as secretary — has a background in business administration, not education.
During her short tenure, she’s managed to close 179 schools and slash $7 million from an already anemic budget. She recently told the Miami Herald the hurricane has “created a bigger opportunity to replace some preexisting practices… with some more effective” ones.“ The guerrilla campaign to open schools is running headlong into a separate effort from the top, to use the storm to accomplish the long-standing goal of privatizing Puerto Rico’s public schools, using New Orleans post-Katrina as a model.
Last month, Puerto Rico’s Public-Private Partnerships Authority director spoke optimistically about leveraging federal money with companies interested in privatizing public infrastructure.” Under allegations of corruption, Governor Rosselló was forced to cancel the contract to conduct school inspections with CSA Group LLP, a multinational previously investigated for conflicts of interest. Activists claim the firm was purposefully stalling to justify school closures later.Lulú Arroyo from Instituto Nueva Escuela tells the Intercept, “If you’re actually looking out for the students and their families, then you’d let them open the schools.”
Puerto Rican teachers and students have a long history of protest and activism, which we rarely hear anything about here on the mainland—unless we are following island media sources.
***Note: In these short segments—videos and tweets are in Spanish:
Demonstration taking place in front of the nation’s Capitol - hundreds of teachers, students and citizens express their rejection of the attempt to privatize the island's educational system.
Keleher recently caught a lot of flack when she walked out of a forum with teachers.
Translation:
In an unprecedented action, she @SecEducacionPR leaves the dialogue and turns her back on hundreds of teachers including @amprnet Aida Diaz president and president of @AFTunion @rweingarten. The unprecedented act took place at the association's Assembly of Delegates.
Keleher’s performance has been challenged in the halls of government—here by Manuel Natal Albelo, Popular Democratic Party (PDP) Legislator.
This video headline dubs her “The Absent Secretary”
(translation)
As they pass educational reform in the dark of the night, outside the Capitol, the school community is opposed to the project. The students, "the raison d'être" of this reform, were not consulted. See here what our youth have to say.
One of the mainland figures who is a staunch defender of public education—Diane Ravitch—has been following the situation in Puerto Rico very closely.
It was via her blog that I found this article by Jeremy Mohler, an advocate for the democratic control of public goods and services, who wrote:
5 reasons why introducing charter schools in Puerto Rico is a bad idea
We are disappointed the powers that be in Puerto Rico have bought the wrongheaded DeVos and Trump spin that charters and vouchers are a panacea," American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said recently.
Responding to the new law, education historian Diane Ravitch writes that it marks "a sad day for Puerto Rico." She continues:
The Governor imagines he will save money by handing public money over to charters and vouchers.
Does he know that charters demand equal funding and choose the students they want?
Does he know that voucher students get worse results than their peers in public schools?
Probably the hedge funds that own the Commonwealth’s debt didn’t tell him.
Puerto Rico is now open to edupreneurs, no-excuses charters, and corporate exploitation of its children.
“Edupreneurs” is a very apt description, and far more polite than the cuss words I’ve been using when discussing what is being done to Puerto Ricans.
A year ago Puerto Rican teachers joined the American Federation of Teachers (AFT):
In a historic vote, the 40,000 members of AMPR with AFT to combat austerity and fight for public education and economic opportunity for the people of Puerto Rico.
AFT President Randi Weingarten has not minced her words about the current situation on the island:
“Puerto Rico has been bankrupted by Wall Street vultures. The last thing the island needs is to import more of the fraud, mismanagement and corruption we’ve seen on the mainland. The right kind of education change is possible, but only if we work with key stakeholders to focus on teaching and learning, not defunding and not vouchers, to secure the island’s future.”
The most recent news after the passage of the law is that teachers have filed suit:
Teachers' Union in Puerto Rico Files Lawsuit to Stop Charters and Vouchers
The Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, which represents nearly 30,000 teachers working in the U.S. territory, filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in response to a new education law signed by Gov. Ricardo Rosselló late last month, the Associated Press reported. This law would allow charter schools and vouchers on the island, although both would be subject to caps—charters (or "alianza") schools can constitute no more than 10 percent of schools in Puerto Rico, while the number of students receiving vouchers under the Free School Selection program would be capped at 3 percent of public school students in the first year, and 5 percent in the second.
Rosselló and Puerto Rico Secretary of Education Julia Keleher have both said the law, which also overhauls the island's school finance system and breaks up its previously unified school district into seven localized offices, will provide more educational opportunities for the island's students in the wake of Hurricane Maria last September. Separate proposals from the island's government would close roughly 300 of the island's 1,100 public schools while also giving teachers raises. However, the union has argued that taken together, the new law and separate fiscal reforms will cost teachers jobs, hurt students, and dismember the island's public education system, which currently serves about 320,000 students.
"To say charters are public schools when they are going to be administered, directed and controlled by private hands is clearly an illegal and unconstitutional contradiction," union President Aida Diaz told the AP.
In tweets discussing their suit, the union referred to charters as "vultures" and said that the law would privatize public education on the island.
Puerto Rico’s young people are their future. Free public education will play a key role in that future.
I’m an AFT member here on the mainland. The union has been standing strong with Puerto Rico.
I’m proud of the union’s Operation Agua:
Operation Agua’s work so far includes:
- We have raised $1.75 million thanks to crowdsourced donations from generous and concerned individuals, and from a variety of unions, organizations and even students, classrooms and schools.
- We have delivered more than 54,000 Kohler Clarity water filters to Puerto Rico, with TOTE Maritime providing all sea shipping services free of charge.
- Based on funds on hand, Operation Agua has committed to distributing another 23,040 filters—meeting more than 75 percent of our initial goal of delivering 100,000 filters.
- The Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico has distributed 6,000 filters to more than 1,100 open public schools across the island.
- Operation Blessing’s staff has held daily water filter distribution events, from remote mountain towns and fishing villages to urban neighborhoods, providing 300-600 water filters at each event directly to families in need.
- We installed a reverse osmosis system in the Hospital Del Maestro in San Juan capable of processing 40,000 gallons a day.
- The Seafarers International Union, along with handling sea shipping responsibilities, has distributed 11,000 filters to more than a dozen communities.
- The Hispanic Federation provided initial seed funding of $250,000 to Operation Agua and works with local partners in Puerto Rico to distribute filters.
- Members of the Servidores Publico Unidos, an AFSCME affiliate, have delivered thousands of filters to special education students and their families at worksites across the island.
Kids are thirsty for education—and for water as well. Please show your support!
#SOSPuertoRico
