This week in the war on workers: Puerto Rico's school year starts, and it's chaos
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School privatization advocates have used the devastation of Hurricane Maria to close hundreds of public schools in Puerto Rico while pushing vouchers and charter schools. As we’ve seen again and again, chaos and destruction are favorite tools of privatizThis week in the war on workers: Puerto Rico's school year starts, and it's chaos
School privatization advocates have used the devastation of Hurricane Maria to close hundreds of public schools in Puerto Rico while pushing vouchers and charter schools. As we’ve seen again and again, chaos and destruction are favorite tools of privatizers, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that the school year has started in Puerto Rico with massive problems. More than 56,000 students projected to be enrolled in Puerto Rico’s schools this year haven't shown up and 18,000 were never enrolled. Some schools also have missing teachers after teachers have been repeatedly reassigned. Schools are in terrible shape: Dozens of schools were still badly in need of repairs. A survey of the island’s 856 schools conducted by the Association of Puerto Rican Teachers the week before classes started found leaky roofs, mold and unusable bathrooms. One school had a rat infestation, according to the survey. Another was still littered with hurricane debris. Many teachers told reporters they didn’t want to be identified by name due to fear of retaliation. This is bad for the people who work in the schools and for the students who’ve coped with deprivation and power outages and instability for too long. Read more