From the VL Inbox – (If you would like to see your event listed here please email info@vivirlatino.com)

Monday, October 17 – 5:00 PM
NYC Department of Education (near City Hall)
52 Chambers Street (Between Centre & Broadway)
FMPR Support Committee – New York
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Dear Sisters and Brothers,
The FMPR Support Committee – New York is making a call for you to join us to make your voices heard in support of free pubic quality education in Puerto Rico and New York. Join us to protest against the privatization of public schools with charter schools on Monday, October 17, 2011, at 5pm, in a picket at Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City Department of Education.

In Puerto Rico, protests have been called by the Teachers’ Union of Puerto Rico (FMPR) to denounce the education summit convened there by U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, from October 17 -18, 2011. This “Education Summit” is the latest attempt to increase support for the devastating federal policies of No Child Left Behind (e.g. fraudulent punitive testing, teacher firings, school closings, privatized charters) and to counter the historic resistance to charter schools in this island-nation that has been a colony of the U.S. since 1898 (post Spanish-American War).

On October 17th we will denounce the undemocratic and dictatorial federal, state and city policies that relentlessly continue to destroy public schools here and in Puerto Rico through charter schools and the contracting-out to private companies.
Through teacher strikes, school stoppages, educational and militant organizing campaigns over the past decades, The Teachers’ Union of Puerto Rico (FMPR) has succeeded in blocking charters, school closings, teacher layoffs, and threats to member health, pensions and wage benefits.

Today, the anti-union, anti-worker administration of Governor Luis Fortuño has continued and escalated policies that are aimed at dismantling public schools and further undermining the right to a free public quality education. Virtually every day, the FMPR and its leadership with the active support of parents, students and community, shut down schools on the island in order to seek redress to these intolerable conditions. This year it will continue its standardized testing boycott and continue to organize against the fraudulent use of student test scores to evaluate teacher performance.

Because of it’s unrelenting campaigns to promote quality public education and to stop privatization, at the local and national level, the FMPR has been the target of intense government repression including police brutality, the illegal denial of union dues check-off, the revocation (for life) of their leaders’ teaching licenses and the denial of their legal union right to leaves of absence without pay. Despite these hardships, the FMPR remains steadfast in this struggle to defend the right to public education. This important struggle needs our support.

Our solidarity with the struggle for quality public education in Puerto Rico is essential at this critical juncture when Wall Street corporations (represented by Mr. Duncan & the Obama administration) continue to lay the groundwork to impose and establish charter schools. To do so, the government-corporate forces have increased their attempts to destroy the frontline of defense of the public schools, the FMPR, and to weaken all resistance.

A free quality public school education is a universal right that was won by working families and unions both in Puerto Rico and the U.S. The fight to defend public schools and to stop privatization through charter schools is a common fight in both countries. Therefore our efforts at stopping the destruction of public schools in favor of prívate charter schools and corporate profits, will be strengthened by standing together. We should stand united!

JOIN US TO DEMAND:

• No to charter privatization. Yes to quality public education. No to cutbacks and layoffs.

• Down with the Duncan/Obama/Bush No Child Left Behind, the Race to the Bottom for our Children.

• No to Fraudulent Testing & Punitive Teacher Evaluation. Respect for Teacher Tenure, Seniority and Job Protections.

• Stop School Closings and top-down dictates (turnaround, transformation, restart) that only erode education.

• Reduce Class Size by providing jobs to all excessed teachers.