Puerto Fears School Privatization After Hurricane
By Aída Chávez and Rachel M. Cohen for the Intercept. As Hurricane Maria departed Puerto Rico, leaving utter ruin in its wake, one community in Vieques picked itself out of the wreckage by focusing on getting school back open.
“The community took out of their own time and said, ‘Let’s do this, we need to repair and reopen this,’ and we started working,” Josuan Aloyo told The Intercept in Spanish. “Cleaning out the trash and debris, and trying to find people that had the proper tools.” Right after the hurricane, Escuela Adrienne Serrano had 40 students, a number that steadily increased each week until they managed to bring 80 students back. But then, on October 18, Humacao School District’s regional director told Escuela Adrienne Serrano to suspend classes. 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.