Teachers Assn. sues Education Dept. over inaction on payments

The Puerto Rico Teachers Association and its local union have sued the island Department of Education to demand adequate pay to teachers from 2014 to 2022.

By The Star Staff

The Puerto Rico Teachers Association (AMPR by its initials in Spanish), along with its local union, sued the island Department of Education on Tuesday to demand adequate pay to teachers from 2014 to 2022.

“Our legal team has filed suit each time the deadlines established by law have passed to make payments to the teachers that they requested between 2014 and 2022,” AMPR President Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez said at a press conference.

The secretary general of the AMPR’s local union, Ángel Javier Pérez Hernández, added that “it is up to us to denounce that the Department of Education admitted in the most recent meeting that they haven’t begun to make the revisions of the Teachers Career cases of 2014-2015, as is their responsibility.”

The suit specifies that the Education Department has not complied with Law 9-2022 or with the Teachers Career Regulation, and that the agency has violated the constitutional decree for the due process of law for teachers.

“The Department of Education not only has not complied with the payment and the terms established in Law 9-2022. but in addition they have not provided an adequate notification of the teachers, in violation of their rights,” said the AMPR’s legal representative, Edgardo Pabón Rodríguez.