Hang With MORE and Puerto Rico Teacher Union Leaders After Today's UFT Delegate Assembly

There's a lot of skulduggery around the relationship between the AFT/UFT and the FMPR, which was once the major teacher union in Puerto Rico. The FMPR pulled out of the AFT and then was sued by the AFT, which lost the suit. That's the skinny. I had been working on a comprehensive blog to explain it all but got distracted over the past 10 days, so that will have to wait. But looking forward to hanging out tonight with the leaders of the FMPR.
Norm (I'm starting to sign some of my stuff since some readers think my name is ed notes.)

FMPR Panel for tonight - following DA

Dark Horse Pub

17 Murray St - downtown NYC

Down the block from City Hall

6pm meet and mingle

6:30 discussion

Our Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico panel:

Mercedes Martinez the President of FMPR, is a ESL teacher with a bachelor's degree in general arts from the Social Sciences Faculty and a bachelor's in ESL. she has 39 graduate credits in ESL. A teacher in the DOE since 2007 and immediately joined the FMPR. Participated in all the strikes, protests and activities in our union. Mercedes created a bond and organized parents throughout the years in defense of public education, fighting against school closures. She mobilized teachers, against labor injustices committed by the DOE and has prevailed through many struggles.

Edwin Morales, Vice President of FMPR, has a a bachelors degree in Economy from the University of Puerto Rico and is currently finishing his master's degree. He joined the DOE in 2009 as a Math teacher, and the FMPR the same year. He was the representative from our Area II, which includes 7 cities in our country. He has led fights against school closures in San Lorenzo and prevailed. Edwin has been involved in all of our struggles in defense of public education. He led the boycott with other teachers in his school against standardized testing where 65% of the total of the students participated in the opt out movement.

Ana Guzman is the current Secretary-Treasurer of the FMPR. She has a bachelor's degree in sociology, and a master's degree in ESL. She joined the DOE in 2002 and the FMPR in 2004. She has occupied different rank and file positions in our union, as secretary of the Local Union of Carolina. Ana participated actively in all of our strikes, protests, and activities and has led a massive boycott of the standardized tests in her High School, for two years, where the participation of the students in all subjects evaluated has been under 45%. This has been possible due to her work with parents and students, explaining to them why we oppose to such tests.

Moderated by Mike Schirtzer- Social Studies teacher and UFT delegate from Goldstein HS in Brooklyn. He has been in MORE since it's founding, elected to the first steering committee, and organized the struggle to protect our immigrant youth in front of Chancellor Farina. He also led the fight against the last contract ; holding forums, organizing protests, and writing widely circulated articles. Mike helped form the high school committee of MORE which resulted in winning the high school division of the UFT. MORE/New Action now has 7 seats on the UFT Executive Board, with Mike being one of the elected representatives.