{"id":32249,"date":"2015-12-05T09:06:03","date_gmt":"2015-12-05T09:06:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/?p=32249"},"modified":"2015-12-05T09:06:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-05T09:06:03","slug":"st-croix-federation-of-teachers-to-stage-demonstration-at-government-house-in-christiansted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.viconsortium.com\/?p=32249","title":{"rendered":"St. Croix Federation Of Teachers To Stage Demonstration At Government House In Christiansted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. CROIX &#8212; The St. Croix Federation of Teachers, AFT-Local 1826, has issued a call to action to &#8220;all ATF members and stakeholders,&#8221; asking that they band together for a demonstration at Government House here on Tuesday, to &#8220;revive education in the Virgin Islands and get back to the bargaining table,&#8221; according to a release AFT issued on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>No other information was divulged in the short press release, which ended by stating, &#8220;your voice matters, silence is betrayal,&#8221; quoting Martin Luther King using bold, red text.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a while since AFT staged a demonstration, but it comes as many have been asking when the Federation would take action on teacher&#8217;s behalf, many of whom have left the territory in search of better opportunities elsewhere &#8212; \u00a0most of them on the U.S. mainland, where many states pay far better salaries.<\/p>\n<p>In October, a teacher who spoke\u00a0to The Consortium on the condition of anonymity to speak freely on the matter, said teachers have been mistreated by the Government of the Virgin Islands in regards to their wages, and the money deducted from the paychecks every fortnight. Coupled with the fact that teachers haven\u2019t received a raise in the territory for multiple years \u2014 even after contracts were negotiated between 2009-2010 \u2014 local educators have either <span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><a style=\"color: #3366ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/featured\/doe-importing-teachers-from-dominican-republic-philippines-and-puerto-rico-as-shortage-amplifies\/\" target=\"_blank\">left the territory for better-paying<\/a><\/span>\u00a0jurisdictions, or quit the field altogether.<\/p>\n<p>And in August, the\u00a0head of Human Resources at the Department of Education, Nicole Jacobs, <span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><a style=\"color: #3366ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/business\/education-crisis-over-70-teachers-have-resigned-or-retired-since-june\/\" target=\"_blank\">revealed<\/a><\/span> to The Consortium that over 70 teachers had\u00a0either resigned or retired from the DOE since June.\u00a0Jacobs also confirmed that the department had been receiving resignations through emails for the entire week beginning August 10, 2015 at an alarming rate.<\/p>\n<p>The Department saw 6 resignations and 20 retirements here, and in the St. Thomas-St. John District, 19 teachers resigned and 26 retired \u2014 a total of 71 educators \u2014 between June 19 to August 8 of 2015.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis does not include anything that I\u2019ve received this week,\u201d Jacobs said then, referring to resignations she had been receiving via email of teachers who had already left the territory. \u201cIf you don\u2019t report back to school you will be terminated; so you don\u2019t want that on your record, but it does not negate the fact that [being a teacher] is not a profession that you can just fill the positions.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Left in a crisis following the resignations, DOE moved to import\u00a038 teachers from the Dominican Republic and the Philippines (the breakdown per country was not revealed).<\/p>\n<p>The imported educators were hired to\u00a0instruct students in physical education, social studies, math and science, according to a DOE press release. The release also made known that there were 120 teachers in the department\u2019s current substitute pool (territory-wide) who would be used throughout both districts. And DOE said it was in talks with Education officials in Puerto Rico to begin recruiting teachers from the nearby island to the territory.<\/p>\n<p>The Consortium will cover the event, which begins at 4:00 p.m. and runs until 6:00 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ST. CROIX &#8212; The St. Croix Federation of Teachers, AFT-Local 1826, has issued a call to action to &#8220;all ATF members and stakeholders,&#8221; asking that they band together for a demonstration at Government House here on Tuesday, to &#8220;revive education in the Virgin Islands and get back to the bargaining table,&#8221; according to a release [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[228,1078,11,191,2474,147],"tags":[1480,71,4035,121],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>St. Croix Federation Of Teachers To Stage Demonstration At Government House In Christiansted - V.I. 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