Chiapas teachers hired by the Public Education Secretariat (SEP) have been fighting for two years with the CNTE teachers’ union, which is preventing them from taking their posts.
The teachers completed the education and evaluation requirements to teach and were designated “ideal” by the SEP. But now they say that dissident teachers affiliated with the CNTE have prevented them from entering the schools, sometimes even physically removing them.
The CNTE is opposed to an education reform passed in 2013 that required teachers to be evaluated on hiring or during their tenure.
In 2017, a group of teachers and education advocacy group Mexicanos Primero requested injunctions against the CNTE and the government of Chiapas for having made illegal agreements since 2013.
One of the teachers, Mónica Pérez, was chosen by federal education authorities to become principal of a middle school in Pueblo Nuevo Solistahuacán over two years ago.
But for two years she hasn’t been able to start work because a member of the CNTE is in her position.
“We haven’t been able to take our positions because the CNTE here in Chiapas has been interfering with those of us who got our jobs the legal way,” she told Reforma. “We are being prevented from taking our jobs in every school in Chiapas.”
Another teacher, Vicente Asaad Vera, was promoted to be a coordinator of biology education in six public middle schools after 35 years as a teacher. But he says that for two years the CNTE has been preventing him from doing his job, which involves making sure the teachers in the six schools follow the biology curriculum.
“We took the tests, we were ideal candidates, we were at the top of the list, we got the jobs, but we’ve been waiting for the government to enforce the law,” he told Reforma. “While the CNTE was mobilizing, we were improving ourselves, but now we’re being pushed out, disparaged and ignored.”
The situation is not likely to change since a new education reform has replaced that of 2013. It discontinues the evaluation of teachers.
Source: Reforma (sp)
