The president of the Dominican Association of Professors, Olimpia Gonzalez rejected the findings of a recent study commissioned by Minister of Education Milagros Ortiz Bosch and funded by the US Agency for International Development. The study said that the two biggest enemies of public education in the DR were the politics that corrode the Ministry of Education itself and the public school teachers union. Consultant Jorge Sanguinetty said that the constant wage increase and other labor benefit struggles of the teachers union and political issues occupy most of the attention of the unionized professors and the employees at the Ministry of Education. He said the Ministry of Education has always given the impression that it is a source of political power to grant jobs and nurture political patronage. According to the study, there is a monopoly of public school education and curiously it is privatized by the political and union interests of the teachers. "They want to become teachers because they desperately need a job, but they are bearers of the deficiencies of public schools from where they come themselves. This is a drama that the influential sectors of Dominican society cannot ignore," says Sanguinetty in the report. He said that the press and society have been indifferent to the problem until now.
