As scores of public school teachers marched in San Juan Thursday to demand the reopening of their schools, US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos visited Puerto Rico to further the ongoing project of converting the island’s public schools into for-profit charter schools.

The billionaire heiress who has long funded schemes to privatize public education met with Puerto Rico’s education secretary Julia Keleher, who is looking at post-Katrina New Orleans as the model for the US territory. The Bush administration and local Democratic Party authorities used the 2005 hurricane to lay off thousands of teachers and transform New Orleans into an all-charter school district.

Teachers march in San Juan Thursday (Source: Facebook Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico)

Members of the Federación de Maestros de Puerto Rico rallied at the headquarters of the Department of Education in San Juan to demand a meeting with Keleher. The FMPR union has charged Keleher with deliberately keeping many of the island’s schools closed, even after teachers and other volunteers have cleared them of debris and cleaned them, because she intends to permanently shutter them. Earlier this year Governor Ricardo Rosselló announced a plan to close 184 schools as part of a debt restructuring plan to pay off the vulture funds that control much of the island’s more than $70 billion in bond debt.

Puerto Rican Schools were badly damaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. They began to reopen on October 23. Since then 614 out of 1,113 have reopened.