Will Catholic Schools Support Strike or Keep Schools Open?

Barbara Flores

According to the release from the Roman Catholic Diocese, with managing authority for Catholic schools, “We believe that the safety of upwards of fifty thousand students in our care will be at risk, without the adequate supervision of our teachers.” But is there division between the church and its management? We ask this because Sister Barbara Flores says the contrary; that mechanisms are in place in the event of Monday’s strike.

Sister Barbara Flores, General Manager, RC School Management

“We will put into place contingencies in the event that we have teachers, many teachers, absent. Of course I want to say that the security of children is our number one priority; the security and safety of children. We are going to do everything we can to put a mechanism in place to ensure children safety but also to teach. And so that is the current position. As we know, Monday has been declared as a day for the strike to continue rather than begin. OUT 05:02

IN 06:09 it varies from district to district, school to school. I must say that the last, September nineteenth—the day of the rally—there were some schools that were opened. Now many schools would have had maybe less than half the population, but there were some schools. There was a district where just about every school was open and the administrators were in the school along with some teachers.”

According to Sister Flores, there are thirty-three thousand children across the country in Roman Catholic preschools and primary schools.