The 2017 School year began Monday, March 13, and it started out crazy!!! We still haven’t fully recovered yet…

So, a little back info – teachers don’t contract with public schools directly here. Once they are certified teachers, they contract with local governments who place them in schools. Now they can request a specific school and often start at a school and remain there unless they request to leave, but ultimately the local government has the authority to pull them and place them elsewhere.

Sooo, Friday before classes began, the local government officially pulled 11 of our staff and placed them in other locations. We had heard rumors of something happening, but didn't realize that was going to happen. The staff they took were ALL of our teachers that work in the special ed inclusion classrooms, 2 of our regular elementary school teachers, our physical therapist, and our school secretary. This left us seriously short-handed, so all of us that don’t actually have a classroom of students have had to cover these classrooms because there is literally no one else left.

This of course caused a very awkward and disruptive start to the school year, and parents are NOT happy. But, after many meetings, getting news stations and newspapers involved, parents protesting in front of the local government, and visits from the local government, we are slowly recuperating from this craziness. 5 of our staff have been returned to us thus far, but we are still short. Thankfully the teacher for the 5th grade special ed class our school psychologist and I were covering returned Wednesday, so I was able to actually start focusing on getting organized and ready to start working with the Deaf students.

We are still short a 1st grade teacher and a 4th grade teacher for the regular elementary school, 2 teachers for special ed classrooms, and our school secretary. Please Pray for us as our school director, Ana, keeps trying to work with the head of the department that places teachers to get our teachers back!

#peru #deafministry #missions #provision