Students in Puerto Rico tired of attending classes in dilapidated public schools have used TikTok to expose the poor conditions in their buildings, putting education officials on the defensive amid renewed attention on a long-standing issue.
Alaisha Torres Soto, the senior class president at Luis Felipe Crespo High School in Camuy, said she was compelled to use TikTok to report the “poor conditions” of the bathrooms at her school earlier this month after not seeing any improvements.
One TikTok video shows a bathroom in such bad shape that it was locked and had an “entrance prohibited” sign, forcing students to leave school to go to a bathroom or wait until they get home when classes are over.
Torres Soto’s TikTok post about one run-down bathroom at her school resonated with students at other schools. Videos from students across the public school system posted and shared widely on social media showed abandoned school areas and bathrooms without soap or toilet paper, sinks draining straight to the floor, and dangling bathroom stall doors.
The videos use the phrase “uniforme completo” (full uniform) to poke fun at the irony of teachers and principals who are overly concerned about students’ correctly wearing school uniforms when school buildings are in disrepair.
“This not new. This is years in the making,” Torres Soto told NBC News in Spanish. “It’s not just my school; it’s most of the schools in the public system of Puerto Rico.”
“This is a violation of our rights,” she said.
Miguel Rivera, a teacher at a public school in Bayamón and a representative of the Puerto Rico Teachers Federation union, said he wasn’t particularly surprised by the deteriorating conditions of the schools shown on social media.
Rivera shared with NBC News over 100 reports the union has received from its members about neglected and deteriorating buildings across the island in 2023.
Rivera cited the case of a student who attended a school with bathrooms in such poor conditions that…
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