July 6th
I talked to education guy at Proyecto Aldea Global, who told me that he would help with the library, and would also be open to being interviewed for my research. He said that I should have a meeting of the community members, and that it could stay in the same community regardless of whether the teachers change. He also said that all in all it would take about a week to set up. I doubt his optimism because off all the security and internet issues. But its nice to hear someone who knows what hes doing say that he would help. That way I know I can ask him questions when I go to start setting things up.

July 7th
Today I sat in on a meeting of the community members (about 50 mothers and not a few babies), the teachers, a representative of the PROHECO and the teachers' lawyer. I learned a few things about the structure of the school and the way everything works around here.

First of all, the school doesn't really get any funding except for to pay the teachers. And sometimes to buy new books. All other work, painting, repairs, small construction projects...all comes directly out of the pockets of the community. The school is run under a project called PROHECO, which basically stands for community involvement in the administration of schools. Only some of the schools in Honduras are part of the project. I think (I'll have to research this more) that it's funded in part by the World Bank. In any case, this school is partly funded by the World Bank. And so they argued that the government really didn't have the ability to void their contracts like they said they did. The teachers haven't been paid in months. Normally, WB and government funds get pooled and the teachers take their paycheck out of them, but these teachers haven't been able to get the money because the government said they were no longer eligible.

According to some papers published by the ECO, that the community members promptly produced in the meeting, an assembly has to be called before the ECO can do anything like changing the teachers. And they hadn't done that. In the meeting last week with the guy at the mayor's office, that was one of their demands. And that was why the 'Promotor' was there at the meeting today.

Many parents wanted to keep the teachers totally, but the Promotor (representative of the ECO) didn't want to. He said that it was a decision that 'came from above,' from politics rather than logic. BUT, one of the teachers, who I was sitting next to, told me that he definitely had the power to change that decision. Just that he might be punished. He just wasn't willing to stand up to them. It was really clear that what was happening was not necessarily legal, but rather just political. Which means that they couldn't really bring it to court, because the politics controls the courts.

At the meeting, the Promotor was on his heels, and stayed seated most of the time. A few of the community members really pushed him around. One of the big points of the final resolution was respect: that the ECO respect its own rules and that it respect the community with which it worked.

The final compromise, because it is true that in the end the politics are more powerful than a group like the ECO, was that the teachers would stay this year (and be paid for the months they worked for free) and that next year they would re negotiate contracts or bring in new teachers. But if new teachers do come, they have to be qualified.

On Friday, the teachers are re-negotiating their contracts.