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But the David Corea Sánchez public school has yet to receive even a piece of chalk from the Education Ministry, the government institution supposedly responsible for its administration. Unfulfilled promises Despite government promises of more school supplies and pay bonuses for teachers — detailed in a July 12 accord with the nation’s teachers in return for which they lifted a massive strike that kept a million students in grades 1-11 out of school from May through mid-July — and strategies as extreme as taking over airports and highways, little seems to have changed. The Congress has only agreed comply with the Law of the Statute of the Teacher of 1998, outlining minimum salaries, paid vacations, and pay raises for public school teachers, through the end of 2006. The strike was motivated by the government’s declaration that it would stop paying "quinquenios," one-time US$30 bonuses given to teachers for every five years of work completed, and $170 bonuses to teachers who graduated from the national teachers’ university — rights guaranteed by the law. Situations similar to that of the school in Villa Nueva are common throughout Honduras, said Sergio Rivera, leader of the Guild of Middle School Teachers of Honduras (Copemh), the country’s second-largest teachers’ union. Still awaiting checks "(The students) often do not even have notebooks and they arrive (at school) without having eaten," he said. "They talk about a school snack — it consists of single cookie." Illiteracy and primary education indices for Honduras are among the worst in Latin America, surpassed only by neighbors Nicaragua and Guatemala; the average salary of a Honduran public school teacher, about $310 a month, is 25 percent lower than the salaries of teachers in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, although higher than the average teacher’s salary in Nicaragua. Three thousand teachers are still awaiting checks from last February, said Manuel Palma, secretary of conflicts for Copemh. The Education Ministry has said it will pay the teachers their overdue salaries and bonuses on Dec. 20. Héber Mejía, public relations assistant for the Education Ministry, said the pay delay was due to "an administrative impasse." Teachers and parents say the problem is simpler — instead of going to education, government revenues go into politicians’ campaigns and pockets. "That is the problem in our country, everything is politicized. Who is suffering? We are and the children are," teacher Euceda said. According to Rivera, it is only a matter of time before the teachers take to the streets again: he said the legislature’s current cooperation with teachers’ demands is merely a way to avoid making unpopular decisions in an election year. Primaries for presidential and congressional candidacies take place February 2005; general elections will be held in November. He predicted that in 2007, the Congress, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut government spending, will try once again to take away the teachers’ bonuses. Fear of privatization In the event of another strike, teachers may not be able to count on the support of organized labor that supported them last time around. Though Honduras Workers Union, the Single Federation of Honduran Workers and the Popular Block — an umbrella organization representing everything from municipal governments to shoemakers’ unions — were all deeply involved in the May-July strike, many of their members were motivated more by fear that the government, under IMF pressure, was going to privatize public schools than by sympathy for the teachers’ salary demands. Mejía said that fear is misplaced. There were never plans to end free universal education, only to decentralize public school administration, he said. Other unions are put off by the teachers’ apparent lack of concern for how their strategies affect other workers. By shutting down highways and effectively stalling trade, said Germán Castro, assistant secretary general of the Federation of Labors Unions of Honduras (FSLH), the teachers "directly hurt others that have nothing to do" with their demands. Whether or not the teachers will have support for their future labor actions, it is clear is that educational levels of Honduran schools need to be addressed. According to UNESCO, the average 5-year-old in Honduras, Nicaragua, or Guatemala has a 15 percent worse chance of finishing primary school than a five-year-old in Chile, Argentina, or Mexico. And while education in Honduras is quite equal between genders, with girls at a slight advantage, rural areas lag far behind urban areas. A 2002 study of third- and sixth-graders by the national teachers university and the Education Ministry found that nearly 90 percent of students in both grades had an achievement level classified as "low." There is some hope. In the 2005 school year, all 1.3 million of Honduras’ primary school students will receive brand-new Spanish and math textbooks thanks to Education for All (EFA), a joint $80 million program for Honduras’ Education Ministry funded by the World Bank and eleven other bilateral and multilateral donors. A new curriculum developed though EFA was ready earlier this year, but the strike prevented its implementation. Rivera, however, said that a permanent solution to Honduras’ educational problems requires a fundamental change in national economic strategy. "The government is implementing the cruelest of economic models," he said. Given that Honduras has signed the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), such a change seems unlikely.