Public schools will play an important role in building and sustaining the recovery of Puerto Rico. Equally important, parents see public schools as centers of their communities, helping their children deal with the trauma of the storm and providing them with the resources and knowledge they can use to build a better life.

That's why it's so disturbing that the Governor's education proposal would close down over 300 public schools and force charters and vouchers on Puerto Rican families. His dangerous proposal would defund, destabilize and destroy neighborhood public schools, not strengthen them. This is the wrong kind of change and would further set back Puerto Rico's economy.

The Governor's education proposal ignores the broad and sweeping trend in the United States to put a hold on charters. Many communities have put a moratorium on establishing more charters because many have failed and many have been caught up in fraud and fiscal mismanagement.

Consider the following:

In Ohio, the FBI in 2014 raided a string of charter schools run by a company called Concept Schools because of widespread fiscal mismanagement.

A 2015 Stanford University study found that charter schools perform significantly worse than neighborhood public schools

In Florida, a charter school manager in 2017 was charged with racketeering and theft by diverting $1 million in funds from the school for his own personal use.

In 2016, a Massachusetts state ballot initiative to increase charters was rejected almost 2-1 by voters, despite the fact that hedge funds, including one of the largest vulture funds attacking Puerto Rico, spent millions of dollars that were not disclosed.

In 2017, the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) passed a motion calling for a moratorium on charters until governance and accountability issues can be fixed.

Why would the Governor ignore this trend and try to import this kind of failure and fraud to the island of Puerto Rico? The last thing Puerto Rico need is the educational equivalent of Whitefish. It defies any logic that the Governor wants to spend money on charter schools that have failed in large numbers in the United States.

There's a better way and the right kind of change. We must first ensure that the existing neighborhood public school system in Puerto Rico is well funded and invests in evidence-based programs that are successful. Programs like making sure students social, health and emotional needs are met. It means treating teachers as professionals and making sure they have the time, tools, trust and training to be effective. It means creating schools that are hubs of their communities, providing students with wrap around services and career and technical education. And, always, it means learning from systems that have successfully improved their schools.

We need the right kind of change, not the wring kind. The Puerto Rican people have suffered enough.

Governor, together we can work toward the right kind of change - change that will stabilize teaching and learning in public schools and help the future of Puerto Rico thrive. The Puerto Rican people deserve this after enduring so much.

I hope you will work with us to make that happen.

*The author is president of the American Federation of Teachers.