Several years ago, Polk County recruited teachers from Puerto Rico to help out with its Spanish-speaking students. 

  • Polk County teacher visits family in Puerto Rico post-Maria
  • Giovani Ortiz teaches at Southwest Middle School
  • Family in Puerto Rico are without power, access to money challenging

Now those teachers are having to teach their classes and also provide for their families back on the island who are suffering.

Southwest Middle School teacher Giovani Ortiz is one of them.

He’s from Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, a town in the valley of mountains on the island’s southeast corner. It’s where Hurricane Maria made landfall.

He went there after the hurricane hit to check on his family. He saw many homes and roofs destroyed.

"I suffered there with them for five days and when I left," Ortiz said. "I remember that I left crying because I knew I was leaving them in that dire situation."  

No one he knows in Yabucoa has power, and people have to leave town just to get out a phone call.

"I can't call my mom. Every Saturday, Sunday we talk," Ortiz said. "My dad, it’s football season. We love football. I can't talk to him about football. It kills me a little bit."

His family survives off of a meager monthly social security check and accessing that money is challenging.

"My uncle did a five-hour wait time at a bank. All burned from the sun. And when it was his turn, no more money [left],” Ortiz said.

When his family can get ahold of some cash, he said they have to waste a lot of it on eating out, if they have the energy to wait in the lines. Ortiz said he’s worried there are days his family isn’t eating or perhaps surviving off of one meal a day. He tried to get them a generator so they could operate their refrigerator.

"I sent it last week, last Saturday, priority mail and they told me it was going to arrive Tuesday," Ortiz said. "And right now it still has not arrived. It's a big issue what’s going on down there. Mail is being lost. It's a mess."

As an English as a Second Language teacher, Ortiz also has the responsibility of helping students who have evacuated from the island. He has two new students already.

"I just tell them we're in this together," he said. "I try to make them comfortable in this situation. It’s going to be hard for them coming to a new school, a new place, some of them, their English is not so good.”

As for evacuating his own family, he's trying to work that out.

"They need cash, especially my mom dad, my brother my grandma, and financially the salary that teachers make, I got to survive [and] at the same time try to help them out,” Ortiz said.

Anyone who would like to help out his family and any others in his town is asked to call (787) 922-4580.