Senate to investigate the use and status of closed schools

The Senate of Puerto Rico today passed a resolution proposing to investigate the destination, use, administration and status of everyone public schools are closed between January 2011 and January 2021 despite an attempt by the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) to limit the number of schools that could be part of the survey.

The measure – written by the senator of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), Mary of Lourdes Santiago– It had the unanimous support of the legislative body.

“My authorship resolution proposes to conduct an investigation into the destination, use, management and status of public schools that closed between January 2011 and January this year. The Tragedy of School Closure started much earlier, however, as colleagues will have seen in a report sent to our offices by the Center for Habitat Reconstruction from 2007 to 2018, 44% of public education spaces were closed and that process began to accelerate after 2011, ” said the senator during the due date in the conference room.

Ahead of the approval, Popular Democratic Party (PPD) majority spokesman Javier Aponte Dalmau attempted to change the measure to dispel allusions to former Governor Alejandro García Padilla and then Governor Ricardo Rosselló. In addition, the amendments left the number of closed schools to be investigated in the hands of the Senate. However, the amendments proposed by Aponte Dalmau were rejected. The legislative minorities including Santiago, the independent senator José Vargas Vidot, the delegation of the New Progressive Party (PNP), the senators of the Movimiento Victoria Ciudadana (MVC) and the senator of the Dignity Project voted against the majority amendments proposed by the delegation of the PPD.

The PIP legislator alluded to the closure of the Lola Rodríguez de Tío School in Carolina where a vocational school for students with functional diversity was closed, who were later transferred to other schools “not meeting their needs”.

According to the legislature, a study by Puerto Rican economist José Caraballo Cueto, the school’s closure from 2017 to 2019 left a balance of 58,606 students. Likewise, the academic stated that the closure of the schools brought in $ 34 million to the treasury during that period. However, maintenance of these facilities increased to $ 311.7 million, the legislature said.

Likewise, Santiago argued that according to a report by the Center for Investigative Journalism of 960 closed schools generated only 4% revenue for the state. “The closures did not respond to any consideration or pedagogy, planning or community,” he denounced.

For his part, new progressive Senator Henry Neumann backed Santiago’s move and questioned the number of schools that had been closed in the past four years. ‘The worst he has committed [la exsecretaria del Departamento de Educación, Julia Keleher] and something that is not understood in any civilized society is the closure of schools. A government must try to bring education closer to the student, ”said Neumann.

While the new progressive Senator Carmelo Ríos asked to speed up the evaluation of these schools so that they can be reused. “For me the question is not whether they failed before or now, it is: how do we solve that?”, Argued Ríos.

We recommend that you:

We recommend that you listen to this episode of the Con Los Editores podcast when you return to in-person lessons:

.Source