Puerto Rico’s Debt Crisis Claims Another Casualty: Its Schools

There has been an exodus of families from Puerto Rico in the face of its economic collapse, so Luis Santaella School has a big problem: Only 146 children are enrolled compared with about 250 in the past, The New York Times reported today. Like 178 other schools across the island, it is set to close after the last day of the school term this week, in part to help Puerto Rico battle a $123 billion debt. The school will join the many casualties of a fiscal crisis that forced Puerto Rico to declare a form of bankruptcy last week and caused hundreds of thousands of people to leave the island in the past decade. The school will join the shuttered businesses and abandoned homes as yet another indicator of the emergency gripping Puerto Rico and the desperate efforts to stop the hemorrhaging. For some, the closings represent not just another chip at Puerto Rico’s national budget, but also an opportunity to transform a struggling education system in which some schools are infested with termites, enrollment has dropped by nearly a third since 2010, and just 10 percent of eighth graders passed the standardized math test. But for parents, the cuts feel both catastrophic and capricious. The oversight board has warned that the government must save up to $40 million a month, suggesting that about 300 schools close and that teachers be furloughed two days a month. The plan is less draconian than the one the fiscal board had suggested. The consolidation is not just about saving money, but improving student performance and empowering local officials to be accountable for what happens at their schools. If two $1 million schools merge, the new $2 million school can afford computer labs that twice as many students could use.