The Senate of Puerto Rico today endorsed a resolution proposing to investigate the destination, use, administration and status of all public schools closed between January 2011 and January 2021 despite an attempt by the Democratic People’s Party (PPD) to limit the number of planters who could be part of the investigation.
The measure – authored by the senator of the Puerto Rican Independentist Party (PIP), Maria de Lourdes Santiago– had the unanimous support of the legislature.
“The resolution of my authorship proposes that an investigation be conducted into the destination, use, administration and status of public schools closed between January 2011 and January this year. However, the tragedy The closure of schools began much earlier, according to colleagues in a report sent to our offices by the Center for Habitat Reconstruction, from 2007 to 2018, closed 44% of public educational spaces and this process began to accelerate — after 2011, ”the senator said during the due to the chamber.
Prior to its approval, the spokesman for the majority of the Popular Democratic Party (PPD), Javier Aponte Dalmau, tried to amend the measure to eliminate allusions to former governor Alejandro García Padilla and then-governor Ricardo Rosselló. In addition, the amendments left in the hands of the Senate the number of closed schools that would be investigated. However, the amendments proposed by Aponte Dalmau were defeated. The legislative minorities that included in Santiago, the independent senator Jose Vargas Vidot, the delegation of the New Progressive Party (PNP), the senators of the Movement Citizen Victory (MVC) and the senator of the Dignity Project voted against the amendments proposed by the majority delegation of the PPP.
The PIP legislator alluded to the closure of the Lola Rodríguez de Uncle School in Carolina where a vocational school for students with functional diversity was closed, those who were later relocated to other schools “that do not meet their needs.”
According to the legislator, a study by Puerto Rican economist José Caraballo Cueto, the 2017-2019 school closure left a balance of 58,606 students displaced. The scholar also proposed that the closure of the plantations during this period allocated $ 34 million to government coffers. However, maintenance of these facilities increased to $ 311.7 million, the legislature said.
Santiago also argued that, according to a report by the Center for Investigative Journalism, of 460 schools closed, only 4% generated revenue for the state. “The closures did not respond to any pedagogical, planning or community considerations,” he said.
For his part, the neo-progressive senator Henry Neumann supported the Santiago measure and questioned the number of schools closed during the past four years. “The worst he committed [la exsecretaria del Departamento de Educación, Julia Keleher] and one thing that is not understood in any civilized society is the closure of schools. A government should try to bring education closer to the student, ”Neumann mentioned.
While the neo-progressive senator Carmelo Ríos called for the evaluation of these plants to be accelerated so that they can be reused. “For me it’s not a matter of whether the ones from before failed or the ones from now is: how do we solve it?” Rius argued.