Puerto Rico to close 179 public schools after declaring a form of bankruptcy
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico is closing 179 public schools in a move expected to save more than $7 million US amid an economic crisis that has sparked an exodus of residents to the U.S. mainland in the past decade, officials said Friday.
About 27,000 students will be moved elsewhere when their schools close at the end of May, said newly appointed Education Secretary Julia Keleher.
“We have a fiscal crisis and few resources and we’ve spent 10 years handing out nearly $3 billion in a system that hardly has any books,” she said. “We cannot keep doing what we’re doing because we don’t have the resources.”
The news about the school closings raised concerns it could speed up the ongoing exodus from Puerto Rico. Nearly 450,000 people over the last decade have left for Florida and other parts of the U.S. mainland to flee the worsening economic crisis.
Officials initially had said 184 schools were closing.
The shutdown of schools announced Friday will be the largest mass closure of schools in the island’s history, with officials saying it will in part lead to millions of dollars in savings a year for an education department that represent nearly 30 per cent of Puerto Rico’s total budget of $9 billion.
The school closures were announced days after Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said the unincorporated U.S. territory in the Caribbean Sea was embracing a bankruptcy-like process as it struggles to restructure $73 billion in public debt.
The decision to resolve a portion of the debt in court is the largest effort ever made by a U.S. government to shield itself from creditors. It’s unknown how long the process will take, although local government officials believe it could be resolved in four years.
Overall, Puerto Rico has $73 billion in public debt, accumulated in part by previous administrations borrowing money to cover budget deficits. By comparison, the U.S. city of Detroit had less than $20 billion in debts when it filed for bankruptcy in 2013, which was the biggest U.S. municipal bankruptcy ever.