4. Conditions at the Closed School Buildings
Physical Conditions and Current Use of Closed Schools Communities across Puerto Rico are wrestling with what to do with over 650 closed school buildings. “There hasn’t been a study or plan for how to use the closed school buildings. They haven’t considered what the community needs and how to plan the reuse,” reported one leader. A Pew Charitable Trust study of closed school buildings in US states revealed that the longer schools are closed, the more difficult they are to repurpose; it also explained that school buildings in general are challenging to turn into any other use given their size and layout, including wide hallways and shared bathrooms.54 Most closed school buildings in Puerto Rico are still unused and have become blighted. In many cases, the closing of a school means more than the closing of a number of classrooms, a public library, or a cafeteria, but also the loss of theatres, playing fields, and other recreational and sport facilities. For example, out of the 673 schools that have closed since 2007, only 123 (18%) were formally contracted for reuse between 2014 and 2019. While some schools may have been leased or transferred prior to the public records being available beginning in 2014, the majority likely remain abandoned or without official use.
The Dr. Martin Grove Brumbaugh school in San Juan lies abandoned though structurally intact. The large inventory of empty schools has led some to demand that they be reopened in order to relocate students affected by schools left damaged by the earthquakes of January 2020.
FIGURE 7
Majority of Closed Schools Still Vacant Out of 144 visited school buildings, most (82) are vacant and have yet to be re-used.
25%
For the purpose of this report, researchers visited a random sample of 144 closed schools (out of 673 closed since 2007). The sample was selected from both official lists and press reports in order to assess their condition.55 Of these, 119 had been closed.56 In total, only a quarter of the closed schools (30 schools) have been reused for some new purpose. On the other hand, 82 (69%) of the remaining
69%
Vacant
Reused
6%
Undetermined
Puerto Rico’s Public School Closures
16
