By The Star Staff
Incoming Transition Committee Chairman Ramón Luis Rivera Cruz said earlier this week that it doesn’t correspond to the committee to recommend to the governor-elect, Jenniffer González Colón, to close public schools on the island in anticipation of the decrease in students foreseen in the coming years.
“The committee doesn’t have the power for that,” Rivera Cruz said in a press conference Tuesday afternoon. “What the committee does is collect all the information, [and then] supplies the information, in a report to the new government so that the new guy has the scenario and establishes the public policy that they think is most reasonable.”
Rivera Cruz insisted that closing schools is not under consideration, but that decisions will have to be made based on the cost of maintaining facilities, human resources and student matriculation.
“Even in a reorganization of students, that does not happen overnight. That can take two or three years,” he said. “Everything will depend on the demographic condition in the area. We are not talking about closing schools. … I could see if the population, by 2028, drops to 184,000 students, then there could be a redistribution of students, because, for example, it could reach a place where there are 10, 15 or 20 students [in a school]. Well, look, we are going to put them in the school that is next door so that they are with a larger population and learn more, their performance is better, and [we] maximize resources as well because then [we are] taking advantage of the teachers. Sometimes we say that there is difficulty in hiring teachers; well, look, there we have a great opportunity to maximize all those resources.”
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