More than half of Puerto Rico’s public schools have closed their doors in the last 10 years. Government officials justified the “consolidations,” saying hurricane damage and declining student enrollment necessitated them. In the years since, some schools have found new life as community centers, while others have been leased or sold. The majority of buildings, however, decompose like rotting corpses, their bones swaddled in nature’s eerie embrace, remnants of past lives slowly disintegrating into earth.
A gate is left open at Escuela Rosa M. Rodriguez in Vega Baja, where neighbors upkeep the school yard and utilize the space for community classes. In the absence of government action, some neighborhoods have taken it upon themselves to maintain the school grounds.