Award of Excellence: Here I Dreamed
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.
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A billboard in a hallway at Escuela Elemental Alfonso Lopez Garcia in Dorado reads, “Good Work”. Julia Keleher, Philadelphia native appointed Puerto Rico Secretary of Education in 2016, was the architect behind many of the school closures. In 2019, she resigned from her role. “I regret the pain that [closures] caused communities,” Keleher said at a press conference in 2019 following her announcement that she would be stepping down. “But somebody had to be the responsible adult in the room.” Keleher was arrested and imprisoned in 2021 on account of conspiracy to commit fraud during her time as secretary.
