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.
“You all are excellent, we love you and wish you success in your new school,” reads a message in a hallway at Escuela Elemental Alfonso Lopez Garcia in Dorado. Teachers left notes for their former pupils on whiteboards, in hallways and online in Facebook pages. School closures fractured bonds between teachers and students.