The empty desks were counted 18 years ago, in the birth ward

Puerto Rico is not closing schools out of malice; it is closing them because the children were never born and the families left, and the only real fix is more children.

Valeria Soto Marrero

Columnist, La Isla Que Viene

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Another round of school closures is in the news, and the read here is the same one I keep coming back to: the empty desks were counted long before any official signed a closure order. The Department of Education proposed closing 83 schools by 2026, affecting 18,644 students.^[2]^[3] The anger is easy. The arithmetic is harder, and the arithmetic is what tells the truth.