Weekly Update

_{Students in Puerto Rico have experienced a series of natural disasters in recent years, including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and landslides, followed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, that has interrupted learning on the island. Credit: Ricardo Arduengo/AFP via Getty Images}

In Puerto Rico, Trump’s campaign to dismantle the Department of Education has a particular bite

Maraida Caraballo Martinez has been an educator in Puerto Rico for 28 years and the principal of the elementary school Escuela de la Communidad Jaime C. Rodriguez for the past seven. She never knows how much money her school in Yabucoa will receive from the government each year because it isn’t based on the number of children enrolled. One year she got $36,000; another year, it was $12,000.

But for the first time as an educator, Caraballo noticed a big difference during the Biden administration. Because of an infusion of federal dollars into the island’s education system, Caraballo received a $250,000 grant, an unprecedented amount of money. She used it to buy books and computers for the library, white boards and printers for classrooms, to beef up a robotics program and build a multipurpose sports court for her students. “It meant a huge difference for the school,” Caraballo said.

Under President Joe Biden, there were tentative gains, buttressed by billions of dollars and sustained personal attention from top federal education officials, many experts and educators on the island said. Now they worry that it will all be dismantled with the change in the White House. President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the U.S. territory, having reportedly said that it was “dirty and the people were poor.” During his first term, he withheld billions of dollars in federal aid after Hurricane Maria and has suggested selling the island or swapping it for Greenland.

Trump is seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and has already made sweeping cuts to the agency, which will have widespread implications across the island. Even if federal funds — which last year made up more than two-thirds of funding for the Puerto Rican Department of Education, or PRDE — were transferred directly to the local government, it would likely lead to worse outcomes for the most vulnerable children, say educators and policymakers.

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