Puerto Rico Seven Months Later: Disaster Relief for Education, Too
by René Spellman
April 20 marked seven months since Hurricane Maria — seven months since power, communications, transportation, and business were halted across Puerto Rico, hundreds of thousands of people had no access to clean water, and nearly 60,000 homes had no roofs.
The anniversary brought with it a new round of recovery from the largest blackout in US History. That week, a work crew accidentally cut power to all 3 million residents of Puerto Rico. And just a week before, a tree took down a transmission line that had left over 800,000 customers of the government-run power company in the dark. The breaking news alerts of blackouts flashed across mainland cable news screens as a sobering reminder of the unprecedented damage within our own country.
At end of March, I visited Puerto Rico for the first time since the hurricane, and my arrival coincided with the US Army Corps of Engineers’ installation of their very last blue tarp roof for families needing shelter. “FEMA Blue” — the sea of blue I saw from the air while flying in to the island — quite literally covered some of the neighborhoods where I was about to volunteer. These tens of thousands of temporary ceilings last only four to eight weeks.
With basic needs still being met, and hurricane season starting again on June 1, what we must not forget in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria is that Puerto Rico’s education system faces an ongoing struggle, as well.
As a volunteer, I joined CAA client and former US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and two dozen of my former colleagues from the Obama Administration on a service trip to Puerto Rico to help two schools in Cataño. Working with local nonprofit ConPRmetidos and mainland company Yoobi, we painted walls and benches; built playgrounds; donated Yoobi classroom supplies; coached basketball, volleyball, hopscotch and more; and did our best at making structural repairs to an elementary school. (Note to self: Practice both basic construction skills and Puerto Rican Spanish before the next trip!)
Here’s what we saw:
1. Kids, even in disaster zones, are still kids! — and they absolutely loved playing Twister, hopscotch, and basketball with our team of volunteers. Arne Duncan, a former professional basketball player, spent hours coaching girls and boys through drills and pickup games. And to bring even more cheer, we painted brightly colored playground games and taught group after group how to skip, jump, and run through some childhood favorites. Recess lasted nearly all day after that. We stressed over making straight lines and perfect angles, but in the end, the kids simply loved the colors, new supplies, repaired structures, and playtime.
2. School is more than a place for studying — for the students we met, it’s a shelter with a real roof, a place to charge cell phones, and a place to smile and laugh with your friends. “What [the students] didn’t expect was what came after the hurricane: They were left without classes, without houses, without food, the family dispersed, no Internet, no refrigerator, no power,” teacher Wendy Calderon told USAToday. As important as these schools are to the community, only on May 1 did the US Department of Education finally announce forthcoming federal disaster relief.
3. Students are leaving — as families flee Puerto Rico and government funding has been scarce, school enrollment is tanking. The week after we left Puerto Rico, their education department decided to shut down a quarter of all public schools. The school we helped will stay open and welcome students from a nearby neighborhood in the fall. While we’re glad that our repairs and refurbishments will be enjoyed by more students, we know there’s a ton of work ahead to acclimate young children to new schools in the midst of everything that’s already happening in their lives.
4. Arts and fun are the universal language of happiness — while both Spanish and English are the official languages of Puerto Rico, none of the teachers nor most of students spoke English. But through a willing translator, Justin Wolff, Chief Giving Officer of Yoobi (a one-for-one school supply company), announced a donation of enough arts and crafts supplies for not just the 700 kids at the schools we served, but also for 15,000 students across all of Puerto Rico. A true highlight of the trip was drawing and playing with the students whose school supplies were already low before the hurricane hit.
And if you’re interested in seeing for yourself, here’s what you can do to help:
1) Go! Puerto Rico is open for business — its hotels are open, cell service is at full strength, and the beaches are beautiful. It’s true that power is an ongoing struggle. It’s true that landline phones are hard to come by. But the island needs your tourism, and will pay you back in all the mofongo and sun that you can handle.
2) Volunteer! There’s still so much to do. Local initiatives like Connect Relief and Generation Gives in Vieques, Puerto Rico will gladly accept your time and skills (especially if you’re better than we were at construction).
3) Donate! If you can’t make it to Puerto Rico this year, send your dollars there instead. The local organization that hosted our trip, ConPRmetidos, has a Puerto Rico Real Time Recovery Fund to finance immediate and long-term infrastructure that will create a stable, productive, and self-sufficient Puerto Rico.
