Blog

Your Education Road Map

Politics K-12®

Politics K-12 kept watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: Federal, States.

Federal

Betsy DeVos to Visit Schools in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

By Andrew Ujifusa — November 08, 2017 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

UPDATED

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is visiting Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to see schools’ recovery efforts after damage caused by recent hurricanes.

DeVos will visit the Escuela Libre de Música Ernesto Ramos Antonini in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Wednesday, and then Charlotte Amalie High School on St. Thomas later in the day. She is slated to meet Puerto Rico Secretary of Education Julia Keleher, as well as the president of the University of the Virgin Islands, David Hall, during her trip. It’s the first time the secretary has visited the U.S. territories since Hurricane Maria struck roughly six weeks ago.

On Wednesday, Keleher’s office reported that there were 614 schools open on the island, a little more than half of the total number of public schools in Puerto Rico.

We traveled to Puerto Rico in early October to document how educators and the island’s school system were coping with Hurricane Maria’s aftermath, as well as how they were aiding general recovery efforts. Schools are reopening on the island, although many are doing so without electricity. For the first few weeks after the storm, schools that did reopen were largely serving as community centers.

Click here for our collection of stories and images from Puerto Rico.

DeVos’ visit to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands is listed on her public schedule, which was updated this week for the first time since mid-October.

Related Tags:

A version of this news article first appeared in the Politics K-12 blog.