It is difficult to identify a more urgent responsibility for a government than educating the future generations of the society it serves. Along with healthcare and public safety, as well as an economy that provides the greatest opportunities to the largest number of people, public education is, or should be, any government’s highest priority.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case in Puerto Rico for generations. In addition to the corrupt practices and extreme politicization that have plagued the Department of Education for far too long, there are also serious administrative shortcomings that, let us remember, have kept the agency under federal oversight for more than five years.

A few days ago, these problems had rather drastic consequences: children were unable to get to school to receive the education they deserve. A multimillion-dollar debt owed to school transportation providers, which their trade association has been warning about for some time, forced one of the major companies to suspend operations, leaving hundreds of children without transportation to their respective schools.

This is unacceptable under any circumstances. The Department of Education has an unavoidable and urgent duty to identify any problems preventing it from meeting its obligations to these contractors and to ensure that no more students are deprived of their education simply because they cannot get to school.

The Department of Education, the largest and best-funded agency in the Puerto Rico government, should have more than enough resources to get to the root of this problem and resolve it without further setbacks.

Unfortunately, that has not been the case, either now or for quite some time.

In this latest instance, Tatito’s Transport Services, which provides transportation to schools in parts of Carolina, Trujillo Alto and San Juan, suspended its operations. Its owner, Reynaldo Molina, told this newspaper that the Department of Education owes him $700,000, leaving him without the funds to purchase fuel for his vehicles. Molina and other transportation providers’ representatives warned that if payment problems persist, more companies will be unable to continue providing services in the coming days.

Some reports have pointed to the government’s Enterprise Resource Planning system, known as ERP, as the source of these problems. The government has struggled to implement the platform, which is intended to manage payments to vendors. The Department of Education is not the only agency experiencing these difficulties, but it is one where their impact is more direct and immediate, particularly on vulnerable populations.

For example, this newspaper has reported on the problems faced by contractors providing services to special education students as a result of the ERP platform. Some of them, like the transportation providers, have been unable to continue serving children for whom any interruption in their educational services can have extremely adverse consequences.

We do not believe it should be necessary to remind the officials in charge that, in Puerto Rico, free and nonsectarian public education is a constitutional right. But we will: every time a child misses school because of an official’s incompetence or neglect, that child’s constitutional right is being violated.

No more excuses or delays, then. Make whatever effort is necessary to ensure that no student in the public school system ever again has their education disrupted because the government failed to pay on time the very provider it entrusted with picking them up in their neighborhood and getting them to school on time.

---

This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.