The Office of the Comptroller of Puerto Rico issued a qualified opinion of the fiscal operations of the Mayagüez Regional Education Office (OREM) of the Department of Education. A qualified opinion is issued when the noncompliance, individually or as a whole, is significant but not pervasive.
The one-finding Report reveals that the Department of Education paid $335,793 for drinking water and electric power services in schools closed since 2017. The suspension of these services occurred up to four years after the closure. From 2017 to 2018, 90 schools were closed in the Mayagüez education region.
In fact, as of July 7, 2022, the Department paid $47,379 for seven electric power accounts that remained active or in use in three of the closed schools. These unnecessary payments could have been used in the Department's operations and, in addition, outside individuals could have benefited from the water and power services at the schools.
Of the visits made to ten of the closed schools, eight were identified in a state of abandonment, five of them vandalized and full of debris (see photos in Annexes 1 and 2). The auditors also found abandoned instructional equipment and materials, controlled-substance paraphernalia, individuals unrelated to the institution, and one of the schools served as a stable for 14 horses.
The Office for the Improvement of Public Schools did not provide maintenance to the closed schools and the Department did not issue instructions in this regard either.
In addition, four of the schools visited had confidential administrative and academic documents, and documents related to the closure—such as the physical inventory, the sheet of transferred materials, or the certification of equipment disposal prepared by the school principal, among others—were not located.
The audit comments that the Department did not measure the achievement of the objectives of the school consolidation and closure process. A special assistant to the secretary and the OREM superintendent confirmed that they did not have information on the economic impact, the impact on students, and the quality of services offered after the closure of schools.
The auditors identified four school facilities under the custody of the Department of Transportation and Public Works, occupied by two municipalities and two nonprofit corporations without a written lease contract. One of the schools served as a Southwest Head Start and Early Head Start. Another of the facilities was occupied by a nonprofit corporation whose president used one of the classrooms as his residence. This first report of the Mayagüez Regional Education Office covers the period from January 1, 2018, to June 30, 2022.
See Audit Report DA-23-22.
To see other published reports, visit our Audit Reports section.
Some documents on this page are saved in PDF format.
To view these documents, you must have the following free program installed.
