Education Department reaches important milestones on school attendance

The new school year started with students already better off in an education system with significantly improved teacher and student commitment to attendance.

The Puerto Rico Department of Education (PRDE) built a stronger foundation in the past school year, boosting teacher presence from 65% in 2021 to over 90% in 2024, and achieving similar results for student attendance-taking.

An evaluation by the Oversight Board found that during the 2023-2024 school year, teachers, principals, facilitators and director supervisors achieved the important milestone of registering their attendance in the automated Time and Attendance system on 90% of school days. Another important milestone that requires teachers to also register student attendance in the PowerSchool student information system on over 90% of school days, was also achieved. Both thresholds are defined within the 2022 Commonwealth Fiscal Plan.

Th 90% attendance requirements for educators and students were strategically designed to improve attendance and oversight on the time teachers and students spend together in the classroom. These needs became clear several years ago when, as described in the 2022 Fiscal Plan, during the 2020-2021 school year PRDE’s teacher attendance (close to 65%) was significantly lower than the national average (close to 95%) for the public school system. While that year was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-related school lockdowns, the difference of about 30% was concerning.

But that gap has now been reduced significantly, and as a result of the PRDE having achieved the 90% attendance milestones, the Oversight Board released $86 million in PRDE funds that were under the custody of the Puerto Rico's Office of Management and Budget . These funds will partially cover the salary increases the Government approved for PRDE teachers and school directors in fiscal year 2022.

With the release of the money, PRDE will be able to redirect funds from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) program to address other agency needs (such as security and maintenance expenses) in the current fiscal year 2025 to better support PRDE’s needs.

An important component of fiscal responsibility includes ensuring that only the civil servants who are working get paid. For four years, the Oversight Board and Puerto Rico’s Government, through the Time and Attendance initiative, have collaborated to improve the process of recording and compensating all government employees for the hours they worked. The project arose after the Oversight Board learned that, for over a decade, PRDE had failed to remove former employees from the payroll or properly account for vacation and sick leave on a timely basis. As a result, PRDE made at least $80 million in payments over 13 years to employees who had resigned, were retired, deceased, or otherwise were not working.

Since the Time and Attendance project began in 2020, improved oversight has resulted in tens of millions of dollars being saved for Puerto Rico’s taxpayers. To date, the initiative has been implemented at 23 agencies and is in progress at 26 others. More than 75,000 public workers are benefitting from the project.

The Oversight Board looks forward to continuing working with PRDE to improve the Island’s public schools to benefit students and teachers and accomplish the requirements and goals of PROMESA for the good of the people of Puerto Rico.