But there was little to no empirical data on why this might be the case. So, Enchautegui, the chief knowledge officer for the Instituto del Desarrollo de la Juventud (translated to Youth Development Institute of Puerto Rico), set out to change that. “A lot of U.S. data sets do not include Puerto Rico,” she said. “For general U.S. sampling, such as the Current Population Survey, pulse surveys conducted during COVID or government-sponsored longitudinal surveys, Puerto Rico is not part of the sampling framework.”

Enchautegui and her team set out to create the “Socieconomic Survey of Families with Children,” which was conducted between December 2022 and February 2023, carried out through home visits in collaboration with the polling firm Ipsos. The sample represents the population of families with children ages 0-17, with incomes at or below $35,000 a year and with a head of household under age 60.

The report found that the most common characteristics of low-income families with children in Puerto Rico were headed by women who work and participate in social protection programs, and still have difficulties meeting basic household needs. Having a quality job was key to a family’s economic security and lifting the family out of poverty, and yet for 75% of families, not having child care was a major obstacle to employment. The child care obstacles were greater for mothers of preschool age children than those in elementary school or older.

“When we look specifically at people living in poverty, it is an overwhelmingly female-headed population, led by single women,” said Enchautegui. “When we talked to them in this report, we asked different questions about barriers to employment,” she said. “Most of it came down to access to child care.”

, published in September 2023, is the first empirical data on child care and employment in Puerto Rico. It feeds into both research and policy involving the overall quality of employment and how to promote an agenda for creating employment opportunities for families. And it shows how more women can and want to provide for their families, but need reliable child care to be able to do so.

The lack of reliable child care is the main reason that Kimberlyz Alvárez, a single mom of three kids in San Juan, is no longer able to work. For a while she was able to work, and had an aunt look after her kids. But after a time that situation became untenable and Alvárez had to quit to watch over her children. “It’s my responsibility and not my aunt’s to do that,” Alvárez said in an interview, translated from Spanish by Caridad Arroyo-Quijano, a research analyst with Instituto Del Desarrollo de la Juventud.

Alvárez, who is 27, previously worked at fast food restaurants like Burger King and Subway, either as a cashier or the drive through. She is no longer in a relationship with the father of her children, so she feels pressure to earn an income to support her family. She would like to go back to work, but she could only do so on a specific schedule that could accommodate her 5-year-old at school and her 3- and 1-year-old at Head Start, which ends at 2 p.m. “I trust the kids are secure in Head Start, but I don’t see that as a child care provider, it’s a school provider. Child care would be after that schedule, and I don’t know anyone in a child care center that I actually trust to leave my kids with so I can’t work full time.”

Women like Alvárez could benefit from additional child care offerings that would allow them to go back to work and earn a salary to support their families. But Puerto Rico faces additional barriers to providing child care support because of lack of local investment and limitations on federal funding. “Our funding is 100% federal dollars,” said Arroyo-Quijano. Unlike other states in the U.S., Puerto Rico does not contribute its own funding.

Arroyo-Quijano explained that there are both mandatory and discretionary funds for child care, but historically Puerto Rico has only received discretionary funds, which are allocated through the Child Care Development Block Grant. Mandatory child care funds are authorized through section 418 of the Social Security Administration and certain funds require state funding for the federal government to match. As a territory rather than a state, Puerto Rico has not had the same safety net programs or funding as other U.S. States. Under the American Rescue Plan Act, Puerto Rico started receiving some mandatory funds permanently, but it still cannot access the funds that require state matching.

For Alvárez, even the availability of more funds may not change her situation. She wasn’t familiar with the American Rescue Plan Act funds and how they were impacting child care on Puerto Rico, but she felt that employers weren’t always aware of the needs of mothers. “Many of us are the main ones in our family in Puerto Rico,” Alvarez said. “Employers need to be more flexible in their work schedule so mothers can have more access to take care of their kids.”

Keleher, who served as Puerto Rico’s top education official from January 2017 until April 2019, pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud, both felonies. Following her prison term, the once-rising education star will serve a year under monitored house arrest and was ordered to pay a $21,000 fine. 

Her sentencing marks the end of a yearslong, high-profile criminal probe that took multiple twists and turns since her initial arrest in 2019. In the plea agreement reached with federal prosecutors earlier this year, Keleher admitted to honest services fraud conspiracy when she signed a letter giving a company permission to widen a street onto public school property in exchange for her renting an upscale apartment from June to December 2018 for just $1. As part of a deal with a San Juan real estate company, she received a $12,000 incentive to purchase a two-bedroom apartment in the luxury building for $295,000. 

She also admitted to conspiracy to commit wire fraud for “having agreed with others to devise a scheme” that allowed a company to subcontract education department work to a 2016 gubernatorial candidate’s campaign manager. The action violated a contract which said the work couldn’t be subcontracted.

Appearing in court remotely because of the pandemic, 47-year-old Keleher offered an apology to the people of Puerto Rico “for the pain and heartache any of the actions that I took while serving as secretary have caused.” 

 “The children of Puerto Rico are the smartest and most capable of any in the world, and they deserve an education system far better than the one they have,” she said as she audibly struggled to hold back tears. “I hope, now that I’ve pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges, that attention can be refocused to the importance of ensuring that Puerto Rico’s youth have access to the resources and learning opportunities that they so rightly deserve and the future of the island depends on.” 

Keleher’s arrest came three months after her resignation as education secretary, a position that netted her a $250,000-a-year salary, but was marked by significant controversy. She led the school system during the administration of former Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, after his crude group-chat messages were leaked, prompting public outcry and widespread protests on the island. 

Keleher took the helm of Puerto Rico’s education department less than a year before its public schools were shuttered in September 2017 by Hurricane Maria. Keleher arrived with ambitions to reform Puerto Rico’s lackluster education system and, after the storm devastated schools across the island, she closed hundreds of schools permanently and ushered in its first charter schools and a private school voucher program. Those decisions and others put her in the center of fierce backlash. 

Keleher and five others were first indicted in 2019 and accused of conspiring to illegally direct millions of dollars in federal funds to contractors who had personal ties to the defendants. About six months later, in January 2020, she faced a second indictment for allegations surrounding the luxury apartment building. Then, an August 2020 superseding indictment replaced the initial charges and accused Keleher of helping a firm led by a “close friend” secure an education department contract by disclosing confidential government documents, including the names and other personnel information of more than 6,000 Puerto Rico school employees. Keleher had initially pleaded not guilty. 

During Friday’s sentencing hearing at the U.S. District Court in San Juan, Keleher’s attorney Maria Dominguez requested that she serve her sentence at a federal prison for female inmates in either Alderson, West Virginia, or Danbury, Connecticut. The billionaire mogul Martha Stewart at the Alderson prison camp. , the Netflix series, is based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, who spent a year in the Danbury prison. 

Keleher’s conviction comes as federal officials seek to improve a public school system that has struggled for decades. In September, the U.S. Department of Education to assist local education leaders in several areas, including financial management. In March, Puerto Rico was in federal funds to help its schools recover from the pandemic.

Enrollment in Puerto Rico’s schools was declining even before Hurricane Maria, but the crippling storm exacerbated an outward migration to states like Florida and Massachusetts. Before the hurricane, Puerto Rico’s schools served roughly 350,000 students, than it does today. 

Prior to her arrest, Keleher consistently portrayed herself as a maligned crusader against widespread corruption within an entrenched bureaucracy. During a forceful 2019 speech at a Yale University Education conference, she suggested that she became a victim. 

“Who you knew determined what job you had, irrespective of your experience or your capacity to perform,” she told a packed ballroom. “[Ending that practice] won me armies of people that literally would have been happy to take my head off.” 

She made similarly forceful statements on Friday after Hon. Pedro Delgado-Hernandez found her guilty. A gag order lifted Friday had previously prohibited Keleher, who has been staying with her parents outside Philadelphia, and her attorneys from discussing the allegations against her. 

“The origins of my case have to do with the dysfunction of Puerto Rico’s Department of Education and political powers that desire to maintain the status quo,” she said in a statement provided to ����Ӱ��, adding that she ultimately was not convicted on any of the initial charges filed against her in July 2019. “There is no allegation I took money away from students, teachers or schools. I would never want to do anything to deprive any child, or any person, of their rights to education.”

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In order to return to school in person post-summer break, were to show proof of receiving at least one dose. Today, of the young population are at least partially vaccinated, a rate higher than any other mainland U.S. state or territory.

The percent of Puerto Rico’s school workforce of roughly 60,000 was vaccinated by the end of March, within six weeks of opening eligibility to the group. To prepare for school reopenings, teachers were included in the second eligible wave, accessing shots just after health and residential care workers.

The island of about 3 million has boasted higher-than-average vaccination rates since rollout, having finalized its robust mass vaccination plan in 2020, well before distribution. Their work provides an opportunity for a case study of successful adolescent vaccination, as most U.S. states struggle to get shots into their school-age population.

That mass vaccination efforts in Puerto Rico are outperforming mainland U.S. states may come as a surprise to those accustomed to stateside news outlets which the island as being in constant disaster recovery. While Puerto Rico has faced serious hardship, it appears to have pulled together in the face of COVID-19 in a way that has eluded other Americans.

When folks think about highly vaccinated places in America

They think Vermont or CT or MA

Those places are good

But not the most vaccinated place in America

So who’s #1?

Puerto Rico!

But PR has gotten way too little attention

Its worth reflecting on how they did it

Thread

— Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH (@ashishkjha)

“In Puerto Rico, the pandemic was never politicized … People were really rowing in the same direction.” Daniel Colón-Ramos back in March. Colón-Ramos is a professor of cellular neuroscience at Yale University and president of Puerto Rico’s Scientific Coalition, a group of experts advising Gov. Pedro Pierluisi on the island’s Covid-19 response.

As of Sept. 29, 56 percent of U.S. youth aged 12-17 had taken at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, while of adults have completed their sequence. Yet the rates drastically vary by region; . About with the virus required intensive care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Scholars, residents and local leaders chalk Puerto Rico’s comparative success up to far-reaching mandates across industries, in a once-public health care system and a common belief in getting students back in classrooms — by any means necessary.

“They urgently needed to get students back to school in person because they couldn’t take it any more. They were hurting and needed to be there, with their teachers,” said Edgar Bonilla, a single father of three living in Caugus, a mountainous city about 20 miles south of San Juan.

Bonilla, one of several island residents interviewed by ����Ӱ�� in Spanish, said he witnessed at least five of his children’s peers leave school last year out of frustration and feeling lost with online learning. Those that stayed may have progressed to the next school grade, he says, but need support with understanding material.

And while there have been a few dismayed teachers since the mandate, he believes “you have to see the other side” — students without needed resources, those who can’t effectively learn online with audio or speech disabilities or who live with chronic health conditions.

“The student who’s unvaccinated, for religious or health reasons, has to take COVID-19 tests the whole week to enter school. Really all have to be vaccinated. There are students with chronic asthma, diabetes, or who are cancer patients like myself,” Bonilla said. The stress of everyone’s health during the pandemic, “has affected me a lot mentally.”

His 14- and 15-year-olds excitedly got both doses before this school year. Their household continues to wear masks outside their home and washes their hands regularly, to protect their unvaccinated 11-year-old sister.

And at the Bonillas’ public high school, youth stay in the same classroom all day. Only teachers rotate between rooms, to make any student quarantines smaller and easier to roll out. Lunch is outside, in small groups with open air, or in smaller capacity classrooms for younger children.

Puerto Rico Department of Health’s extended the vaccine requirement to all school staff and anyone entering school buildings. Families told ����Ӱ�� enforcement is strict to minimize contacts — if you forget your vaccination card, for instance, school staff or your child must come find you outside or meet at your car. No exceptions.

The only comparable sweeping K-12 mandate in the mainland is for California’s K-12 children. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the s on Oct. 1, yet it’s unlikely to go into effect until July 2022.

Some California districts are weighing vaccination mandates because of concerningly among youth. And where they have been adopted stateside, many are not complying and at least two — in Los Angeles and San Diego — are being

Three weeks ahead of its deadline, Los Angeles Unified estimated had not yet gotten a dose. The district recently extended its deadline for educators to Nov. 15, fearing the original cutoff would worsen critical shortages, though roughly . And New York City’s mandate for educators faced protests, legal and union challenges, but now about of their teaching force has gotten one dose.

Overall, there are more states that ban vaccine mandates for school staff (14) than have instituted them (11). In further contrast, when Puerto Rico did announce its mandates, no formal opposition followed.

In late March and April, the island saw an uptick in cases. And though no outbreaks were linked to the roughly 100 schools then open part-time for special education and young children, in an abundance of caution. The closures seemed typical of the system’s strict approach to COVID-19 safety.

Following a for all government employees, Gov. Pierluisi also this August that many private businesses, including restaurants, salons, casinos and gyms, require all employees to show proof of vaccination. Those claiming an exemption must show negative test results weekly. Businesses must also require that their customers show proof of vaccination or cut capacity by 50 percent.

The constant guidance from health and government officials has helped families return to in-person learning, though some schools are now facing closures amid a wave of unrelated to the pandemic. In addition to dealing with infrastructure damage from years of destructive hurricanes, Puerto Rico’s circa 1976 power generation units are twice as old as those stateside and due for major replacements.

For many, vaccination is the one factor they can control to keep children in school.

Daniel Pacheco says there’s a “responsibility” felt among families when it comes to the mandates. His family of four lives in Aguadilla, a city of about 55,000 on the island’s northwest tip where about 73 percent of the population has been vaccinated, and has seen the pandemic’s impact firsthand. His wife, Marizabel, is a nurse.

“My wife and I think the same way, that teachers in direct contact with children have to be vaccinated to avoid the spread,” he said. “I think [the vaccine] should be approved and given to all kids because there’s already scientific evidence that it’s really beneficial for them to get vaccinated.”

Their school hosted a virtual open house before classes resumed to explain how exactly quarantine protocols would work. His two children, ages 6 and 10, returned to school for the first time fully in person this August and will be vaccinated once eligibility is extended to their age group. The Federal Drug Administration will review Pfizer’s request to extend vaccine eligibility for youth 5-11 on Oct. 26, and authorization may follow in early to mid- November.

While parents in Puerto Rico say there hasn’t been much widespread hesitation, a recent parent poll across the U.S. revealed roughly 51 percent would vaccinate their children when eligible. Low adolescent vaccination rates raise concern for recently opened mainland schools now facing threats of closure with student and staff quarantines. As of Oct. 10, COVID-19 outbreaks in the 2021-22 school year precipitated about according to Burbio, a website tracking school policies and schedules.

For instance, amid rising Delta variant cases, recent efforts in double the city’s youth vaccination rate to 55 percent, a rate still leagues behind Puerto Rico’s. The key, local leaders say, was making the shot available at schools, churches and essential community organizations; stopping misinformation and deploying health officials throughout the community to address concerns.

One whose organization distributed vaccines told the Miami Herald that he believes using community groups to administer vaccines has made the difference for small populations skeptical of the government or pharmaceutical industry.

The strategy of spreading secure information at the local level could help Puerto Rico reach herd immunity, local journalist and mother Paola Arroyo said.

Similar to the anti-vaccination camps on the mainland, some of those holding out, “are not very aware of how beneficial the vaccine is and are carried away by fake news on social networks or platforms that aren’t necessarily official,” she said. Others aren’t vaccinated for religious or health reasons, or lead a kind of natural lifestyle and prefer to build immunity without vaccination.

A 29 year-old resident of Guaynabo, just outside of San Juan on the northern coast, Arroyo stays cautiously hopeful. She regularly sees youth, even infants, wearing masks outside and taking stock of health guidelines posted outside businesses.

“Youth are very aware of the problem that we’re confronting. They’re more aware than adults themselves,” she said.

Arroyo had her first child during the pandemic, and though vaccines weren’t available during her pregnancy, she was “confident” when getting both doses as soon as she became eligible. With encouragement from her pediatrician, she is passing antibodies onto her 9-month-old daughter Valentina through breastfeeding.

“I’m going to get the booster when it’s available and continue breastfeeding to protect her,” Arroyo said. “I believe in the power that vaccines have and understand that it’s a social responsibility.”

Julia Keleher, the embattled former education secretary of Puerto Rico who oversaw the island’s response to Hurricane Maria, has pleaded guilty to two federal conspiracy charges in a wide-ranging corruption probe that scrutinized her business dealings while leading the U.S. territory’s school system.

As part of a deal with federal prosecutors, Keleher pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and honest services fraud. The agreement recommends a sentence of six months in jail, 12 months of home confinement and a $21,000 fine. The agreement, which a federal judge will weigh at her Sept. 7 sentencing, would settle a yearslong and high-profile government corruption probe. The agreement would absolve Keleher of several other charges including wire fraud, identity theft and bribery.

Though the case has taken several twists and turns in the last few years, Keleher and five others were first indicted in 2019 and accused of conspiring to illegally direct millions of dollars in federal funds to contractors who had personal ties to the defendants. About six months later, in January 2020, she faced a second indictment accusing her of offering up a plot of public school land in exchange for help buying a luxury apartment. In a superseding indictment in August 2020, prosecutors accused Keleher of helping a firm led by a “close friend” secure an education department contract by disclosing confidential government documents, including the names and other personnel information of more than 6,000 Puerto Rico school employees. Keleher had previously pleaded not guilty.

The first charge, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, stems from an allegation that she participated in a bidding process in which she did “solicit and demand” that the company Colón & Ponce subcontract education department work to the campaign manager of a 2016 gubernatorial candidate. The action violated a contract which said the work couldn’t be subcontracted. The second charge, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, centers on Keleher offering up 1,034 square feet of public school land to a real estate company in San Juan. In return, Keleher was allowed to rent an apartment from June to December 2018 for just $1. When Keleher ultimately bought the two-bedroom apartment for $295,000, she was given a $12,000 incentive bonus, according to the indictment.

Keleher, once a rising star in education reform circles, entered her plea  Tuesday morning from her parents home outside Philadelphia. Her spokesman declined to comment later that day, citing a gag order that forbids the former education secretary from speaking to the press. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Puerto Rico didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The white-collar criminal case has received significant public attention, especially in Puerto Rico where her tenure as education secretary was highly controversial. Keleher became Puerto Rico’s schools chief in January 2017 with big goals of reforming the island’s lackluster education system. Less than a year later, Hurricane Maria devastated the island and shuttered its public education system. In response, she seized upon the tragedy to close hundreds of campuses and usher in new education reforms, including charter schools and private school vouchers.

Before her indictment in 2019, she resigned from her post as the island’s top education official, a position that netted her the unusually high salary of more than $200,000. Prior to her arrest, Keleher consistently portrayed herself as a maligned crusader against widespread corruption within Puerto Rico’s education department.

“Who you knew determined what job you had, irrespective of your experience or your capacity to perform,” she told several hundred audience members during a forceful speech at a Yale education conference in April 2019. Ending that practice “won me armies of people that literally would have been happy to take my head off.”

Before her indictment, former Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló praised Keleher’s status as a political outsider from the mainland U.S. Keleher’s indictment was announced shortly before Rosselló that led to widespread protests.

“If you take somebody inside of the system, it’s kind of like The Matrix,” Rosselló in 2018. “It already owns you.”

Puerto Rico’s embattled former education secretary, Julia Keleher, has been slapped with new federal charges including wire fraud, identity theft and bribery in a high-profile government corruption case that stems from her tenure at the helm of the island’s public school system.

The new charges come three months after Keleher’s former “special assistant” accepted a plea deal in the case.

The new charges offer greater insight into a case that began in July 2019, when Keleher was arrested on allegations that she participated in a conspiracy to steer millions of dollars in government contracts to people with whom she had personal ties. The new superseding indictment, filed on Aug. 10, alleges that Keleher disclosed confidential documents — including names and other personnel information from more than 6,000 Puerto Rico school employees — to help an outside company secure an education department contract related to curricular and administrative restructuring. The indictment identifies the outside firm as “Company A,” whose president is Keleher’s “close friend.”

Separately, the new allegations add greater detail to a “sham selection process scheme” to steer an Education Department contract to Colón & Ponce, a company run by the sister of Keleher’s ex-assistant. Glenda and Mayra Ponce — the assistant and her sister — reached deals with prosecutors in May and pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy. In exchange, prosecutors will recommend to the court that other charges against them be dropped, according to court documents.

Keleher was Puerto Rico’s education secretary from January 2017 until her resignation in April 2019. Less than a year into the job, Puerto Rico’s schools were devastated by Hurricane Maria, and Keleher seized on the tragedy to close hundreds of schools and usher in new education reforms, including charter schools and private school vouchers. Those reforms — and her unusually high salary of $250,000 a year — were the subject of fierce condemnation.

In total, the first indictment accused Keleher and five others — including the Ponce sisters and the former head of Puerto Rico’s health insurance administration — of schemes to direct more than $15 million in contracts through corrupted bidding, rather than fair and transparent processes. 

In a separate indictment, from January, federal prosecutors accused Keleher of offering up public school land in exchange for help buying a luxury apartment in San Juan.

Keleher has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Maria Dominguez, Keleher’s attorney, declined to comment, citing a gag order that prevents her from discussing the case. An attorney for Mayra Ponce didn’t respond to a request for comment. Attorney Juan Matos de Juan, who represents Glenda Ponce, declined to comment on the specifics of his client’s plea deal, citing attorney-client privilege.

“I can tell you that whatever is [in] the plea agreement is true,” he said. He denied that Glenda Ponce’s plea prompted additional charges against Keleher. His client is “an extremely small fish in that lake,” he said, and the allegations against her are “a totally different level” than those that Keleher faces.

As Keleher’s “special assistant” at the department, Glenda Ponce is accused of collaborating with Keleher to secure a government contract for Ponce’s sister through a corrupted bidding process, according to the indictment. Then, according to the latest indictment, Keleher “did corruptly solicit and demand” Colón & Ponce to subcontract education department work to “Individual C,” who was the campaign manager for a 2016 gubernatorial candidate. In exchange, Keleher increased the Colón & Ponce contract by $50,000, according to court records.

The latest indictment also names a new defendant, accountant Aníbal Jover, the former president of Puerto Rico’s Association of Certified Public Accountants, who faces wire fraud charges related to allegedly corrupted contracting between the island’s health insurance administration and a managing partner at the accounting firm BDO.

The hurricane brought widespread devastation to Puerto Rico and ultimately sparked major education reforms. This summer, the island’s school system came under scrutiny when federal officials indicted Julia Keleher, the former education secretary, in an alleged corruption scheme.

Listen to the podcast to hear Keierleber discuss how storms and scandals have shaped the educational experiences of students in Puerto Rico.

Read more of Mark Keierleber’s coverage of Puerto Rico’s schools:

Complicated Crusader to Accused Federal Conspirator: Ex-Puerto Rico Education Secretary Julia Keleher’s ‘Surreal’ Journey

Julia Keleher Offered Big Plans to Reform Puerto Rico’s Storm-Battered Schools. She Left Her Post Playing Defense

Lawmakers in Puerto Rico Approve Sweeping School Choice Bill Six Months After Maria, Creating New Voucher Program & Charter Schools

As Puerto Rico’s Governor Embraces Major School Reform Agenda, New Orleans Offers Inspiration, Caution

Puerto Rico Teachers Fleeing Hurricane Maria Arrived at Orlando’s Airport With Nothing. They Left With Jobs

Julia Keleher, Puerto Rico’s former education secretary, was arrested Wednesday on charges that she participated in a conspiracy to steer millions of dollars in government contracts to unqualified, politically-connected organizations. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents arrested Keleher in Washington, D.C., where she was freed pending her surrender to officials in Puerto Rico within the week.

An indictment puts Keleher and five others — including the former head of the island’s health insurance administration and an executive with a major accounting firm — at the center of a conspiracy to illegally direct more than $15 million in federal funds through contracts to organizations with which prosecutors said the defendants had personal ties.

From 2017 until her resignation in April, Keleher led wide-scale education reform efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria shuttered the island’s schools. She was widely viewed as a controversial lightning rod for her push to adopt charter schools and private school vouchers, in addition to her decision to close hundreds of public schools on the island.

After stepping down, Keleher consistently painted herself as a heroic fighter against the island’s anti-reform forces. As recently as April, following local news reports that Keleher was under federal investigation, she denied the allegations. In an exclusive interview with ����Ӱ��, Keleher claimed that she sounded the alarm on irregularities involving a contract, which she said was discovered during an internal audit.

“The fact that there are investigations into operations in the Department of Education, that’s not news — I myself made the referral,” she said, noting that federal investigators have looked into mismanagement at the island’s education department “repeatedly.”

“What the Puerto Rico press is reporting firmly is that there’s an investigation into me,” she said. “My understanding is there’s an investigation into contracting in the department, right, and that’s been going on” for years, including before she worked for Puerto Rico’s government.

The grand jury indictment, however, tells a different story.

Eroded trust

In a 44-page indictment, six people were named on 32 counts, including money laundering and wire fraud. Besides Keleher, those charged include Ángela Ávila-Marrero, who formerly led the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration; Glenda Ponce-Mendoza, who worked as Keleher’s special assistant, and her sister, Mayra Ponce-Mendoza, who owned the company Colón & Ponce; Alberto Velázquez-Piñol, owner of the company Azur, LLC, a subcontractor; and Fernando Scherrer-Caillet, managing partner of the prominent accounting firm BDO.

“Public corruption continues to erode the trust between government officials and our citizens,” Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, said in a press release. “Defendants Keleher and Ávila-Marrero exploited their government positions and fraudulently awarded contracts funded with federal monies,” adding that their actions deprived Puerto Ricans of education and health services.

“The charged offenses are reprehensible, more so in light of Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis,” she added.

Officials allege Keleher and others devised a scheme to direct education department contracts to the company Colón & Ponce, through “a corrupted bidding process” that gave the company an advantage based on personal relationships at a time the agency hadn’t yet put out a bid for services. The Ponce-Mendozas worked together to secure a contract with the education department, according to the indictment, and Keleher instructed the agency to award the $43,500 deal to the company. That contract was later increased to $95,000, the indictment said, and was used in part to pay the salary of a special assistant to Keleher. Additionally, officials at Keleher & Associates, a consulting firm owned by the former secretary, allegedly helped Colon & Ponce craft their proposal.

At one point, the indictment said, an education department official refused to sign a letter granting Colón & Ponce the job because it “was the only company not qualified for the contract, and was the worst applicant.”

Meanwhile, Keleher, Velázquez-Piñol, and Scherrer-Caillet were charged with conspiracy to commit theft in an alleged effort to defraud more than $13 million in federal funds through education department contracts to the company BDO between January 2017 and April 2019. BDO subcontracted with other companies to perform the services, in violation of the contracts, including the company Azur, which it granted a 10 percent commission, thus inflating the costs of the services, according to the indictment.

Ávila-Marrero, Velázquez-Piñol, and Scherrer-Caillet were also charged in an alleged conspiracy to defraud more than $2.5 million in federal funds from the health insurance administration to BDO.

The indictment alleges BDO and Azur executives “paid individuals with government influence” and were given internal government documents to help craft contract proposals. Prosecutors said that several existing government contracts were cancelled or terminated and awarded to companies “endorsed and promoted by individuals with government influence.”

Keleher’s initial court appearance in Washington occurred behind closed doors Wednesday. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson freed Keleher without bond, on the condition that she surrender to authorities in Puerto Rico on or before July 17, El Nuevo Dia, a Puerto Rican newspaper . Scherrer-Caillet, Ávila-Marrero, and both Ponce-Mendoza sisters pleaded not guilty in federal court in Puerto Rico; Velázquez-Piñol was arrested in Connecticut.

Attempts to reach Keleher for comment were unsuccessful Wednesday. But Maria Dominguez, one of her attorneys, noted that Keleher isn’t accused of receiving any kickbacks or bribes, making these charges “significantly different” than other public corruption indictments.

While declining to address specifics, Dominguez told ����Ӱ��, “We’re convinced in the innocence of our client, and we don’t believe this is a meritorious prosecution.”

In a series of tweets Wednesday, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, who championed the island’s reform push with Keleher, said he was cutting a foreign vacation short in order to return to Puerto Rico to address the charges.

“The allegations against people arrested today are a disgrace,” he wrote. “Our public policy is clear: we will fight corruption in all its forms. No one is above the law. Everyone who fails must face the consequences.”

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat and chair of the House committee that oversees Puerto Rico, told The Washington Post that Rosselló should resign following Wednesday’s arrests.

“We’ve crossed that crucible now,” Grijalva told the newspaper. “The restoration of accountability is so key going forward.”

Aida Diaz, president of the island’s teachers union, that the charges were “another shame” for the education department and a “sad day” for the public school system.

Prior legal tangles

Wednesday’s indictment is not the first time that Keleher and the island’s education department have tangled with the courts. In February, just two months before she stepped down, a judge but quickly backtracked after department officials vowed to release documents related to a separate federal investigation into a tutoring program. In the April interview with ����Ӱ��, Keleher claimed the documents federal officials sought stemmed from a case that began before she became education secretary. The arrest warrant was issued because officials in the education department failed to furnish the documents, she said, alleging that she was set up by her own employees who didn’t tell her about the request for information.

“That’s the beginning,” she said, of an “attack on me and on the changes we were trying to implement.”

Some longtime friends of Keleher responded with shock to Wednesday’s news, defending her as a fierce change agent at the helm of a dysfunctional education system.

Don Yu, who has known Keleher since they worked together at the U.S. Department of Education during the Obama administration and considers her a “good friend,” described her as a tireless promoter of improving education.

“Julia is a tiger on the behalf of children. She’s relentless … extremely smart, extremely hardworking, and all of that on behalf of students,” Yu told ����Ӱ��.

Yu, currently the chief operating officer at Reach Higher, the college access initiative started by Michelle Obama, said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the case, but “if any of those allegations are true, that isn’t the Julia that I know.”

He first , in response to what he called knee-jerk reactions from people assuming the worst, he said.

During her tenure as education secretary, Keleher faced protests and lawsuits over her education reform efforts. On Twitter, critics expressed their grievances with the hashtag #JuliaGoHome. Those emotions didn’t dissipate with her departure. During an April education conference at Yale University, where Keleher spoke about leadership, a student that said reform efforts don’t fix the island’s education woes but rather “mutilate it in order to benefit all but those Puerto Rican citizens who actually rely on high quality public schools.”

In a May op-ed for ����Ӱ��, Keleher addressed the criticism.

“There were threats and protests,” she wrote. “Offices were stormed and arrests were made. Describing the reaction as resistance to change would be an understatement; it seemed more like a full-on battle to protect the status quo.”

But officials cast doubt on that view Wednesday, saying that Keleher and others acted criminally at the expense of Puerto Rican students.

“It was alleged that the defendants engaged in a public corruption campaign and profited at the expense of the Puerto Rican citizens and students,” Neil Sanchez of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General, said during a press conference in San Juan. “This type of corruption is particularly egregious because it not only victimizes taxpayers, it victimizes those citizens and students that are in need of education assistance.”

I set two objectives upon taking office. The first was to assess the system’s functioning, identifying strengths and failures; the second was to determine how the education reform agenda Gov. Ricardo Rosselló had presented during his 2016 campaign would be implemented. In short, define the basic operating capacities and figure out how to build upon them.

What I found left me saddened, shocked, disillusioned and appalled. Just two months into the job, it became clear that Puerto Rico’s nearly 1,300 schools had limited, inconsistent or nonexistent access to:

● standards-aligned curricular materials and instructional planning resources

● textbooks, workbooks and other learning supports

● internet, computers and instructional technology

● nursing and health-related services

● social-emotional supports and access to counselors, psychologists and social workers

● professional development programming for each content area and training in specific instructional practices

● supervision, support and guidance for principals

● systems, processes and practices that increased opportunities for special education students to participate in the general education program

The Education Department also lacked effective financial management and did not have data systems that could easily communicate with one another, further complicating daily operations and hobbling effective administration. Educator salaries were among the lowest in the nation, and teachers and principals had not received a pay raise in 10 years. Schools and classrooms were unsafe and unhealthy, reflecting unchecked deterioration due to insufficient maintenance. For years, widespread teacher shortages had caused students to miss core courses for an entire year.

Even before Hurricane Maria struck in September 2017, conditions for teaching and learning were subpar, bordering on negligent. Though one might have thought that things could not get worse, the storm destroyed the few books, instructional resources, technology and extracurricular equipment that had been available to teachers and students.

Shocked and embarrassed by the department’s failure to provide basic educational services, my team and I set out to address the root causes of these systemwide failures by setting an aggressive agenda to change how it operated. We established four goals: 1) improve the return on investment and demonstrate better outcomes for students in terms of academic achievement and entry into the workforce; 2) address the needs of the whole child, including health, socio-emotional and related factors; 3) implement strategies to recruit, develop and retain outstanding educators; and 4) increase transparency and alignment of budgetary resources.

We criticized the status quo. We disrupted existing practices and created new processes. We scrapped outdated policies and drafted new ones that reflected current best practices. We reorganized the Central Office to ensure that responsibility for each goal was clearly assigned. We created seven new regions, each headed by a regional superintendent supervising approximately 140 schools. We demanded reallocation of existing resources. We procured modern data systems and found ways to leverage new technologies. We canceled some contracts and awarded some new ones. We pushed people out of their comfort zones and asked them to stop doing what they had been doing the way they had been doing it for at least two decades.

Our mission was to stop those practices, actions and routines that had systematically denied Puerto Rican youth an adequate educational experience.

Although there was general consensus among parents and community leaders that the island needed a better public education system, many others did not want their daily routines disrupted. Many were incensed by the audacity of an outsider who struggled to communicate in Spanish yet criticized the department, its culture and its way of doing business. Some hurled criticisms of new policies and programs, while others engaged in personal attacks and publicly questioned my ability to lead the system because I was not Puerto Rican. There were threats and protests. Offices were stormed and arrests were made. Describing the reaction as resistance to change would be an understatement; it seemed more like a full-on battle to protect the status quo.

If not us, then who?

Robert Kennedy, Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan have all made use of a quote attributed to Rabbi Hillel: If not us, then who? If not now, then when? These are key questions for anyone who cares about public education, is committed to the recovery of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria and of the current fiscal crisis, and believes in equity, fairness and equality.

Over the course of 2½ years, we laid the groundwork by disrupting the system with more effective practices, a new education law, local autonomy, policy-based budgeting, a clearer picture of the basic investments needed in every public school and a comprehensive strategy to professionalize the workforce. But Puerto Rico and the new team leading the department still have a long way to go to create a school system where students are thriving cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically; teachers perform and are treated as professionals; principals are supported; learning is individualized, relevant and engaging; and technology facilitates access to and exploration of the world.

The Puerto Rican government must confront its chronic underinvestment in public education. At least double the current amount of state funding is necessary to ensure Puerto Rican youth have access to learning opportunities that will enable them to compete with graduates from other school systems. However, the department’s fiscal management must be closely supervised to ensure its budget is not used to reward political favors and make campaign contributions, as it has been in the past. Historically, the department has relied on contractors to outsource work that could be done by employees, which effectively prevented the creation of strong middle management and delayed the creation of accountability frameworks — perpetuating the organizational dysfunction and failure to ensure professional responsibility for student outcomes. There needs to be a clear set of performance outcomes for all contracts, and the department must demonstrate how it is achieving a return on each investment. The entire budget should be linked to goals and performance objectives, and middle management needs to be held accountable for funding requests, vendor recommendations and performance outcomes.

Political leaders, appointed officials, unions, teachers and those who do business with the department must put the interests of the next generation ahead of their own. For the recently planted seeds of change to take root and systematic changes to flourish, there needs to be a critical mass of people who are willing to declare an end to business as usual. Everyone who has a relationship with the public school system must embrace a shared responsibility for creating better and more effective ways of leading and managing; demonstrate a willingness to collaborate around a shared goal; reject the continued politicizing of the agency’s decision-making; and, most importantly, be strong in the face of attacks, build networks of allies and expand the coalition of supporters.

The public needs to hold the department accountable for delivering on the promises of the governor’s education reform law. Puerto Rico desperately needs alternatives to traditional schools and more choices for parents and students. The island must continue to improve its instructional programming and ensure all students are fully bilingual in English and Spanish. It is paramount that students have access to courses that teach computational thinking and real-world applications of STEM. In order for the public education system to play a central role in Puerto Rico’s economic recovery, parents, business leaders and community members must have a voice in shaping vocational programs and demand that the department teach skills that ensure students are ready to enter the workforce and/or become entrepreneurs. The public should demand the use of online performance reporting tools that demonstrate what progress is being made in implementing the education law.

A matter of urgency

Urgency can be defined as: 1) importance requiring swift action, and 2) an earnest and persistent quality; insistence. Was it right for me to have had a sense of urgency in leading change in Puerto Rico’s public education system? Did the conditions really warrant swift action? Was it necessary for me to be earnest and persistent?

My answer to each of those questions is yes. It is not OK for a public education system and its leadership to turn a blind eye to its failures. Elected and appointed leaders, teachers, principals, parents and community members cannot continue to deny the deleterious effects this failed public education system has had on youth, their futures, the economy and the future of the island.

I spent 27 months of my life challenging the status quo, breaking paradigms, creating new models, demanding data and analytics, championing the use of best practices, making room for new ideas and approaches, and demanding professionalism and accountability. I canceled contracts, reduced the number of political positions, and created new performance expectations for teachers and administrators. I made tough decisions despite political risks and retaliation. I stepped on numerous land mines and made thousands of enemies, some known and some unknown. I was loathed by those who had benefited from the influence of politics in public education. But I did what was necessary based on what was fair and just for the students.

I paid a price for that bold action, but I would do it all again. Driven by a sense of urgency, ownership and commitment, I would make every effort to disrupt business as usual because it was undoubtedly the right thing to do.

Though in hindsight, I can identify things that I could have done differently, what I don’t think I could have done was go more slowly. Had I tried to win over people benefiting from the status quo by using logic and reason to persuade and convince, two more years would have slipped by. For me, delaying doing the right thing is not an option when the fate and future of students who have lived their entire educational experience without a real opportunity to learn rests on my shoulders.

Julia Keleher is a consultant and a member of the National Assessment Governing Board. She served as Puerto Rico’s secretary of education from January 2017 to April 2019.

Since her confirmation hearing as Puerto Rico’s education secretary, Keleher faced questions that plainly painted the Philadelphia native as an outsider. On several occasions, she was quizzed on Puerto Rican icons, including athletes and authors — people, Keleher acknowledged, she didn’t know. Then came the Twitter hashtag: #JuliaGoHome.

Days after she announced her resignation earlier this month, Keleher faced a similar line of attack while speaking at Yale University. As Keleher spoke at an education conference, a Yale student to attendees with an overarching message: The outgoing secretary will never be Puerto Rican.

Much of the vitriol stems from Keleher’s dramatic attempts to reform the island’s education system. Months after Keleher took the helm of Puerto Rico’s education department, that system was thrust into chaos. In September 2017, Hurricane Maria crashed into Puerto Rico and shuttered the island’s public school system. In the face of tragedy, Keleher often spoke with magniloquence about her big plans to reimagine public education on the island. In an interview after this month as Puerto Rico’s education secretary, bringing to a close a two-year tenure, she offered up a different persona. This time, Keleher appeared at times combative, at times defeated as she attempted to defend her overtures as secretary.

“People have said to me that Puerto Rico’s status, and the fact that it is a colony, has a lot to do with how I was received,” she said. “It’s very raw and very present for people, so I want to be respectful. But I think it had influence in ways that hurt and didn’t help.”

Indeed, Puerto Rico’s relationship with the mainland U.S. has been contentious for generations. An unincorporated territory of the U.S. since 1898, Puerto Rico has seen its residents long forced to grapple with the . Hurricane Maria’s destruction furthered the pushes both for Puerto Rican statehood and for independence from the U.S., which some residents say has long neglected the island. In the letter at the Yale conference, Yale student Adriana Colón-Adorno blasted Keleher for referring to Puerto Rico as her “adopted land.”

“Though being Puerto Rican is not just about where you live and the diaspora is an integral part of the community, a fundamental part of the Puerto Rican identity is a deep shared history of struggle and resilience, which you can never be a part of,” Colón-Adorno wrote in the letter to Keleher.

Still, the reforms Keleher implemented after tragedy struck in 2017 would’ve likely been controversial in just about any context. Among grievances, Colón-Adorno disparaged Keleher for closing hundreds of Puerto Rico’s public schools and introducing charter schools.

Keleher said the changes she instituted were necessary to save a system that was in “free fall.” Deep in a financial crisis even before the 2017 storm, Puerto Rico’s education department closed more than a third of its public schools as thousands of residents fled to the U.S. mainland and student enrollment dwindled. With Keleher’s lead, Puerto Rico’s unitary education system was divided into seven regions. Through a sweeping new education law, Keleher ushered in the island’s first charter school, referred to in Puerto Rico as escuelas alianzas, and paved the way for a private school voucher program.

Those reforms faced steep opposition from some on the island and from progressive groups in the contiguous U.S. Upon hearing of Keleher’s resignation, national and local teachers union leaders cheered, accusing the outgoing secretary of treating educators and parents “as a speed bump” and for implementing reforms that “created chaos and instability for the island’s 320,000 schoolchildren.”

After Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, Keleher was quick to compare its situation to that of New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005, officials replaced a battered public school system with one composed almost entirely of charter schools. Students in both school systems had long struggled academically before destruction hit. While reports have found that the reforms led to gains in student performance, the changes were — and remain — deeply fraught. Under Keleher’s lead, school choice made an introduction in Puerto Rico, albeit on a smaller scale.

The disruptor

Keleher paints a different picture of her tenure at the helm of Puerto Rico’s public school system. She arrived, she said, to disrupt a school system that had violated kids’ rights to learn.

When she took over Puerto Rico’s schools in January 2017, schools lacked textbooks. Campuses were threatened by mold and water leaks, she said. Restrooms were filthy. She viewed the entire education bureaucracy as rife with corruption. Access to technology was limited. But the pushback she received, Keleher said, was indefensible.

“The defense of making changes was, ‘You can’t close our schools because it’s a right, our kids have a right to go to these schools. You can’t privatize it because you can’t change the conditions,’” Keleher said. “I don’t know how the bad guy is the one who’s trying to change the thing that’s substandard.”

Of course, Keleher couldn’t have anticipated that a natural disaster would disrupt Puerto Rico’s entire public school system. But she spoke as education secretary.

The education department provided local schools with more than a million new books. Schools saw technology upgrades, including new laptops and broadband internet. Additional school nurses were hired and trained to address student trauma. Officials created a new coding program and launched a workforce development initiative.

“We had a clear expectation for what goes into a school: a full faculty, social workers, counselors, librarians, nurses,” she said. “We fixed, I think, the root causes for the problems that created the conditions that kids were going to school under. And really, what you need at that point then is a leader who can just execute. You look at someone from maybe inside the system who has those relationships.”

She said her decision to step down, however, was guided by politics. Though she initially hoped to stay at the education department for a decade “because I know that’s how long it takes” to see results from education reforms, she said she resigned because she didn’t want to deal with the politics of election season.

“When politics starts to become what’s shaping discourse, you know, that’s not what I wanted to get involved in,” she said. “I didn’t want to take a political position, and I didn’t want to be a part of that conversation.”

Initially, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló that Eleuterio Álamo, who led the education department’s regional office in San Juan, would serve as interim secretary. But that changed quickly. Instead, the Senate confirmed Eligio Hernández Pérez, a deputy secretary, as the interim chief.

‘Will you be ready?’

The fierce politics that have swirled around Keleher since she took the education secretary post didn’t end with her decision to step down. At first, officials announced she’d become an adviser to the education department with a $250,000 salary. That’s the same salary she was paid as secretary — another point of contention locally. That contract position fizzled within days, however, after local news reports noted that lawmakers were into her work as secretary and alleged education department contracting irregularities.

Keleher declined to comment on the matter. But this isn’t the first time she’s run into an inquiry by federal officials. In February, news reports indicated that Keleher faced an arrest warrant after the education department failed to provide documents related to a federal fraud investigation dating back to 2011 when Keleher worked at the U.S. Department of Education. That arrest warrant was ultimately lifted, but Keleher implied that the ordeal stemmed from sabotage within her own department. Officials in Puerto Rico’s education department received multiple requests for documents related to the federal investigation, Keleher said, but nobody responded.

“My employees intentionally did not inform me of that requirement to submit. People knew about it but didn’t do it,” Keleher said. Failure to submit the documents, she said, was part of an “attack on me and on the changes that we were trying to implement.”

Keleher is now back home in Washington, D.C., where she said she plans to leverage her experiences to help other education leaders implement change, including those who face steep fiscal crises and need to close schools. Her LinkedIn profile says she’s become an “independent consultant” supporting policies that “produce transformational change.”

If her speech at the Yale education conference is an indicator, she’s already giving out advice on leadership. As the letter criticizing her circulated, she asked the audience how they’d feel if they were in her spot.

“I asked the audience, ‘How would you feel if this letter was about you?’” she said. “’How will you feel when the response to you taking bold action is a letter like this? Will you be ready?’”