WILLEMSTAD - A plan is underway to close school buildings and merge schools. There is an average vacancy rate of 31 percent at the various schools on Curaçao.
The new housing plan was recently presented in Parliament by Minister Sithree van Heydoorn of Education, Science, Culture and Sport (OWCS) and the director of Policy Productions, Yolanda Hoogtanders.
The Netherlands has pledged thirty million euros for educational housing as part of the political agreement on the COHO Kingdom Act. Policy Productions has made an inventory of vacant school buildings. Based on this data, a plan is now being developed for closing and merging schools. This can also mean that schools of different school boards are housed in one building.
Pending the new housing plan, eleven schools have already been designated by the school boards that can be refurbished. These are schools for which it has been established that there are no unused buildings and that they will remain at the same student level for the time being.