2026-27 school year will begin under the shadow of a deficit of up to 8,000 classrooms

The Government has delivered 926 classrooms through School Infrastructure and plans to complete 1,500 before the start of the school year, but this does not solve the problem that repeats every year.

Santo Domingo.- The Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (MINERD) has scheduled the start of the 2026-2027 school year for August 24th, with the return to classrooms of more than two million students across the country, for which they indicated they are making all necessary preparations to ensure a successful start to the school calendar. However, the Dominican Association of Teachers (ADP) reports a deficit of up to 8,000 classrooms.

The Secretary of Communications and Public Relations of the ADP’s National Executive Committee, Menegildo de la Rosa, based on data from the Ministry of Education’s Infrastructure Department, indicated that 4,166 classrooms remain pending to meet the demand for pre-university education. To that figure, he said, about 3,000 additional classrooms must be added to guarantee the enrollment of children from three years of age.

“This means we can speak of a deficit of between 7,000 and 8,000 classrooms to solve the problem of student placement in Dominican education,” he maintained in statements to De Último Minuto.

The leader stated that the lack of infrastructure causes numerous students to be left out of schools due to the absence of available classrooms.

You might be interested in: Government has delivered 926 classrooms and expects to complete 1,500 before the start of the school year

Likewise, he criticized the prolonged use of so-called mobile classrooms, which, as he explained, were conceived as a temporary solution of one or two years, but in some educational centers have remained in operation for five or six years because construction work has still not been completed.

Given this scenario, the ADP considered it necessary to declare an emergency plan for school infrastructure and increase the investment allocated to the construction and rehabilitation of educational centers.

Areas with the greatest deficit

De la Rosa pointed out that the areas with the greatest deficit are the provinces in the Eastern region, especially Higüey and Verón, due to population growth driven by tourism development.

He also mentioned Santo Domingo Este and Santo Domingo Norte, where the internal migratory flow has increased the demand for school spaces.

Situation in Santiago

The president of the Dominican Association of Teachers (ADP) in Santiago, Miguel Jorge, corroborated that the main obstacle for the start of the next school year is the classroom deficit, a situation that, he asserts, repeats every year.

He indicated that thousands of families have still not been able to enroll their children due to the lack of spaces in educational centers. As he explained, a large part of the student population in the district remains without a spot, because the authorities have not built the necessary classrooms to meet the demand.

“The authorities have not built the classrooms required to accommodate the students. We are talking about thousands of students throughout this district who have not been able to secure a spot to enroll in an educational center. Naturally, that worries us greatly because we are starting off on the wrong foot,” Jorge pointed out.

The leader also pointed out that numerous school facilities remain unfinished or have work stalled, which worsens the lack of space to accommodate students. Among the cases, he mentioned:

• The Rafaela Geminián de Cruz school, in Cienfuegos, whose reconstruction work is practically at a standstill and will not be ready for the start of the school year.
• The school facilities under construction in the Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Villa Olímpica neighborhoods, which have remained unfinished for about ten years.
• The Profesora Mélida Giralt School, where the reconstruction of the preschool classrooms began more than a year ago and is still not finished.
• The school in El Aguacate, in Jacagua, demolished two years ago and still unfinished.
• The school in El Arroyo, in Gurabo, whose students continue to receive classes in a church while they wait for the completion of the work.

In his view, this proves that the conditions to start the school year normally do not exist, since the lack of classrooms is compounded by other deficiencies, such as the insufficiency of teaching, administrative, and support staff. “With this description that I have just provided, the conditions are definitely not in place to start a school year regularly,” he maintained.

Juan Valdez: “The country has been carrying a deficit of more than 28,000 classrooms since 2012”

The president of the Citizen Collective for Educational Quality, Juan Valdez, asserted that the Dominican Republic is not prepared to start the school year, attributing the situation to the deficit in school infrastructure and the low execution of the budget allocated for the construction of school facilities.

As he maintained, the country is carrying a deficit of more than 28,000 classrooms, a figure that, he stated, far exceeds the estimates that only consider pre-university education.

Valdez explained that the historical classroom deficit, calculated in 2012, estimated the need to build some 30,000 classrooms. However, he pointed out that between 2012 and 2026 that goal has not been reached and that, furthermore, that projection became outdated following the expansion of preschool coverage.

In his view, the problem was exacerbated by the implementation of the 2014 curricular design, which expanded the right to education from early childhood through the Comprehensive Early Childhood Care Centers (CAIPI).

“The Dominican people are being deceived when it is said that children enter school at age three. The system provides for care from early childhood, and the necessary infrastructure to guarantee that right does not exist,” he stated during an interview on “El Matutino del País”.

The educator indicated that, according to data from the National Statistics Office (ONE), the population between one and five years old exceeds one million children, while only about 392,000 receive educational care, which leaves more than 600,000 minors out of the system, mainly due to a lack of spaces.

Likewise, he criticized the pace of school construction over the last few years, stating that not even 6,000 classrooms have been built in the last six years, despite the needs of the educational system.

Valdez also questioned the execution of resources allocated for school infrastructure. He asserted that the School Infrastructure Directorate had barely executed around 51% of the budget assigned for this year, which is why he considered that billions of pesos could remain uninvested at the close of the fiscal year, while the classroom deficit persists.

“The Dominican government has failed over the last six years to build school infrastructure. Year after year, incredibly, despite the large deficit of classrooms, what we have had here is an accumulated budget under-execution. For example, this year they have allocated 12 billion pesos to the school infrastructure directorate. We are already five months away from the end of the year and they have only executed 51% of their budget,” explained Valdez.

School Infrastructure promises to complete 1,500 classrooms by August 2026

For this year 2026, the School Infrastructure Directorate (DIE) has projected a goal of delivering more than 2,300 new school classrooms, with special attention to the preschool level to accommodate children aged 3 to 5, through the 24/7-365 Classroom Plan, which is promoted by the Government.

During a meeting with the press earlier this week, the director of the DIE, Roberto Herrera, said that they have set a goal to deliver 1,500 new classrooms during the month of August and that, once the delivery process is concluded, the details of the schools by provinces and municipalities will be announced.

“When the time comes to deliver the total amount, which will be now in August, we will be able to make the publications, like last year, indicating where they are, in which municipality and in which province,” the official stated.