And it's complicated.
There was a large wave of back-immigration a couple of decades ago. At the same time, PR fertility started to fall. Much of the population growth was kids from large families filling out the demographic curve as they hit child-bearing years. Fertility went below replacement rate 8 or 9 years ago, and that coincided with a relative exodus of PRenos starting in 2003 or 2004. (Officially, fertility is higher for PRenos on the mainland, but that might just be due to the demographics of the population--more older people on the island, more 20- and 30-somethings on the mainland.)
In other words, the population's declining, and it's the younger demographic that's declining the most. And that's been true for years.
But PR has a moderately corrupt government. There's a reason it spent billions on infrastructure just to have it collapse under Maria/etc. Much of the money was squandered, wasted, or pilfered. One thing you do in that situation is keep people happy.
So Houston has some schools where the school population's declined by 50 or 60%. They keep schools open to keep parents happy and just stop using parts of them. There was a school-building scandal a few years ago where pictures showed molding, decaying, collapsing ceilings and drywall in a school that was open--except that the reporter forgot to mention it was in a wing that was sealed off over a decade before and wasn't used for classes. It costs more money to keep open multiple partially-occupied buildings, but "communities" require them for historical continuity and community solidarity and pride. Profoundly wasteful, but nobody ever said pride was cheap. It hurt when they closed my elementary school outside of Baltimore because of a paucity of students. It was the right thing to do. The population shifted, and they not only re-opened the school, they tore the building down and rebuilt it.
It's the same pattern in PR. Before the hurricanes last fall there were scores of schools that should have been closed. This was discussed in the media. Nobody cared, it was PR-internal until after the 'canes. But in spite of the budget problems, those inefficient schools were kept open. In the end, the evil budget committee in order to reduce the deficit had to tell PR to do what they should have done to stop wasting money before they accrued a lot of pointless debt. PR is paying interest on the money spent to keep people living under a corrupt government happy.
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