Literature Review Laura Mercado Vocational Table 1: Description of the 4 schools selected with SAIs School Name Botijas Laura Mercado ESEVA Berwind Starting Year 2000 2012 2015 2017 Municipality Orocovis San Germán Corozal San Juan Rural/ Urban Rural Rural Rural Urban School type Non-vocational Vocational Vocational Traditional Farm acre(s) 2 32 5 1 Grade level K-8th 6th-12th 9th-12th 6th-8th Expanding Agroecology in Puerto Rico’s K-12 Public Schools: Indicators for Sustainable Continuation Carol E. Ramos-Gerena University at Buffalo, SUNY carolram@buffalo.edu • In 2017, and just a few weeks after Hurricane María hit Puerto Rico (PR), administrators and leaders of the Berwind Middle School faced the risk of being permanently closed. The school was characterized as underachieving and had high violence rates. Leaning on innovation to make a compelling case for their permanence, the school developed a school garden project. • The school garden initiative at Berwind Middle School, “Proyecto Agroecológico Urbano Intermedia Berwind (PAUIB),” provided a model for agroecological integration in other public schools in PR. • Carol Ramos was invited to support a research project involving Berwind Middle School (before Hurricane María) and asked to support parent and community participation in the school. • Through a stakeholder-driven research design process, a study was set out to assess “how do we ensure the long-term continuation of PAUIB?”. The results of this study motivated a broader assessment of the agricultural education offering in PR. • Since 1932, agricultural education (AE) in PR has been included in K-12 schools, but the number of school-based agroecological initiatives (SAIs) are limited. • SAIs exist in the schools that voluntarily integrate agroecology, since there is no legal or regulatory framework, nor institutional support from the Department of Education of PR (DEPR) to promote agroecology. Between 2017-20, a total of 103 schools (of all 812 public schools in PR) were in the AE program of the DEPR. This study found that teachers and school directors voluntarily developed SAIs in both agricultural (vocational and non-vocational) and traditional schools. There is no database available for all the schools with SAIs, therefore these results are limited to the interviewed sample. In the study sample, we observed diverse characteristics for SAIs, as shown below: • SAIs are a relatively inexpensive solution to foster the critical awareness, skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for future generations to develop the capacity to question and transform the inequities within the colonial and capitalist food system in Puerto Rico 1,2,5,6 and to configure, in the long-term, the agricultural landscape of the country. • A critical component of SAIs program sustainability³ is the commitment, conviction, and leadership of local champions—specifically, teachers and school directors. Their vision and commitment to scale agroecology and overcome the challenges of managing both a school and a farm surpasses the lack of institutional support. Supporting their work through the 10 Factors could help them address their SAIs sustainability challenges. • Schools are highly capable of expanding agroecology horizontally through knowledge exchange⁴, but the organizational sustainability of school gardens3,8 should be addressed for agroecological up-scaling9,10,11 and long-term continuation of SAIs to occur. • SAIs comprise the management and planning of all components in the food system⁷ at the school scale. From food production, cultivation, packaging, distribution (to their home and/or school kitchen), acquisition (selling their production in school agriculture fairs or neighborhood businesses), consumption and waste management (composting organic waste). • Agroecological school planning requires a fundamentally different vision of food systems: through multi-actor cooperation, collective resource management, equitable gender roles and bot