Reorganization of schools in the department of Caazapá applying a mathematical programming model

Abstract

The current location and the level of use of schools in the department of Caazapá, as in other regions of Paraguay, propitiate a sustained increase in maintenance costs and investment in infrastructure, destining at national level in the last eight years USD 537 million in infrastructure. Today, there are 469 schools located in this department, with an average of 83 students per school. If it is also considered that 66% of the establishments have fewer than 25 students, it can be inferred that there is an underutilization of the infrastructure and operating costs. In contrast, only 1% of the establishments have more than 49 students per classroom. This spatial distribution of schools, and their occupancy levels generate high investment costs for improvement and maintenance over time, and in turn causes resource management problems, which are scarce. It is imperative, then, the application of strategies aimed at optimizing the available resources. With this work, we generate a distribution of schools, with the search for the best selection of schools, in the sense of minimizing operating costs, investment in infrastructure and student transportation. For this, a mathematical programming model, existing in the literature, and compatible with the case of Caazapá in terms of variables, parameters, constraints, and objective function was previously identified. The implications of this new reorganizated set of establishments include closing some schools, changing the capacity of others, or continuing without any change. The model was modified, adapted to the Paraguayan case, and combined with the use of geographic information systems (GIS) for the analysis of the problem and the presentation of the results.