If your child goes to school in Turrialba, Sarapiquí, Limón or Sulá, there are no classes today. Those four areas are closed in full, across every school and every modality, so you do not need to check a list to know your campus is included. Outside those four regions the closures are campus by campus, and that is where you need to look before you leave the house. Guápiles, San Carlos, Zona Norte-Norte, Cartago, Heredia and San José Norte all have individual schools closed while their neighbours stay open.
The Ministerio de Educación Pública announced the suspension yesterday afternoon and then widened it last night. The 3 p.m. cut covered 862 campuses across seven regions, with 80 closures in Guápiles, 21 in Zona Norte-Norte and 12 in San Carlos alongside the four full-region closures. The later update brought the total to 934, adding 23 more in San Carlos, 19 in Zona Norte-Norte, 15 in Guápiles, 11 in Cartago, three in Heredia and one in San José Norte.
Because the list grew twice in one evening, check the ministry’s own channels this morning rather than relying on a figure published last night. The full campus-by-campus list is the only reliable way to confirm a school that is not in one of the four closed regions. Education Minister Leonardo Sánchez said the decision drew on reports from the area and information from the Comisión Nacional de Emergencias. The rain that came with tropical wave No. 32 pushed rivers and streams over their banks, brought slides and damaged roads, and in many communities the problem is not the school itself but the route to it.
That is worth noting as a school can be perfectly safe while the road a bus takes to reach it is not, which is why closures in the same area can look inconsistent. The decision rests on whether children, teachers and staff can get there and back. The suspension covers today only and the ministry will see later whether to extend it, and that decision will depend on how conditions look after tropical wave No. 33 passes over today. Do not assume Tuesday is settled either way.
The ministry also reminded families that suspending classes is its call alone. A yellow or orange alert from the emergency commission does not automatically close a school, and a municipality cannot close one on the ministry’s behalf, so an alert in your area is not by itself an answer about your campus.
University students have a separate set of instructions. The Universidad de Costa Rica moved its Atlantic campus in Turrialba and its Guápiles site to remote work and live online classes. The Paraíso campus is running normally. If you are working today and your kids school is closed, the problem will be childcare rather than schoolwork, and it may repeat tomorrow. Worth sorting a backup now while you have the morning to do it.
