Puerto Aventuras high school classes begin while its new Margarita Maza campus is built

Puerto Aventuras now has public high school classes inside the town. Between 120 and 130 students are enrolled in the new federal Margarita Maza bachillerato and are being taught in the town's secondary school while their own campus is built, which means that for these students, going on to high school no longer means leaving the town every day.

The figures come from Gilberto Gómez Martínez, the alcalde who heads Puerto Aventuras within the municipality of Playa del Carmen, speaking to Noticaribe on September 10. He said the students are using the buildings of the José Antonio Tzuc Esparza secondary school until work on the new campus is finished, and that enrollment is expected to grow once it opens. For a town of this size that is a real change. Until now, the alcalde said, many young people from Puerto Aventuras have had to travel to Playa del Carmen or Tulum to take their upper secondary studies at all.

What the Margarita Maza bachillerato is

The Bachillerato Nacional Margarita Maza is a new federal program from the Secretaría de Educación Pública, launched this year with the stated aim of bringing young people who are outside the school system back into it. According to SEP's admission call of August 17, it is free and takes two years, organized in 16 modules of five or six weeks each. It is taught in a mixed format, with classes in person on campus and an online platform that students can use at any hour, alongside art, culture and sport. The call also explains the arrangement Puerto Aventuras is now using. At the start of the program, it says, the classroom part can run in alternative sites near the places where the campuses will be built, proposed by the state authorities.

Puerto Aventuras was named as one of the program's sites in Quintana Roo from the start. When registration opened in August, Quadratín Quintana Roo reported four campuses for the state: two in Cancún, one in Playa del Carmen and one in Puerto Aventuras. The state government's fourth annual report, published in early September, lists six Margarita Maza upper secondary campuses planned across Playa del Carmen, Puerto Aventuras, Cancún, Puerto Morelos and Tulum.

The national calendar is still running. SEP's call set registration from August 17 to September 7, and according to El Heraldo de México registration is now open until Saturday, September 26. State education authorities elsewhere, Michoacán among them, have published Monday, September 28 as the program's first day of classes. The alcalde's account does not say whether the Puerto Aventuras group began earlier than that date or whether the figure of 120 to 130 counts students enrolled for the start of term.

The campus being built

The permanent building is one of two. According to the alcalde, the state educational infrastructure institute, IFEQROO, is putting about 55 million pesos into two Margarita Maza campuses: one in the Real Ibiza development in Playa del Carmen and one in Puerto Aventuras. In August, IFEQROO's acting head, Moisés Pérez Canto, gave the figure as 56 million pesos for the same two campuses, and said the new building would not be ready until next year, so families would keep making the daily trip through this school year. No construction progress figure or opening month has been published.

Pérez Canto has also described the wider push behind it. Speaking to Quintana Roo Hoy on August 7, he said Playa del Carmen and Benito Juárez were the two municipalities where demand for upper secondary places had grown most in 2026, and that new schools there would serve a little over 3,200 students. Alongside the two Margarita Maza campuses in the municipality of Playa del Carmen, that includes CBTIS 309, a federal technical high school with room for 950 students in Playa del Carmen itself.

The ground for a high school in Puerto Aventuras was set aside some time ago. In March 2023 the council, then Solidaridad, voted unanimously to donate a plot of 19,998.31 square meters on Calle Guaya in Puerto Aventuras to the Colegio de Bachilleres for a high school campus. The records we have found do not say whether the Margarita Maza building stands on that plot.

What it saves families

The daily trip is the reason this matters in Puerto Aventuras. In an interview with Noticaribe on August 18, resident Lilian Espinoza set out what it costs. A family can spend 40 to 60 pesos a day on a mototaxi to take a student out to the federal highway, where they board a van to Playa del Carmen for about 70 pesos round trip. That comes to around 500 pesos a week before any money for lunch, and it puts teenagers on Highway 307 every school day. Those mototaxis are the same service the state mobility institute capped at 600 plated units in July, as we reported in our piece on the town's mototaxi map.

The alcalde also confirmed that the new primary school in the Nueva Generación neighborhood opened some months ago and is already taking its first pupils, in the buildings completed in the first stage of that project.

What this does not settle yet

The classes in the secondary school are a start rather than the finished school. The students are borrowing another school's buildings, the permanent campus has no published opening date, and the only firm guidance on timing is IFEQROO's August statement that it will be ready next year. The enrollment figure of 120 to 130 comes from the alcalde, as reported by Noticaribe, and we have not found campus level figures from SEP for Quintana Roo. The investment figure covers two campuses, and no breakdown for Puerto Aventuras alone has been given.

What has changed is the direction. A town that for years sent its teenagers up the highway for high school now has an upper secondary program of its own on the ground, with a campus funded and under way. For families who live in Puerto Aventuras or are thinking of moving there, that takes a daily trip up the highway out of the school week. For more on the town, see our guide to Puerto Aventuras.

Sources: Noticaribe, September 10 and August 18, 2026; Secretaría de Educación Pública, Convocatoria de ingreso al Bachillerato Nacional Margarita Maza 2026 (August 17, 2026); Quadratín Quintana Roo, August 13, 2026; Quintana Roo Hoy, August 7, 2026; Cancún Mío, report on the fourth state government report, September 6, 2026; Government of Michoacán, August 8, 2026; El Heraldo de México, September 22, 2026; H. Ayuntamiento de Playa del Carmen, March 17, 2023. Main image: Nan Palmero, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.