In the town of San Pedro Pinula, there is an elementary school as well as a middle school.

For Maya who live in a village, the effort and expense required to send a child to town to attend

middle school may be prohibitive; thus, only children whose parents have money and/or live

close to town are likely to attend. The only high schools for the whole department of San Pedro

Pinula are in the department capital of Jalapa, which, from the town of San Pedro Pinula, is at

least a half-hour drive over a mountain ridge. High school students from San Pedro Pinula tend

to live in the department capital while attending school. Since the high schools of Jalapa serve

the departments of both Jalapa and San Pedro Pinula, it has the atmosphere of a college town, but

instead of college-aged students the population is largely of high school age. The housing needs

of the students affects the economy of Jalapa: many inhabitants rent out private rooms in their

homes, and whole apartment buildings are dedicated to housing high school students. Not all

high schools are public and most have attendance fees, and, further, the parents) will have to

pay for school supplies, uniforms, housing, and food, so ending a child to high school can be an

expensive undertaking. At minimum, it costs a Pinulteco an average of Q 1500 ($200) monthly to

send their child to high school. Some teenagers take the daily jitneys to Jalapa and return home

every evening (which costs Q160 a month or $25), or they live with relatives in Jalapa.

 In the past, only the children of the wealthiest families went to high school in Jalapa. But

when Ladinos started to migrate to the United States, the attendance patterns changed as lower

class Ladinos began to send their children to middle school and high school. In the past decade,

the number of Maya children from the towns and villages who attend high school in Jalapa has

increased significantly, which indicates a great change in the community. While there is still a

large gap in the status of women and men, as well as Maya and Ladino, the rise in education may