Willing but weak

IT used to be that parents themselves would discourage their children from going to school on the first few days of the start of classes because they knew that no classroom learning would actually take place anyway because the kids would be tasked with housecleaning after the long summer break left facilities poorly scrubbed. But the ingenious Brigada Eskwela, a nationwide voluntary community service program for preparing public schools a couple of weeks before the opening of a new academic year, has addressed that rather student-unfriendly practice which distracts from the more important task of learning. Now education officials in Pangasinan are raving about the excellent attendance on day 1 of school.

Then again, as the students eagerly flock in, one of the major challenges that the public school system faces is the longstanding overcrowding due to lack of classrooms, among other things. Students are willing but the facilities are weak.

Public schools and their operations are the domain of the Department of Education but its slice in the national budget has long been sorely minute and, aggravated by corruption, inadequate for the delivery of quality education services. This is where local government units come crucially in. But LGU support, like the national funding, is also miserably small and equally tinted with corruption. This is evidenced by the misuse of the special education fund in Dagupan by the Lim administration, using the pot to pay largely to pay other purposes instead of adding more facilities and supporting the training of teachers as mandated by law. The situation in Dagupan is not an isolated case. By and large, education is not a priority among elected LGU officials.

Parents, with the teachers through the PTAs, should be more proactive by monitoring how public funds intended for primary and secondary education are being utilized by LGUs. They can also lobby for the duplication of best practices in the few LGUs with enlightened leaders who understand and champion the value of education.

Such a shame to disappoint the hundreds of thousands of young minds who are eager and hungry to be educated. It is tantamount to depriving them of a promising future.

 

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Damning questions

IT took almost three days to remove a crash-landing plane that got stuck in a runway at the Davao International Airport in Davao City.  Wasn’t that a bit slow, in the process disrupting routine airport procedures and other flight operations from rival airlines, eventually resulting in huge financial losses – not to mention untold ordeal suffered by the traveling general public?  Who was at fault in the undue delay of retrieval operations, officials of the disabled plane or the airport management?  Listen to Mayor Sarah Duterte of Davao:  “What happens both inside the plane and the airport is not our business.  What happens outside the airport is our business.”  Fair enough.

But here are the more damning questions:  Is the airport in Davao really international?  If so, how come it gets paralyzed entirely after absorbing one plane mishap?  Does an international airport only have one runway?  If yes is the answer to the third question, it’s not funny anymore.

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