Luzon students, teachers struggle amid floods

AS CLASSES open today, school officials and communities in central and northern Luzon, especially in areas devastated by strong typhoons in the past two years, are struggling to bring learning to children no matter the odds.

In Pangasinan, the two sections of Grade 6 in San Miguel Elementary School in Bani town will hold their classes in a village chapel because their classrooms, which were destroyed by Typhoon “Emong” two years ago, have yet to be replaced.

Another grade level will hold classes at the school’s stage while another will hold sessions in classrooms without walls, though these are surrounded by cyclone wires.

“In both situations, the students are exposed to the elements … They are vulnerable to bad weather conditions, including lightning,” said Dr. Elpidio Calixtro, Bani schools supervisor.

At least 11 of the 29 elementary schools in Bani have buildings that are in need of major repair, he said. The worst are the Marcos school buildings built in the 1960s, whose steel trusses, braces and walls are coated in rust.

“We have been reporting the need for new classrooms and repair of the old ones to the Department of Education (DepEd) and officials always promise to send repairmen. We are still waiting for them,” Calixtro said.

In Infanta town, which was ravaged by Typhoon “Cosme” in May 2008, the Batang Elementary School is awaiting replacement of three classrooms destroyed by strong winds, Mayor Ruperto Martinez said.

The roof of a classroom in Nangalisan Elementary School in the town was blown away by Cosme and had not been restored, he said.

What exacerbates the lack of classrooms is the implementation of the program to accommodate kindergarten students in public schools. The DepEd did not provide for rooms to house the additional students, Martinez said.

In many villages, kindergarten classes will be held in makeshift classrooms, barangay halls and chapels.

Cleaning their classrooms in Macabebe, Pampanga, while accepting enrollees two weeks ago, Erlinda Galang, Veronica Vergara and Portia Viray pause several times from work to massage their legs.

Varicose veins get their much-deserved strokes. “We got these years ago. These are what you get when you teach in a flooded classroom or stand long hours while teaching,” said Galang, a Grade 2 teacher at the Macabebe Central Elementary School for 19 years now.

Galang has accepted that floods are a fact of life in the town. Macabebe, she said, is at the mouth of the Pampanga River, which drains out to Manila Bay. “One rain storm is enough to flood the place,” she said. “Floods are worse when these occur during high tide.”

A pair of rubber boots is thus indispensable for teachers in Macabebe, said Viray.

Viray’s Grade 3 pupils will have classes in one of the old buildings where the ceilings are peeling off and the walls reveal marks on how high or low the previous floods reached.

Each wooden desk comes with a chair shared by three students, instead of the ideal two. The desks, she said, are important during floods because students sit on these, their feet on the chairs.

Floods deny students learning spaces. Near Viray’s classroom are six idle, low-lying rooms.

Students assigned to the three new well-elevated structures behind the Gabaldon building are spared from floods. But pathways get submerged at times, too. Year-round, even during summer break, the pond in between the buildings is filled with tilapia, drawing weekend fishers.

Macabebe teachers appear to have no fear of floods. When water is not beyond a foot, classes are not suspended. These are held instead at the Gabaldon building or at the training center.

In these instances, teachers shorten their lessons by 10 to 20 minutes to give a chance to other classes. “The children are used to [shortened classes] during floods,” Vergara said.

Parents like Nerry Lacap enroll their children in flooded schools because they have no choice. “We can only afford public schools,” he said.

Much of the 3.1-hectare Macabebe High School is swampland. The only strip of dry land, about 200 meters long, is where 11 classrooms now stand.

The principal, Rosita de Ala, agreed that the site is unfit for a school but it‘s the only space the municipal government can offer.

Saving more than 80 perennially flooded schools in Pampanga‘s fourth district (Macabebe, Masantol, Minalin, Candaba, San Simon and Apalit towns) by raising them is a “so difficult and sad undertaking,” Rep. Anna York Bondoc said.

Repairs and rehabilitation were funded by a P50-million fund given by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2010.

“I‘ve been harassing the national government to release funds to us because local funds do not suffice,” Bondoc said.

In Zambales, normalcy has slowly returned to Botolan town, after school buildings there were either destroyed or buried under mud and sand due to widespread flooding when a major dike breached in 2009.

“Most of the school facilities here are ready for the resumption of classes. Except for the village of Carael, I am confident that things have gone back to normal. But because June signals the start of another storm season, we still have a lot of reasons to remain wary,” said Botolan Mayor Nerma Yap.

Joel de Guzman, 35, a school teacher in Botolan, said the storms have hit the elderly and children the hardest.

“It’s difficult for the children to go to school. For instance, here we teach mostly students of evacuees, and their parents have barely enough for the family. Some students have dropped out, their parents opting to use what little they have for food instead of school,” he said.