School a long walk for Cordillera kids

BAGUIO CITY—Cordillera parents walked for 3 to 4 kilometers with their children in interior Cordillera provinces as early as 6 a.m. on the first day of school on Monday, as mandatory kindergarten in public schools started.

Some children also took boats because they needed to cross rivers to reach school in parts of Abra and Apayao, said Crescencio Gamay, Cordillera planning officer of the Department of Education (DepEd).

But public grade school and high school students are used to the same journey each week in the Cordillera, one of the characteristics of school life in rural mountain communities, he said.

Gamay said local government employees, policemen and soldiers oversaw security for students who had to walk to reach their schools.

“As of our very last check, all 22,938 kindergarten pupils are safe, listening to their first lecture in kindergarten class,” he said.

Cordillera public elementary schools received 221,698 pupils on school opening, while the region’s public high schools accepted 86,186 students on Monday, Gamay said.

The biggest cluster of students is still enrolled in Benguet public elementary and high schools, he said.

DepEd has also opened new work items for teachers, focusing on the need for 20,000 kindergarten teachers in public schools, Gamay said.

Ideally, a kindergarten teacher must handle only 25 pupils, but the Cordillera has only 125 kindergarten teachers who handle two classes each, he said.

Contractual work items have been opened to increase the teaching workforce, Gamay said.

The DepEd Cordillera office also plans to hire 309 elementary teachers and 450 high school teachers for 2011, he said.

In Isabela, however, overcrowded classrooms characterized the “birth pains” of the public kindergarten program.

At the Alibagu Elementary School in Ilagan town, 45 kindergarten pupils were crammed into a room under one teacher originally assigned to teach Grade 1 pupils.

At the Centro-San Antonio Elementary School also in Ilagan, 60 kindergarten pupils pack one classroom.

“So far, we are okay here, unlike in some elementary schools that have no kindergarten teachers [at all],” said Cristina Manghi, the school principal.

Benito Tumamao, DepEd Cagayan Valley director, said these were minor problems. “So far, so good in the opening of classes,” he said.

In Cabanatuan City, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) donated 5,011 board feet of lumber to two public elementary schools in a town once notorious for illegal logging.

Gary Zaldy Flores, a teacher of Calabasa Elementary School (CES), and Marjorie Flores, head teacher of F. Buencamino Elementary School, both in Gabaldon town, received lumber seized by the Nueva Ecija South community environment and natural resources office.

Flores said CES requested lumber from the DENR to repair classrooms and build a hut for the school’s special activities.

In the Science City of Muñoz, Dr. Ruben Sevilleja, president of the Central Luzon State University (CLSU), said the university started to enforce a four-day school week that ends on Thursdays.

He said the move would save the CLSU at least P500,000 a month in electric bills. Vincent Cabreza and Villamor Visaya Jr., Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Anselmo Roque and Armand Galang, Inquirer Central Luzon