READY FOR FLAG-RAISING | Students at Luyahan Elementary School in Barangay Pasonanca, Zamboanga City, line up for the flag ceremony during school opening on Aug. 22, the first day of the new school year across the country since the pandemic struck in March 2020. (Photo from Facebook courtesy of ELENA FLORES)
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines — Macey, a 6-year-old first grade student, was excited to attend her first day of in-person classes last Aug. 22. However, her excitement turned into trauma when the time came to answer the call of nature.
Macey requested permission from her teacher to defecate in one of the comfort rooms in Luyahan Elementary School in the village of Pasonanca in this city, but to her dismay, the toilets were dirty and there was no water.
Pleading help from her teacher, the child was allegedly instructed to just relieve herself on a grassy area near the school.
Embarrassed, Macey has refused to go back to school after that experience.
“Imagine the trauma and embarrassment suffered by my granddaughter. I am sure there were other learners who suffered the same situation during their first day in school,” said Macey’s grandmother, who also happened to be a retired officer in one of the universities in Zamboanga City.
The grandmother revealed that the family decided to transfer Macey to a private school “so our girl can start to appreciate learning in school.”
“We don’t want her to remember the horrors of learning after that traumatic experience,” she added.
Who’s in charge?
Another mother of a first grader from another public school in the city expressed disgust when her son came home with his pants wet from urine.
“I am mad. My son narrated to me that he didn’t know where to pee. They were told to pee at the back of the school building [but] he was embarrassed to pee in the open space [so] he wets on his pants hoping no one will notice,” the mother said in Chavacano.
She said the school officials should have started with a campus tour for young learners, especially first graders, “so they know where the toilet is, the wash area, the exit, the guard house, the principal’s room, and there should have been someone in charge to handle this toilet issue.”
She vowed to bring the matter before the parents-teachers association meeting.
The state of toilets is not prominently discussed in relation to the readiness of the country’s public schools to reopen for classes, unlike the concerns on the adequacy of classrooms and teachers.
State of disrepair
Basilio Uy, acting chief for school governance and operation of the Department of Education (DepEd) here, admitted there is a shortage of comfort rooms in the 172 public elementary schools and 41 high schools in the city that hosts 219,164 students.
In all of the city’s 213 public schools, there are a total of 1,018 functional toilets, as of December 2021, according to Uy.
This means one toilet for every 215 learners, way off the standard of one toilet for every 50.
Macey’s grandmother said the pandemic, when in-person classes were called off, should have been the opportune time for the DepEd to ramp up the building of toilets.
“The education department is spending millions of pesos for gadgets, how come they cannot fund comfort rooms for public schools,” the grandmother complained.
But Uy said the agency didn’t have funds for infrastructure upgrade at that time because the budget was focused on COVID-19 response.