Classroom shortage, half-day classes await school opening

Due to a shortage of classrooms, most, if not all, of the public elementary and high schools in Cebu City will continue to hold two class shifts per day when the school year opens on June 3, said Acting Mayor Joy Augustus Young.

However, holding classes in morning and afternoon shifts would affect night high schools which are supposed to start classes at 4 p.m.

Young, outgoing vice mayor and chair of the City Council’s Education Committee, said the city needs about 1,000 new classrooms to avoid overcrowding and ensure students can hold whole-day classes “ but we don’t have enough money to build the classrooms that we need,” he said.

Classroom shortages are a perennial problem across the country.

Young said the allocation from the Department of Education (DepEd) for new units is too small. The city government has to allocate at least P20 million from its Special Education Fund (SEF) per year for this.

In spite of this, construction of new school buildings has been hampered by delays in the bidding process, he said.

He is asking the city’s Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) to speed it up.

Young also said the nationwide implementation of the K + 12 program this year was the “dumbest” solution to the country’s educational problem because it would worsen the classroom shortage and should be suspended.

Cebu City had about 160,000 students enrolled in elementary and public high schools last year.

The number of students is expected to increase when classes start on June 3.

“There is nothing that we can do to immediately address the classroom shortage. It takes a year to construct new buildings,” he said.

In 2010, former mayor and now south district Rep. Tomas Osmeña authorized the allocation of P100 million under Supplemental Budget 1 (SB 1) to build additional classrooms and school buildings.

This outlay is in addition to the SEF allocation of Cebu City for new classrooms.

However, Young said many of the construction projects under the 2010 Supplemental Budget No. 1 have not yet been impelmented.

The construction of a four-story, 28 classroom building at the Regino Mercado Elementary School in barangay Pahina Central worth 21 million has not started.

Another delayed project is the P11.7 million construction of a four-story, 16 classroom school building at the Kinasang-an Elementary School because of unresolved road right of way issues, said Young.

Young said that with limited space in the city, the city government is forced to build high-rise school buildings.

City Administrator Jose Marie Poblete said that delays in the bidding process cannot be avoided because the city lacks personnel to prepare technical aspects of the Program of Work and Estimates (POWE) and the Approved Budget Contract.

“But if it is already in the budget, we can still use the appropriation now,” he said.

Poblete said the P100 million outlay for classrooms and school buildings is charged to the 2010 capital outlay and so remains a continuing appropriation available for use anytime.

“Rest assured that as long as it is for the good of the public, it is a priority of our mayor,” said Poblete.