Kinder to High School

June 9, 2011

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO — In a bid to build more classrooms, Pampanga first district Rep. Carmelo Lazatin has initiated an education summit aimed at raising funds.
Lazatin initiated the “Kabahagi Ako – Sa Handog Silid Aralan Tugon sa Kaunlaran” project to address the lack of classrooms in the province’s first district, which is composed of Angeles City and the towns of Mabalacat and Magalang.
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The “Kabahagi Ako” project is the first-of-a-kind, congressional district-wide public/private partnership program that seeks to address the said problem.
The project aims to engage private institutions and business entities in the district to help address the lack of classrooms by adopting a public school of their choice.
Each participating private institution will be asked to construct one classroom for their chosen school, while the concerned local government unit will allocate funds to compliment resources pooled by the private sector.
A formal meeting with private institutions will be held during an education summit on June 23 at the Hotel Stotsenberg in Clark Freeport.
Guest speaker during the summit will be Education Secretary Armin Luistro.
Aside from Lazatin, Pampanga Gov. Lilia Pineda has already pledged financial support to the project.
Angeles City Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan, Mabalacat Mayor Marino Morales and Magalang Mayor Romulo Pecson have yet to finalize their pledges.
Numbers
In an initial meeting Tuesday, Lazatin’s Chief of Staff Irish Calaguas said the program was formulated after several discussions with Education Secretary Luistro.
Research conducted by Lazatin’s staff showed that towns under the province’s 1st District lack at least 247 classrooms to accommodate the growing number of elementary and high school enrollees.
Moreover, at least 184 classrooms need major repairs.
“If we total these, there are around 431 classrooms that need funding,” Calaguas said.
Calaguas said building and repairing a new classroom would cost around P650, 000 or a total of P280 million for 431 classrooms.
However, local government funds are insufficient.
The same research showed that there are 117 public elementary schools and 26 public high schools across the district.
Meanwhile, enrollment in the past school year is at 82,274 for elementary and 37,698 for high school.
The district has only 1,837 elementary classrooms and 674 high school classrooms.
These data translates that there are 42 elementary students while more than 58 high school students in a single room.
Calaguas said they will send letters to private companies in the district informing them about the project.

Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/pampanga/local-news/2011/06/08/education-summit-seen-address-classroom-backlog-160096