DepEd’s “Brigada Eskwela,” a good project

DepEd has a laudable project called “Brigada Eskwela.” This involves a communal action on sprucing up school plants and facilities to make them habitable for children come class opening in June. Initiated in 2003, it has gained nationwide support among parents and community officials, chalking up last year about P2.3 billion worth of assistance from education stakeholders.

Since Brigada involves doing minor repairs on school building, this strategy has resulted in substantial savings on repair funds tucked to education department’s annual budget. We don’t have the figure this year but during my time this item used to be from P5 to P10 million in this region, a substantial sum really during those days. As usual, it was DPWH which handled the repair works and because it had limited personnel many dilapidated classrooms were left unattended to.

One thing about repairing a classroom is that the work can usually be done by local carpenters at very minimal cost. Even if the work involves total renovation, the job can be done by male residents in barangays most of whom are good in carpentry work.

We found this out during the watch of the late Secretary Isidro Cariño. An engineer himself, the Secretary entrusted the task of repairing school buildings to local education officials, particularly the school principals themselves. After training the latter how to do the job including preparing a work plan, cost estimate, steps in materials procurement and others, funds were released amounting to the cost estimates but not exceeding P20,000 each. The surprising outcome: School buildings were repaired on time, the quality of work was acceptable, but more important, savings in millions of pesos were realized.

This strategy may be embedded in the Brigada initiative. The principal can organize a special group out of the volunteers and assign them the repair jobs. With free labor and donated materials classrooms can be improved with practically no cost to the government. To attract volunteers, parents and teachers may prepare free lunch or snacks for the repair team. This, coupled with giving of certificates of recognition to the workers, would go a long way towards encouraging community cooperation to improve school buildings.

One corollary outcome of the Brigada is encouraging collaboration on the part of education advocates in the service area of the school. Sometimes the leadership of a school forgets that the latter is a people’s institution whose operation, to be effective, requires the combined efforts of parents, community officials and school personnel. By bringing these people together in pursuing the project there it inevitably generated a spirit of cooperation which, if properly nurtured throughout the school year, could be an effective factor in solving many school-related problems.

One such problem is non-regularity of attendance. During my watch as a school official I learned that some children could not make it to school every day for one reason or another. Sometimes it was poor weather condition that prevented children, especially in countryside areas, from attending classes. Sometimes it was livelihood related concerns that did so, such as when children were made to help their parents in the field during planting or harvest activities. At times the cause was a heart-rending one, such as the case of a grade two girl which, as told to me by the teacher, would be absent one day a week because on that day her only dress would be washed and pressed.

Poverty – this is one stumbling block to a successful educational program. Poverty prevents parents from sending their kids to school or, if they manage to do so, from providing them with their basic needs such as nutritious food, decent clothing and school paraphernalia (paper, pencil, notebooks, etc.)

Years ago the malnutrition figure among school children in this region was 20 percent. This was when the economy was fairly in a good state and the number of poor families was less than the current figure of about 40 percent. What is the current figure now when prices of basic goods have gone haywire?

 Problems like these can be made known to Brigada participants during a “pulong-pulong” organized for the purpose. This may not have been spelled out in the DepEd memo on the project, but if a school principal is imaginative enough he could organize a kick-off program during which he orients parents and barangay officials of the state of his school, especially with regard to its participate and drop-out rates as well as its percentage of graduation and achievement profile. In this program he could also present his plans and projects and their rationale in relation to the welfare of his school wards.

 All told, the Brigada is a good project and Secretary Jesli Lapus should be congratulated for it.

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