Principal says she did not suspend bloggers

The principal of the Quezon City Science High School (QCSHS) said yesterday she was not primarily responsible for suspending four of the school’s students for writing statements critical of her and her policies on their www.multiply.com blogs.

Dr. Zenaida Panti-Sadsad said the QCSHS had merely recommended the suspension of the four students and the ultimate decision to impose it was made by the Quezon City Division of City Schools, headed by Dr. Victoria Fuentes.

“The school’s role in this case was only recommendatory; it was the Division of City Schools that approved the ordeal of the four students,” Sadsad said.

However, the students’ parents said a letter from QCSHS recommending the 10-day suspension to the Division of City Schools came from Sadsad and “a committee of discipline” she had formed to investigate the blogs.

Sadsad said a STAR report about the suspension of the four students, which came out Jan. 16, was incorrect since the students had not been suspended at the time “because of an appeal made by (their) parents.”

The Department of Education-National Capital Region office had ordered the lifting of the suspension order a few days before it was due to start on Jan. 19, pending an investigation into an appeal filed by the parents of the four students. The order was issued by the Quezon City Division of City Schools.

Sadsad denied that she had closed down the two school newspapers, The Banyuhay and The Electron. “Both of these school papers are qualifiers to the National (Schools) Press Conference, which will be held in Naga City come February,” she said.

She also denied that she removed Rex San Diego as the faculty adviser of the two school papers.

“San Diego was never sacked from his position. His appointment from the Civil Service Commission was Regular/Permanent Teacher I, English. His new teaching assignment as the teacher of Technical Writing I, was approved by the Division Office,” Sadsad said.

San Diego, however, belied Sadsad’s claim that she did not remove him from his post. “She was the one who decided it. She was the one who ordered it,” San Die-go told The STAR in an interview yesterday.

San Diego said his relief was not justified since the school’s two papers had won a string of honors and trophies as best campus papers during the last 14 years that he had served as adviser.

QCSHS, he said, has become the only high school that won the best campus paper for both its English and Filipino versions in the history of the National Schools Press Conference held annually by the DepEd.

San Diego said many students have complained about changes in the curriculum of QCSHS since Sadsad assumed the post of school principal less than two years ago. He said students opposed the changes since they followed the curriculum of regular public schools, not that of a science high school.