The shocking realities of school management

Throughout my high school and college days in one of the well-known Catholic colleges of Manila, I was only aware of a single authority in each department: the principal of high school, and the dean of college. Thus I conceived that a school runs solely dependent on an academic director.

When I became a preschool teacher, I realized that beside the academic head, there is a school administrator who monitors the teachers’ competence and efficiency and provides the monthly compensations of school personnel. Then, after I trained at the AMI Montessori Internazionale in Italy, I became the project manager of the Montessori preschool under the sponsorship of Operation Brotherhood International, a civic-oriented organization. Gradually, I encountered the myriad concerns of a school, foremost of which was an estafa case involving both the company accountant and cashier who handled the foreign funding of all the OBI projects – for its medical mission to Vietnamese and Laotian refugees in the ’60s, including the cash tuition fees of the O.B. Montessori school operation.

About this time, OBI president Oscar Arellano passed away and OBI ceased operation. We were then incorporated as a non-stock, non-profit school. Thereafter I realized that the viability of a school depends also on the vigilant controls of its finance section.

Private school and public school managements are a world apart

Private schools may be in a better control of the administrative, academic and finance departments compared to public schools. However, much depends on the priorities of the family who owns and likely manages the school and makes up the majority membership of the school board.

In the public school management, the principal remains a helpless authority figure. Since public schools usually have a huge student population, responsibilities of the principal are awesome specially since she is not provided a full-time secretary. Today, these principals can no longer adequately supervise and continue training the teachers. As the school opens this month, the onset of the rainy season, her time is taken up looking after the various problems such as leaking roof, loose doorknobs and faucets, the flooding of classrooms due to poorly maintained drainage system, termite infestation eating away columns and foundations.

Who comes to the assistance of the principal when all these happen? She is tasked to call the Municipal Hall who then sends a maintenance man to do the work. If the maintenance personnel fails to appear, any of the ten janitors who are not trained technically, will ultimately find some remedies.

The need for professional architects and engineers

Not all schools hire a professional architect. O.B. Montessori Inc. has steadily retained one architect, Joey Aviles, for 11 years for O.B. Montessori’s total number of four school sites, including its main headquarters in Greenhills, a complex of high-rise buildings.

Matching the old palazzo, which Italian Montessori schools occupy, we rented old Manila "mansions". This was in the mid ’60s when the old, well-known families of Manila moved out to the new Ayala subdivisions in Makati. The Cu-Unjieng mansion in Paco had ten huge rooms upstairs and downstairs. The winding narra staircase led to a huge living room with wide narra floors. The tall gates led to a wide driveway decorated by two reclining sculpted cement hound dogs. The old garden had a fountain in the center. The Rufino mansion in Taft also had ten huge narra rooms we used for preschool and grade school. However, the weekend Libertad fires and the regular flooding of classrooms during the rainy season forced us to relocate. The young parents who patiently carried their preschool children through the one foot high floodwater never failed to impress me.

Finally in the ’70s we joined our mother company, OBI, in the Lichauco compound in-between the La Ignaciana and the Xavier House along Herran street, now Pedro Gil. The two Intramuros style bahay na bato (stone houses) of the early 1900s were of Spanish-American heritage. These houses were supported by massive porous limestone and adobe walls instead of the metal-reinforced, compact cement foundation used today. Sta. Ana, considered then the "Forbes Park" of Manila, had clusters of beautiful mansions alongside the Pasig river with Malacanang Palace as its neighbor across the river. The Sta. Ana church and the public market are in the center.

The electric wires were so old and could cause fire so we hired a company to rewire both houses. The cost stunned me, but it was necessary. For three years we struggled with the rainy season. It kept flooding the ground floor classrooms which ruined the Montessori apparata on the bottom shelves. We spent again a fortune elevating the exterior grounds, two feet higher, and landscaping the 4,000 sqm school area.

Unfamiliar with the professional renovation and repairs of edifices, I designed the extension of rooms, the covered walks and the likes by myself. I then contracted small time repairmen of our post-war big house in Singalong. These karpintero, tubero, electrician and mason were frequently hired by Mama and her sisters in the family compound. Later, I had observed the cement floors being rough and not aligned. The faulty wirings caused occasional brown-outs and grounding since the electricians were usually unlicensed. The carpentry works looked awkward. Generally, these handymen being illiterate could not do a good job. All these blunders challenged me and my school officers to put together a professional maintenance crew.

School maintenance work – a continuous operation

Well-run schools never go on holidays. On the contrary, the summer holiday period of April to May is the busiest time for both administrative and academic management. Each of our ECO offices, or the Environmental Care Office in each branch, is responsible for the over-all maintenance, sanitation, beautification and safety of the school premises.

Since the ECO covers a wide range of complex functions, its officers and staff are composed of professional engineers and skilled workers. To date, this office has 26 ECO personnel for all its four branches including the engineers, draftsman, the skilled workers like the carpenters, electricians, mason etc. aside from the two architects: an in-house architect and a consultant. In fact, every summer, four carpenters fix and repaint the tables and chairs for the 17 preschool classrooms. Repainting takes two to three days per classroom. Presently, 14 classrooms are ready for occupancy.

This summer, the biggest construction budget is allotted to the new high school of Sta. Ana branch. Three million pesos has been allotted for the two-story, four-classroom building. This new extension building will be linked to the old schoolhouses with great care to maintain its old Spanish-American character. To accommodate the additional high school students, the old Home Arts kitchen for grade school shall be renovated for P90,000 to double its capacity. The new high school library costs P200,000.

Since half of students in our Dasmarinas Village, Makati Branch lived in Las Pinas, Alabang, and Parañaque area, we decided to quit renting a huge house along Mckinley road in 1996 and instead purchased two new townhouses in a one hectare lot in Las Pinas three years ago. Architect Aviles worked out my idea of linking together these buildings like a mall. The rest of the one hectare land is now occupied by a school farm and a big basketball and assembly court. This summer we are using a space between the buildings for the construction of a Science Laboratory costing a million pesos. The renovation of the high school Food Tech room which includes a small cafeteria business reached P80,000, while the renovation of the two libraries P150,000.

The construction bidders

Learning from past mistakes, we started the bidding practice for our various construction projects when we constructed the first two school buildings of Greenhills. Before, we used to keep only one contractor who had monopolized the smaller construction and maintenance works of the small schools. We realized later on that he was not only over-pricing, but was giving us sub-standard work. Today, all renovations or expansions – are always open for bidding to our regular contractors, namely one large construction company and three small firms.

Right now, we have opened the bidding for the construction work of the covered walk for our Angeles, Pampanga branch. After identifying the scope of work, Architect Aviles drew the design. On this was based the in-house estimates by our ECO Team. This, matched with the contractors’ proposed estimates, served as the basis of negotiations. The choice is usually the firm with a consistent record of reliability, not just the cost factor. The summary of tabulated bids will still be presented to me for final approval. The document phase of the project follows, signified by the contract signing. We foresee that the work will last for two months. Construction meetings are to be conducted on-site. This is will serve as basis for the progress-billing of the awarded contractor.

A training course for building custodians

Construction of the four buildings of the O.B. Montessori Center in the Greenhills headquarters involved my joining the weekly update meetings with the architect, construction director and foreman, as well as our in-house engineers and finance director. That was in 1986. By 1993, we completed the quadrangle plan with two much taller buildings, part of which became our college. I decided to use these experiences alongside that of our expert architects and engineers, coupled with our disciplined and highly skilled workers in a comprehensive Building Custodian and Safety Course under the TESDA program. At the moment, I am still working on it with an Australian Security Specialist from Adelaide, Derek Phillip Mart.

During our regular school board meetings, Ed Carrascoso, former NAIA airport manager, sits as a member of the board. As he receives our financial report on the school construction and repairs the four schools are undergoing, he would tell us of the huge building construction he is directing including the new 400 bedroom FEU hospital in Fairview, Quezon City. He said that the right building administrator for it is difficult to find.

When an international plane descends on Metro Manila, passengers note two clusters of skyscrapers high in Makati and Greenhills. At the moment, some of these old buildings have been replaced with even taller, modernistic glass buildings. New hospital buildings and shopping malls are continuously changing the skyline of Metro Manila.

What kind of maintenance crew looks after their cleanliness, order and safety? They would need gigantic generators and water tanks. What about the security agencies hired to guard the premises vigilantly particularly in these uncertain times? Dare we look into the shabby and precarious conditions in building maintenance of smaller buildings, hospitals, schools and other public structures all over the country?

The construction industry is festered with deception and malversation of funds. The professionalization of custodianship by requiring training and licensing will prevent the loss of innocent lives.

(Erratum: Column on Raising baby Alessia, the Montessori way (May 17, 2001) was faxed from Europe. Without the distraction of a yaya, who is likely to underestimate a baby, Mary Jo and Luca have the sole privilege of discovering the secrets of Alessia’s world... Deciphering the facial expression of the baby and guessing what she is pointing out – will greatly relieve her... Spelling errors included Mary Jo’s surname, Gervasoni. Guardal Come sei gelosa (Watch her. She’s jealous). The street name is After identifying the scope of work Vittorrio Emmanuele. The restaurant is Da Vittorio. The waiter served pastaciutta al pomodoro or tomato pasta without broth. The waiter assured Mary Jo when Alessia smeared tomato sauce on the white table cloth E niente, Signora. Eramo fanciulle una volta (It’s nothing, Madame. All of us went through childhood.)... Adamello mountain in Italy and Provence. France.)