Again, the school calendar issue

The question of changing the opening of schools from June to September has again cropped up. Two senators, Drilon and Flavier, have recently reopened the issue which was the subject of a debate about 12 years ago. This writer was then with DepEd when secretary Armand Fabella ordered the regional offices to conduct consultations with parents and other stakeholders on the subject. The result: More than 75 percent of the respondents were against the idea.

The reasons given were varied, the most significant ones being that September and subsequent months are actually typhoon months, especially in the Visayas, and that June is a good time for the young to start schooling because harvest time happens on April and May, which means money is still in the pockets of parents.

Actually, using the weather as an argument for school opening change is not quite appropriate because the entire country does not have the same weather condition at any one period of the year. Everyone knows that while a disturbance may be happening in a cluster of regions the same does not usually affect other parts of the archipelago. Thus, Mindanao except Surigao and Davao, is practically typhoon free while the Bicol region including the central parts of Samar and Leyte are typhoon prone areas.

This being the case any month proximate to the start of the calendar year, January, should be a good month to open the doors of Philippine schools. February and March ought therefore to be the months for such event but since March, April and May are summer months, and heat does not conduce the mind to learn, aside from the fact that April and May are fiesta seasons June is just the right occasion for it. Some proponents of the September opening mention that this month coincides with the start of the American school calendar. But the academic practices in that country ought not to influence our choice, after all how many Filipino students are affected by it? Only the children of the very rich for sure.

They say if it aint broke, why fix it? Indeed why change the school calendar? Think of the hassle such change would create: First (assuming the shift is gradual), classes will have to open in July for the current school year; which means students and teachers will have one extra month of vacation in June. Then classes will have to close in April of 2007 and vacation time will be May, June and July (another three idle months for students and teachers). In that year classes will open in August and end in May 2008 and vacation time will be in June, July and August (2008) before schools open on the target month - September.

The dislocations this situation will create in terms of class programs, lesson budget, financial budget, infra-project implementation and others, is tremendous not to mention wastage of work hours for teachers and study periods for students during the prolonged vacation months.

It is surprising why of all the many problems besetting our schools, the good senators would zero in on the school calendar. If they only did their homework they would have found out that our schools, public schools especially, where about 80 percent of Filipino children are studying, are in a miserable state. There is an acute shortage of almost everything - from teachers to classrooms, to books and learning tools and what have you.

Here in Central Visayas, for instance, such shortage translates to the following: Teachers, 1,480; classrooms 2,741; desks and armchairs 208,847' textbooks 352,237 all of which need a budgetary allocation of P441,795,639.

Multiplied by 16 (assuming all regions have the same needs as those of the Central Visayas, a middle-size region, the number of items needed is huge and the money equivalent (P7,068,730,224) is enormous.

For want of more teachers the TPL (teacher-pupils ratio) in most urban elementary schools is 50 or even higher. In the high school the situation is worse with one teacher handling as many as 70 to 80 students. In most cities like Cebu City night high schools classes are being operated to accommodate thousands of students who cannot be absorbed in day classes for want of teachers and classrooms.

Problems such as these ought to be in the forefront of our legislators concern, not such a peripheral issue as school calendar change.