Devastating

In all probability, our legislators being politicians, a proposed measure that will be devastating for our educational system in the longer run will be passed for popularity points incumbents will earn in the short term. This is legislation in aid of reelection.

Senate Bill 1359 and House Bill 7584, both seeking to allow students with unpaid tuition and other school fees to take assessments and examinations, are now awaiting reconciliation. Parents will, no doubt, be pleased by this. Schools, for their part, will face the prospect of bankruptcy.

The proposed legislation is the equivalent of prohibiting power distributors from cutting off service to customers who fail to settle their bills. Should such legislation be passed, it guarantees the bankruptcy of power distribution companies.

Private schools, as a matter of course, refuse examination permits for students with unpaid accounts. That, of course, causes much more than an inconvenience. It could lead to students with limited financial means to eventually abandon their education.

Cruel as it might sometimes seem, withholding examination permits is the only leverage the schools have to compel payment of fees. Without such leverage, the schools will run short of their operating expanses. Teachers could not be paid their wages. Schools could not recover their costs.

Private schools are enterprises. They require investments to start up and collect fees to be operable. Deprived of the means to compel payment, many schools will run into financial difficulties.

Our private schools are not at their financial best just now. At the height of the pandemic, DepEd reports, 860 K-12 private schools suspended operations because they simply did not have the financial means to continue or were unprepared to shift to remote learning. Those closures adversely affected 60,000 students and 4,500 teachers.

Private schools carry half the load of our educational system. In 2019-2020, private colleges and universities produced 402,437 graduates. State colleges and universities produced 394,139 graduates. From 2010 to 2020, 3.7 million graduated from private schools, providing the trained manpower our economy needs.

Private education lost many students to state colleges and universities when the free tuition law was passed. The students lost to this migration to public institutions translate into diminished financial capacity for private education institutions. Many of these institutions now teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.

Private schools are partners of the public education system. They provide benchmarks for cost and quality.

Government cannot replace the private schools. As it is, DepEd has difficulty building the tens of thousands of classrooms we lack and find the 30,000 teachers the public schools need. We need to support our private schools.

The populist piece of legislation now being considered will worsen conditions in our educational system. The decimation of private schools it could cause will leave a generation of young Filipinos without schools to attend. The adverse effects on our social and economic development will simply cascade.

Blocked

That video clip showing Senator Cynthia Villar arguing with a security guard manning a road barrier is unflattering to the legislator. People have made judgments without finding out the context for that confrontation.

The steel barrier that caused Villar’s agitation was installed on a public road by the BF Resort Village Homeowners Association (BFRVHAI). It prevented the passage of private vehicles on a public road.

Learning of the barriers being installed along Aventine Hills, BF Homes, Villar proceeded to the site. The barriers prevented access to the composting facility established with the senator’s support. The composting effort, using kitchen and garden waste, helped Las Piñas attain its zero waste management goals.

The composting facility was set up along the easement of a river that used to be filled with informal settlers. Five years ago, Senator Villar shouldered some of the expenses for relocating the informal settlers. Since then, she helped develop the composting facility which serves as a venue for other community activities.

Recently, BFRVHAI board chairman Euan Rex Torralba ordered the deployment of security guards and vans to block use of the Aventine Hills street. He also ordered the padlocking of the road going to Villar’s composting project, shutting down the regular Zumba activities in the area. Earlier, he refused the planting of trees in the river easement. At one instance, his guards even removed a tarpaulin welcoming Villar to an event inside the village.

Last July, when Torralba assumed hist post, the village association posted security guards at Onelia Jose St. This prevented Las Piñas residents who are holders of “Friendship” stickers from using this road that connects to the Zapote River Drive leading to Cavitex and the bridge that leads to Bacoor. The nighttime closure of the gates to the subdivision also brings discomfort to those who need to traverse the blocked roads.

A city ordinance passed in 2006 enumerates the streets that constitute the “Friendship Route” covering contiguous subdivisions. Ten of those streets, including Onelia Jose, traverse BF Resort Village.

One resident of the village, Virgilio Hernandez, says the homeowners association simply did not want other Las Piñas residents to use the road, personally funded by Villar, to cross over to Bacoor. Last Sept. 22, he filed a petition for prohibition and mandamus, with an application for preliminary injunction, against the BFRVHAI.

The actions of the homeowners association, he says, is causing injury to non-residents of the village. The guards are even charging delivery riders P150 without issuing receipts.

The actions of the association head not only violate standing ordinances. Torralba is obviously out to pick a fight with the senator.