SEN. Sherwin Gatchalian yesterday said the Department of Education should have included 61 other schools in its pilot run of face-to-face classes set to start on November 15 since they are all located in areas with few or no coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases.
Education Secretary Leonor Briones announced last week that limited face-to-face classes will start in 59 schools in Masbate and eight other provinces in six regions and will run for two months until January 31 next year.
Before that, the DepEd had announced that it had identified 120 schools nationwide that had passed the risk assessment of education and health officials.
Gatchalian, who chairs the Senate committee on basic education, wondered aloud why the DepEd had limited the pilot run to just 59 schools, most of them located in Masbate, Cebu, Zamboanga peninsula, Sarangani, and North Cotabato.
Gatchalian also appealed to the Health Department and Inter Agency Task Force on the Management of Infectious Diseases to prioritize the vaccination of teachers and non-teaching personnel to boost the confidence of parents and teachers involved in face-to-face classes.
The DepEd had earlier said that only 57 percent or around 580,000 of the department’s 970 teaching and non-teaching personnel have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Gatchalian noted that several island municipalities in the Visayas that have zero COVID cases are not included in the 59 schools.
“We can see that there are zero COVID areas which have not been allowed to hold pilot face-to-face classes,” Gatchalian said in a radio interview.
Gatchalian also said he will recommend the expansion of classes 30 days after the November 15 start of pilot face-to-face classes and not wait until March 7.
In its timeline, the DepEd said it will conduct an evaluation of pilot classes in February next year, identify other schools, inspect sites, and present to President Duterte its report and proposed expansion on March 7.
The pilot run will cover kindergarten to Grade 3 students without existing comorbidities.
Subjects that require laboratories or workshops for senior high school students will be allowed to have face-to-face classes.
“The education sector is one of the sectors that has not yet started normal operations,” Gatchalian said.
An official of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority said face-to-face classes are still unlikely to be implemented in Metro Manila for now.
“Although Metro Manila mayors already recommended to implement face-to-face learning in NCR, for now it’s still unclear if this is possible,” MMDA Office-of-the-Chairman Executive Assistant Atty. Kin Firme said in an interview. — With Noel Talacay
