DepEd seeks P12B for new school buildings, repairs

MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Education (DepEd) is seeking more than twice its current funding for the construction and repairs of school facilities across the country as officials hope to address the perennial shortage of classrooms and a backlog of repairs in public schools.

Oliver Hernandez, DepEd chief engineer, said Tuesday that the budget for school facilities, including new construction and emergency repairs, were lumped together for the first time under a single fund for more efficient disbursement, procurement and contracting.

“It’s almost double the budget to help us address the backlog. What they did was lump it together so that the budget is flexible. Anytime we need it, it’s available, unlike before where we had to realign, and it took time,” Hernandez told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Part of DepEd’s proposed P206 billion budget for next year is a “basic education facilities lump sum” of P12.04 billion, a consolidation of what had long been separate funds for the construction of new school buildings, addition of new classrooms to address acute shortages and repair and rehabilitation.

DepEd got a total of P4.9 billion engineering allotment this year with funds separately disbursed: P1.6 billion for “red and black schools,” or those in need of new rooms to address severe classroom crowding; P2.2 billion for the construction and repair of schools; and P1 billion for armchairs, desks and other school furniture.

DepEd has to build some 152,500 classrooms to ease crowding in schools and reach the ideal single-shift class schedule with at most 45 students per classrooms. Public schools have long been adapting to the shortage through holding classes in shifts and cramming as many as 100 students in one classroom.

A standard classroom costs roughly P650,000 to build, said Hernandez, head of the DepEd Physical Facilities and Schools Engineering Division.

“The President’s priority is to construct more classrooms … And we’re also hoping maybe there are NGOs and local government units who would like to support our program through [fund] counterparting,” he said.

The proposed budget will be flexible and would allow for emergency releases, Hernandez said.

“It’s flexible in a sense that not one budget will be focused on new construction or repairs so that, for instance a typhoon comes, we can tap that budget [to repair damaged schools],” he said.

“It will be faster in a way because the budget is readily available if we need it,” Hernandez added.

DepEd has some 170 civil engineers and architects monitoring construction and repair projects nationwide, Hernandez said. –Tarra Quismundo, Philippine Daily Inquirer