The first order Vice President Sara Duterte as Education Secretary is to tell all public and private schools to transition to five days of in-person classes by November 2.
“Starting November 22, 2022, all public and private schools shall have transitioned to five days in-person classes. After the said date, no school shall be allowed to implement purely distance learning or blended learning except for those that are implementing Alternative Modes,” the order read.
As parents, we should’ve seen this coming, as the pandemic has already been with us for more than two years and if you come to think of it, it is embarrassing that the Philippines remains one of the few countries in the planet that has not yet returned to face-to-face classes.
However, given the current situation where COVID infections are starting to rise again, combined with the cost of fuel and living that seems to be skyrocketing out of reach, the thought of sending our kids back to school by November can be unsettling to say the least.
For many, the main concern would be COVID safety. This is because our schools, whether public are private, are famously overcrowded. If we go back to 100% capacity and schedule on F2F, 40-45 students in a classroom where ventilation standards most likely remain at pre-pandemic specs sounds like an outbreak waiting to happen every day. No additional classrooms have been built throughout the pandemic, no ventilation upgrades have been made. Going back to full F2F classes means social distancing will be a challenge and the learners’ only defense against COVID is the facemask.
If our government has not yet learned the lesson of the gross ineffectiveness of the formerly-ubiquitous face shield, then expect maximum discomfort for our poor learners who might be forced to don these useless and wasteful pieces of plastic.
The only thing we can do as parents as this point is to train our kids for long-term daily mask usage, which wasn’t a necessary life skill when they were studying from the relative safety of our home bubbles.
If COVID infections are no longer a concern, there are still other issues we will have to deal with once fulltime F2F school starts. The price of fuel is currently at an all-time high, making sending kids to school these days ridiculously expensive compared to before. There is also the price of everything else, which has also shot up. Parents will have to reevaluate if the previous rate for food and snack allowance is still enough for their kids once F2F school restarts. If they are going to go the way of the packed lunch/snack, it may end up a bit cheaper but given the current food prices, it’s still going to leave a mark on the monthly budget.
Having my kids study from home over the past 2 years has made me realize just how wasteful sending them to a private school 14 kilometers from home was. If only the public school system were better, my kids could just walk to the nearest one. Not having to coordinate the schedules of the parents and kids to make sure everyone gets to do what needs to be done and also get home was a blessing that reminds me how much of a curse my car-dependent lifestyle is.
If only we had decent public transportation, this new setup that we will be adjusting to in a few months wouldn’t be so painful. However, as we can see from the public transportation hellhole in Metro Manila, things are likely to get worse before it starts to get better. Hopefully the up and coming cities like Bacolod take advantage of the opportunity to come up with a better public transportation system before the current situation worsens and spirals out of control. Once fulltime F2F school begins, the influx of school-aged kids will be testing the capacity of whatever public transportation system we have in place. Hopefully it passes that test for now.
It would be nice if everybody were ready for F2F classes within the next few months. Schools, parents, transportation, budgets, and students will all have concerns adjusting to that new normal we’ve been delaying for almost 3 years. However, with a DepEd that was run by an octogenarian and then recently taken over by someone supposedly “strong” but with zero experience in the field, it is difficult to be optimistic.
But because we, the ever-resilient Filipino people, know that we can always surmount any challenge, we have no choice but to get ready for this newest one and hope that we are up to whatever comes our way.
Good luck to all parents preparing for SY 2022-23.*
