Needless cancellations
It’s bad enough that our deeply flawed education system and the weak cognitive abilities of our children due to poor nutrition have placed us at the bottom in global education assessments. Now we see a lot of needless reductions in their school days. How many times lately have we seen class and work cancellations in anticipation of heavy rain, yet it turns out to be dry or even sunny? Who do we blame? Is it the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa) for faulty weather forecasts? Or the decision-makers who canceled, for erring too much on the side of caution? Can we fault them if they insist they were just doing their jobs, using their best judgment based on the available information?
The problem appears to lie more in who actually decides on such class and work cancellations. That in itself (i.e., as to who has the authority) is a matter of great confusion to many, not just the general public but also decision-makers themselves at various levels. Who has the final say? Malacañang? The Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG)? The local government unit? If it’s the LGU, which one: the provincial governor? The city or municipal mayor? Or should it be the school head or principal who decides whether it’s a public or private school? It doesn’t help that all of them often post public announcements on the same cancellations. Even if they don’t contradict one another (and they sometimes do!), it’s still not clear where the authoritative decision was made. And when an announcement comes from the Office of the President through the Presidential Communications Office, everyone sees it as a decision coming from the top.
This is where it’s important to assert the good governance principle of subsidiarity, which holds that decisions are best made at the lowest level possible. This is the very basis of our law on devolution (the Local Government Code of 1991 or Republic Act No. 7160). And it’s the same rationale for empowering school heads to effectively manage their schools, under the Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001 (RA 9155). But official pronouncements since then continue to confound, rather than clarify, who really decides on class cancellations. Last July, the Palace announced that DILG Secretary Jonvic Remulla has been authorized to announce work and class suspensions during disasters. But does “announce” also mean “decide”? What about the authority granted to local chief executives to decide on class cancellations due to weather, under Executive Order No. 66, Series of 2012? Does the announcement supersede the EO? Or are Remulla’s announcements to be done in consultation with LGU executives, to determine which provinces are to be covered by his cancellation decision or announcement? Is the decision properly guided by data from the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council, guided in turn by Pagasa?
Our experience last Sept. 1 says otherwise. Early that day, the DILG announced the cancellation of classes and government work in the National Capital Region (NCR) and 16 provinces, citing “heavy rainfall.” But the rainfall map that Pagasa released at 5 a.m. on that same day did not support this; it showed only five of the 16 provinces expecting heavy rain of 50-100 millimeters, and also included Palawan, which the DILG failed to list. Heavy rain was not in the forecast for NCR either. In Los Baños, Laguna, where I live, and true to Pagasa’s map, there was hardly any rain, and the sun even partly came out. My son, who lives near Santa Rosa, Laguna, where his daughters go to school, affirmed the same weather there, yet classes were canceled in all of Laguna. Metro Manila weather was also reported to be fine that day. It is thus puzzling how the DILG determined the coverage of the announced cancellation. And Sept. 1 is not the only date this has happened.
In a country with already more holidays than most others, it is important to avoid needless cancellations of our children’s valuable school time. The costs are heavy: studies indicate only around 52 percent effectiveness of online vs. face-to-face learning. A survey by the National Economic and Development Authority had almost 60 percent of families reporting a parent who had to skip work and forgo income to teach their children when classes are called off. The moral of the story leads us back to our key S word: subsidiarity. In a country where local climates can vary widely across provinces, and even microclimates differ across towns and cities in the same province, it makes eminent sense to leave cancellation decisions to those on the scene, who can see firsthand what conditions are really like. Having Malacañang or the DILG Secretary issue those weather-induced class cancellations is not the way.
