ONE of the pressing problems facing public schools in Davao City is remotely related to education, burglary.
This is an interesting portion of the state-of-city-schools report made by Dr. Helen Paguican, Davao City division superintendent, before some Rotary club members a week ago.
Dr. Paguican, whose doctoral thesis dealt on the correlation of education and crimes against property and other law infractions, said cases of burglary and vandalism form part of the serious challenges faced yearly by public school administrators in the city.
“In the public schools, not only that we lack a lot of physical facilities, what we have are usually burglarized,” she said rather succinctly.
Paguican told members of the Rotary Club of East Davao who have donated millions of pesos worth of school facilities through the years that it is only in the public schools where the water faucets are enclosed in a case and padlocked. When the secretary of education ordered schools to install hand-washing facilities due to the AH1N1 pandemic, almost immediately the faucets disappeared, followed by the light bulbs above them.
More disturbing are reports that among those stolen are entire doors of toilets and toilet bowls. This is really depressing given that the city’s public elementary and secondary schools, Paguican said, lack about 2,000 toilet bowls based on the ratio of one bowl to every 45 students.
Something must be done quick about the fact the division only has 85 watchmen to guard the 350 elementary and secondary high schools. For do-gooders who have been donating computers, books, air-conditioning units and other needed equipment, and even constructing classrooms and toilets for public schools, this is real dampener.
