Cadiz City's School Board needs fine tuning

Everytime I stood up on a management conference of Cadiz City's DepED school officials to air my personal views, although unsolicited, on some educational concerns, I was misunderstood, by a few as seen in their facial expressions, for being grandstanding and annoying. The reactions of the few were very frustrating, discouraging and depressing as if what came out of my mind was for them nonsense and bereft of significance.

But thanks to technology, through our school's blogsite, as school head I have now the opportunity to ventilate my way of seeing things happening in the Division of Cadiz City without the sarcasm and pessimism by a few who thought of themselves as having superior knowledge compared to others like me whose only fault is just to bring out the way we see developments in the education sector in Cadiz City.

The Local School Board of Cadiz City has been in education for quite a time but its impact in the school community is yet to be felt. Its resources, although spent in education, were not used to cater the actual individual needs of the schools due to lack of representation in the LSB council in the planning to make the school board responsive to the immediate needs of the city's schools.

The city's school board needs fine tuning to make it relevant to the present and immediate needs of the schools. It has, on several instances failed, to see the relevance and effectiveness of its given assistance to schools that instead those could help, the school heads felt that they had no choice but to accept what was just available given to them for they were deprived to take part in the planning and decision making.

One can begin counting using his or her fingers instances when the annual "Brigada sa Eskwela" was held that school heads would receive assistance from the local school board in the form of gallons of paints without them having consulted as to the number, color and quantity of paints they needed in their school, assuming that their priority is the the repainting of their school buildings.

But schools, often than not, need not paints and should not be left with no choice but to accept the gallons of paints. School heads have different priorities. They must be given the chance to say what they want for their school and should have someone to represent them in the local school board council. The LSB must be responsive and pro-active in the delivery of basic education.

Why not make it multi-sectoral in its representation so that not only repairs, paints, purchase of textbooks and school supplies can be made program priorities but should include pressing concerns like drug dependence, sex education, career guidance, community involvement, etc.

Why not invite representatives from the academe (teachers, school heads ), business, religious, alumni associations, parents associations, and nongovernmental organizations in the local school board council? If done this could pave the way to improve local school board governance, responsive resource allocation and utilization as way of ensuring the attainment of quality education in the city of Cadiz.

The local school board, although has eight members, often rests its decision making on only two powerful members, the city mayor and the schools division superintendent. This limits the involvement of multi-sectoral representation in decision-making and the Local School Board using the Special Education Fund (SEF) were spent on non-priorities.

Naga City's Jessie Robredo, now the DILG Secretary, has shown the the local chief executives in the country on how this be done. Secretary Robredo did this in his city and yielded significant and dramatic results in the delivery of basic education services in his Naga City in which other cities in the country now do.

Its time for the LSB to rethink of involving others in the planning and decision-making, of using the SEF not only of purchasing paints, school supplies but also on teacher training and inspiring teachers through giving the performance based incentives using relevant standards of selection and not by personal bias.

If in other parts of the country it can be done, why can't it be done here in our city?