Letters to the Editor
Letters to the
editor are welcome on this page. Only those with complete name,
signature, contact number and return address for verification
shall be considered for publication, subject to editing and space
limitation when necessary - Editor-in-Chief.
A frame of reference
Last July 12, 2005, I wrote your columnist Sandy Vargas to explain
what we in the Naga City School Board are trying to do. Allow me
to share its relevant portions because they address some of the
concerns raised by your letter-writer Manuel Collao last week:
“I understand where teachers are coming from in regard to the
reform we are introducing in the school board. I am not a teacher
but my wife is; she’s teaching Mathematics at Camarines Sur
National High School. Between us, we have expended a good number
of our waking hours discussing the issue, mainly because based on
my computations, Cam High as a middle-of-the-road performer in the
division and national achievement tests stands to lose
significantly.
“This is the reason why the Board decided to take the middle
ground. The P400 monthly allowance being funded out of the Special
Education Fund (SEF), which is it empowered to allocate, remains
as an across-the-board grant. This week, we shall have paid the
COLA from January to June 2005, as we did in full for 2004.
“But as I have explained in two letters to the Bicol Mail editors
already, we are proceeding with a performance-based scheme in
regard to the P350 monthly allocation coming out of the city
government’s General Fund. The underlying logic is accountability.
We should begin to make our schools, and their teaching staff,
accountable for the kind of graduates they are producing….
“What the City Government, therefore, is giving out from its
General Fund is no longer a COLA because it will not be given
across the board. Technically, it is a performance bonus or
incentive that rewards good performance by schools and teachers
who are doing well, with the hope of encouraging those who are not
to do better. As Ateneo de Naga High School principal Gregorio
Abonal (who is sitting on the Board as representative of the
private schools) pointed out, it is the good teachers who should
complain under an across-the-board COLA system. During the NACITEA
meeting last June 27, I noticed a good number of them immediately
voice support to the proposed scheme.
“On the whole, what we in the Board are trying to do initiate
reforms that can be painful, but in a transparent manner, that
will lead to measurable improvements in the quality of basic
education in Naga.”
For Mr. Collao’s information, details of the Board’s
performance-based incentive scheme as well as the Reinventing the
School Board project are accessible through the internet via my
blogsite – http://nagueno.blogspot.com. He will, for one, discover
that the Board has no operational control and supervision over the
Division of City Schools; some of his concerns should therefore be
addressed where they are due. I hope he, and others who might be
interested in what we are doing, will check these documents first
so that the ongoing debate can proceed in an objective manner.
Wilfredo B. Prilles, Jr.
Project Coordinator
What’s the real state of the
nation today?
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in her SONA this week, had
failed miserably in addressing the pressing issues that
have plagued her administration and bedeviled this poor nation.
Not only did she slink away from them altogether, particularly the
nagging question on the truth about the “Hello Garci” tapes and
the looming impeachment trial against her, she also dished out a
diversionary (or is it entertainment?) antic which seemed to have
made only the likes of Jose De Venecia and Fidel V. Ramos
hilarious – the Cha-Cha (Charter Change) proposal.
And this as if by junking our present presidential system in favor
of parliamentary-federalism form of government, or tinkering with
the Constitution without full proof guarantee that the true will
and well-being of the people will prevail over and above the
scheming politicians’ vested interests, the country’s broiling
political and financial crises would instantly vanish like magic!
The President seemed to have failed to recognize the fact that
what most of the people she had sworn (or cheated?) to serve
actually want is anything but her “cha-cha”. What the people want
are tangible accomplishments by way of providing affordable basic
services and decent means of livelihood, food, shelter, education
and security for our people.
What probably most people want is not a change in the form of
government, but a change in the very people who “run” the
government, particularly the bums and crooks who have been lording
it over our political zoo and bleeding our country and people dry
for as long as anyone can remember. And considering the
credibility baggage our so-called lawmakers have been carrying so
far, entrusting the critical task of amending our Constitution to
them or through their Con-Ass (Constituent Assembly) could be
likened to throwing the already emaciated, if not dying, Juan de
la Cruz into a river teeming with rapacious crocodiles!
GMA would do well to accomplish a lot of things without having to
waste much-needed public funds and further divide the nation on a
dubious venture of amending the charter. To keep on ramming it
down the throat of our people now would be, to say the least, a
breach of public trust and an outright deception.
GMA can do a lot better and smarter than that, can’t she?
——————
P.S. Any freedom-loving and truth-seeking citizen of this
much-vaunted democratic country should view with grave concern the
incarceration of the Bicol Mail’s editor, Jose B. Perez, over an
RTC “indirect contempt” charge (BM, July 21, 2005). This case
should be thoroughly looked into by unbiased legal and press
entities to ensure that no travesty of justice or any assault on
press freedom has been perpetrated.
And, let the truth prevail and “set us free” at all cost.
MANUEL A. COLLAO, via e-mail
