Editor’s Note: As we go to press, we received the following letter from Mr. Wilfredo B. Prilles, coordinator, CPDO and Naga School Board , as a response to our editorial last week entitled, “QUEEN of false hopes”. In the spirit of fairness and intelligent debate, we are accommodating this response on the same page that the issue was first brought out:

        I AM taking exception to your editorial last week accusing that the QUEEN program is raising false hopes about realizing the constitutional mandate for free public education. I believe it is shortsighted and misses the forest for the trees.

        1. Firstly, it must be remembered that public education in the Philippines remains primarily an obligation of the national government through the Department of Education. Unfortunately, its annual outlay for education has not really made public education absolutely free pursuant to the provisions of the 1987 Constitution.

        The Naga City School Board came up with the QUEEN program as an intervention to make up for the national government’s shortcomings because of our fundamental belief that public education is a shared community responsibility. Moreover, QUEEN’s coverage is only for those students whose parents have voluntarily joined the program.

        2. As such, the program requires parents who join it to match the School Board’s outlays with certain commitments as their counterpart. Thus, they should attend school meetings and participate in school activities regularly, and more importantly ensure that their children do not absent themselves from school.

        Their counterpart would also include certain fees that some PTAs collect but government cannot assume – like support for catechism, which the state cannot fund obviously, and activities like maintaining a drum and bugle corps, which only benefits a few students. To that we have added the student I.D., on the belief that it is something that parents should primarily provide.

        3. The Constitutional mandate to provide free public education up to high school does not provide a blanket authority for schools and PTAs to raise fees and spend them as they please.

        As custodian of public monies, it is incumbent on the School Board to ensure that these funds are used well. Mayor Robredo’s marginal note – “anything in excess of P398 will be shouldered by the parents and that the detail of its intended expenditure should be fully explained” – should be seen in this light. Contrary to your assertion that it militates against that constitutional mandate, it in fact strengthens it by demanding greater transparency and accountability at the school level.

        Truth of the matter, there is still much to be desired in regard to funds being spent in our public schools. For instance, all public schools today are allocated P100 per pupil by the DepEd central office for their maintenance and operating expenses (MOOE). When the 2008 budget of the national government is finally approved, it will increase to more than P200 for elementary and P500 for high school. How these funds are exactly used, especially in the context of what the School Board allocates under the QUEEN program, remain unclear.

        Before the school year closes next month, all schools will conduct a PTA meeting which will decide, among others, how much of these voluntary fees should they collect during enrolment in May and June. They would serve as a perfect occasion to present and discuss the school and PTA financial reports – which should be circulated among parents and other community stakeholders beforehand – and the proposed school budget for the school year precisely justifying the proposed fees.

        4. In this context, Naga Central School 2’s so-called “winter of discontent” is of its own making. Among the 29 public elementary schools in Naga today, it adopted the highest level of school fees totaling P650. By comparison, its neighbor NCS 1 only had P588. Most other schools in the city have lower.

        As a matter of fairness, I don’t believe it is proper for one school to be getting more than others. For instance, why should NCS 2 be entitled to more than what Grandview Elementary School, where my three kids are currently enrolled, is getting? This is precisely the reason why the Naga City School Board – after running a survey among all public schools on March 16, 2007 – has adopted a citywide cap of P400 for male and P396 for female pupils (the variance arises from differing scouting fees for boys and girls).

        5. Finally, how “free” should public education be? In an ideal world where funds are not an issue, the ideal of a “sky’s-the-limit” free public education would make sense. But in reality, we face and must operate within resource and policy constraints. Our public schools should start doing the same.

        This month, the QUEEN program will turn a year old; it is very much a work-in-progress; and we are therefore learning along as we implement it, from which learnings current program policies and guidelines derive.

        But the brickbats notwithstanding, one thing is clear: By assuming the bulk of the school operating expenses that the national government has failed to provide for since 1987 when our Constitution was approved, which is why these voluntary school fees exist in the first place, the School Board in Naga has made public education more accessible, less of a burden to parents and therefore substantially closer to the intent of the constitutional mandate.

        By failing to see this point, that editorial sadly missed the bigger picture and chose to see the proverbial glass half-empty instead of half-full.