THE ALLIANCE of Concerned Teachers called on the Department of Education-National Capital Region to install strong preventive measures against the coronavirus disease in schools before considering proposals to allow limited face-to-face interaction among students on campus.

It made the call after DepEd-National Capital Region Director Malcolm Garma, a member of the regional Inter-Agency Task Force, bared a plan to seek permission for limited face-to-face inter-actions as soon as Metro Manila was placed under a modified general community quarantine.

“While we agree that socialization is vital in children’s development, it shall not come at the cost of their health and safety. Hence, the proposal shall be based on the adequacy of preventive measures against Covid19 in schools, not on quarantine classification, which frankly is nothing but a joke. Its imposition is less about the government’s success in fighting the pandemic, but more about the country’s desperation to cushion the economic impacts of the lockdown,” Raymond Basilio, the group’s secretary general, said.

NCR will be under GCQ until October 31.

The group reiterated that the DepEd’s minimum health standards are sorely lacking, even in NCR where ACT’s regional union successfully negotiated for the establishment of protective and preventive measures for school opening. Among them was the inclusion in a regional memorandum of pre-onsite reporting health screening among employees. However, ground reports confirmed that this has not been widely implemented.

“We have documented several teachers who are made to report for duty despite the lack of any health evaluation by DepEd’s medical personnel, especially with the last-minute shelling out of school funds for improvised learning materials as centralized modules will still be unavailable come October 5. Some protective equipment has been made available at schools through the nearly dried up school MOOE and from donations, but these will not be enough in the coming days. Even more alarming is how schools are still being used as quarantine facilities when teachers and parents have started coming to school for module distribution,” Basilio said.

The ACT urged DepEd and the IATF to aggressively install vital health and safety measures in schools, “so student’s developmental needs can be met without sacrificing their health.”

The group reiterated their demands for school safety, which will require considerable resource allocation that ACT asserts can be provided with ‘proper prioritization’.

“A meager yet significant amount of P1.7 billion is needed for the establishment of preventive health measures in all schools—including clinic nurses for every district; water supply installation in every school; and other sanitation and protective supplies for teachers and staff, though more will be needed if students will also come to school as they too shall be given such. That’s only 38 percent of the President’s P4.5 billion intelligence and confidential fund, or 8.9 percent of the budget for the NTF-ELCAC (National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict)—both of which have dubious uses with the spenders having almost zero accountability. Meanwhile, the same can be realigned to ensuring school safety for the benefit of around 1 million education workers, 27 million learners and their parents,” Basilio said.