KABATAAN Party-list called for the safe reopening of more schools, saying that although most areas have eased their pandemic restrictions, very few schools conduct face-to-face classes.

The Department of Education has pledged that more schools will hold in-person classes in the coming school year but the group said that all schools should safely reopen.

“Breaching the 50 percent threshold is not a sign of competent leadership or policy,” Kabataan Party-list  said.

“In fact, this supposed achievement is long overdue. Facilitating safe school reopening is obviously delayed by unscientific, anti-poor, and negligent policies of the Duterte administration: the absence of regular mass testing, vaccine mandates, and the lack of additional funding to assist expenses related to school reopening, among others. Prolonged school closures inevitably cost many of our youth their right to education,” the group said.

“Some schools even struggled to continue operating given the difficulty of online or modular learning,” it added.

The group said that it will immediately re-file the Safe School Reopening bill that it principally authored in the 18th Congress in the next Congress.

The Kabataan Party-list has pushed for the  safe reopening of schools, one of its 9-point youth agenda.