At around 1:00 p.m. of July 21, students returning home from schools, colleges, and universities were stranded on the roads. Mga basang sisiw (wet chicks). They instantly gained weight because even their socks were wet. High-ranking government officials apologized and said they made a mistake in not immediately declaring the suspension of classes and promised it would never happen again.

“Ano’ng tuwa’t saya ang aming dala (What joy and happiness do we bring),” the mice sang. Leptospirosis! Not funny, and if going to school is an escape, going home when classes are cut amidst inundated streets and overflowing bridges treats young people to the art of rejection, to the hanging back, and inviting troubles and accidents. (The other local leaders offered no more apologies, thinking it’s someone else’s fault, not theirs.)

What is difficult about declaring early suspension of classes when the price is the safety and health of the students and teachers who are traveling? For example, if the weather turns hilarious and the southwest monsoon shifts and the sun rises, what will the education sector lose if blended learning takes place or is attempted to be done online via a learning management system?

Officials no longer think that floodwater levels are rising year after year in many areas in the provinces, especially in cities. Just patience. Resilience. So wrong is the sheer incompetence in the bureaucracy that is being tolerated. Another thing rising? Assistant professor of economics JC Punongbayan noted: “Nung 2020, wala pang P100 billion ang pang-flood control, and just around 1/5 of infra outlays. Pero pagdating ng 2025, nearly P350 billion na, and 1/3 of infra outlays. Marcos removed P16.7B in flood control projects for this year, but that’s just 5% of the budget that was retained for flood control.”

How good are we in placing people in important positions of service? Every day of the semester and the academic year is crucial. For example, if 13.5 weeks per term are supposed to be spent on teaching and learning days, it should be filled if the allotted time is not used properly. But it seems that those who sit are incompetent, and they are the burdens because they are paid by the pockets of the citizens who pay more and more taxes, with middle-class, paycheck-to-paycheck workers on the losing side.

It was better in Dr. Nilo Rosas’ time in the late 1980s and 1990s. When parents would turn on the radio at dawn, there’s almost always a declared suspension of classes. Now that there are more than a few media of communication, when millions of mobile phones are sold easily—parents and maturing college students are even more wary of proper and timely official announcements of class suspension and/or shifting to blended learning.

Marcos’ 4^th SONA and education

Not minding what VP Sara Duterte abhors to hear as this former DepEd secretary has said that she is not attending the President’s state-of-the-nation address on Monday, we would like to hear BBM’s concrete plans to improve the plight of students and teachers vis-à-vis the 165,000-classroom shortage, among other EDCOM II-identified problems and solutions.

Secretary Sonny Angara noted that the education department faces an increasing cost of constructing classrooms while the population keeps growing. He never categorically denied that their previously allocated funds were insufficient and never said that they were trying their best to push Congress and the executive branch to pass and go for a General Appropriations Act that institutes the much needed and most obvious reform relative to truthfully and profoundly, rather than mildly, obtaining the highest budgetary allocations for the education sector as enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.

Section 5, paragraphs 4 and 5 read: “The State shall enhance the right of teachers to professional advancement. Non-teaching academic and non-academic personnel shall enjoy the protection of the State. and “(It) shall assign the highest budgetary priority to education and ensure that teaching will attract and retain its rightful share of the best available talents through adequate remuneration and other means of job satisfaction and fulfillment.” (Art. XIV, Constitution)

We continue paying the wrong people the wrong amount. We keep rewarding the Senate show’s Robinhood and many more politicians, instead of professors and teachers whose sense of resilience, high qualifications, and constant upgrades of the noblest of all professions, even community extension work, matter more to the Filipino nation in general and the young minds in particular.

We will listen to Marcos’ SONA and the education accomplishments of his administration, but we will take note of what needs to be done, what daydreaming is occurring, and what concrete actions to maintain.

Project NOAH

The UN award-winning Project NOAH (Nationwide Operational Assessment of Hazard) envisions “a disaster-free Philippines with communities that are empowered with open access to accurate, reliable, relevant, and timely hazard and risk information.” Its eight major components include distribution of hydrometeorological devices in hard-hit areas; disaster risk exposure assessment for mitigation–light detection and ranging; enhancement of geohazards mapping; coastal hazards and storm surge assessment and mitigation; flood information network; local development of Doppler radar systems; landslide sensors development; and weather hazard information projects.

This key disaster risk reduction and management program is now managed by the University of the Philippines. The Duterte administration defunded it, which was initially administered by the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) from 2012 to 2017.

The DOST and DepEd officials are correct when they have begun utilizing artificial intelligence-powered methods and approaches, but we have to make sure projects like NOAH are thoughtfully supported and allowed, with researchers, scientists, trainees, and Executive Director Dr. Mahar Lagmay, to keep going without political intrusions.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) have extended their helping hand when they played a part in Digital Information for Monitoring and Evaluation (DIME). UP Vice President for Digital Transformation Peter Sy acknowledged that integrating disaster risk reduction strategies and ensuring that government projects—including but not limited to that of UP-NOAH—are strong enough when nature strikes. But when unscrupulousness from the public and private sectors strikes, we hope and pray that we have the sense of anticipation to weather their “storm.”