City to distribute free school supplies to elementary pupils
BACOLOD CITY -- A total of 58,000 elementary pupils in the city can avail free school bags with school supplies like notebooks, pencils and papers this coming June 1, opening of school.
Mayor Evelio Leonardia said the project was conceptualized by the city together with Councilor Greg Gasataya, chairman of the Committee on Education, few years ago.
“The city through its Special Education Fund set aside P11 million pesos for the project but through bidding the supplier offered only P7 million pesos,” Gasataya said.
Leonardia said this is another project of the city after they started the freeing of miscellaneous fees which before considered as a great burden to parents at the start of every school year.
“The city allocates a budget annually for the usual miscellaneous fees of the students, like ID’s, Red Cross, Anti-TB, Boy Scout and Girl Scout,” he added.
Meanwhile, a resolution requesting principals and teachers in the City of Bacolod to enroll pupils/students in schools without requiring them to pay any fees was passed by the Bacolod Sangguniang Panlungsod last week.
Proposed by Councilors Greg Gasataya and Celia Flor, the resolution said the City of Bacolod, despite its limitations, has been doing its task to offer and make education accessible to all.
“This is an offshoot of a public hearing where they discussed the enrollment,” Gasataya said.
Gasataya said the DepEd has an existing memorandum stating that a child should be enrolled without fees even if there is a contribution required by the school for PTA fees.
“The PTA fee will depend on what the parents and the schools have agreed upon,” he added.
They passed a resolution requesting the schools to enroll the students, especially the incoming first year high school or Grade 1, since other students had already enrolled after the closing of classes.
He said they have received fewer complaints during enrollment now since most of the students have already enrolled.
There are about 90,000 elementary and high school students in Bacolod City.
In the case of city-owned Bacolod City College (BCC), a total of 1,200 freshmen enrolled this new school year. This record is very high compared to previous years according to Councilor Gasataya.
“We are now conducting meetings to determine how many additional teachers they will need for this school year, to meet the needs of the increased number of students,” he added.
BCC since then has the lowest tuition fee per unit with only P30.