One real long-term solution to our country’s problems during the dry and rainy seasons is having climate-adaptive designs for all our school buildings.
Many school buildings have poor ventilation. Poor ventilation makes indoor temperatures unbearable in the classrooms. Classrooms are also workplaces—the workplaces of teachers and non-teaching personnel. The workplace and occupational health standards stated in laws and rules of the Department of Labor and Employment should be followed.
Classrooms and school buildings should be regarded as special structures requiring standards that are higher than the minimum because they are used by our children. Classrooms and school buildings should have special provisions in the National Building Code and Structural Code of the Philippines.
I suggest the following measures to the DPWH and DepEd:
1. Redesign, build, and renovate classrooms and school buildings to comply with new ventilation standards and green architecture regulations.
2. Classrooms should have higher, insulated, and stronger ceilings, more secured roofing, and larger windows.
3. School buildings in typhoon-prone locations should have special designs to make them resistant to typhoons.
4. School buildings in flood-prone locations should have cisterns and protective barriers that divert the flow of flood waters and drain the campus of accumulated rainwater.
5. Campuses should also have dengue-proofing designs to minimize mosquito breeding, and
6. Functioning clean restrooms and handwashing stations.
Most capital outlays for new public school buildings should be sourced from public-private partnerships (PPP) and official development assistance of the bilateral and multilateral kinds to reduce the burden on the national budget. There should be a loan facility private schools can tap for affordable loans. Education infrastructure bonds with long maturities can also spread over time the capital outlays cost.
REP. BERNADETTE “BH” HERRERA
Bagong Henerasyon Party-list
Deputy Minority Leader
Contact information - 09177292437
