ELEMENTARY and high school students who fled with their families from ongoing clashes in Marawi City have been accepted in schools in the city, according to the Department of Education (DepEd)-Division of Cagayan de Oro, June 6.
Jun Bayete of the Planning and Research division of DepEd-Cagayan de Oro, said there are 408 elementary students and 169 high school students from Marawi City who are currently enrolled in both private and public schools in Cagayan de Oro.
This number, he said, can still rise as the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the city continue to increase two weeks into the fighting between state security forces and local terrorists.
"As per instruction by the national office, the schools should accept the students regardless if they have the right documents to enroll. As long as we can verify them as one of the evacuees form Marawi, then we can accept them in schools," Bayete said.
Accordingly, even if the evacuee student does not have any documents to show upon enrollment in one of the schools in the city, the school administration could look his or her name up in the DepEd Learner's Information System (LIS). This will allow the school to know if the evacuee student has been enrolled and has completed his or her marks in the last academic year in a school in Marawi.
Paul Badon, the assistant principal of City Central School, said that they have now accepted 16 Marawi evacuee students since the start of the enrollment. And while they could not refuse these students a slot if they wish to enroll, Badon said they encourage parents to enroll their children before the month ends.
"Well, we could not really reject them but if they enroll in July, they will have a hard time coping and they would have missed a lot in quizzes. Their grades might get affected," Badon said.
Cagayan de Oro National High School school principal Marlon Francis Seriña also said that they have indeed accepted students from Marawi City since it is the responsibility of public schools to accept them.
"And no, we do not separate them from the other children who are already here. They are very much welcome in this school," Seriña said.
Omayrah Hadji Basher, 11, is an evacuee student from Marawi City who should have been an incoming grade five student in Mindanao State University-Integrated Laboratory School (MSU-ILS). With the onset of the siege of their city, she and her family were forced to evacuate to Cagayan de Oro City where they are living with relatives in Macabalan village.
"Akala ko na titigil muna akong mag-aral kasi umalis kami sa Marawi. Sabi ng Omie ko na dito muna daw ako sa Cagayan para hindi daw matigil dahil tatanggapin naman daw kami sa school dito. Pero kung ok na yun doon gusto ko parin bumalik sa ILS. (I thought that I would have to stop school for a while because we left Marawi. But my mother said that I will have to study here in Cagayan so that I would no have to stop and the school here would accept me. But if everything is good in Marawi, I still want to go back to ILS.)," Omayrah said in her first day of class.