Marikina City’s 2nd District Representative Stella Quimbo vents frustrations at yesterday’s congressional hearing over the Department of Education’s (DepEd) failure to consider her proposal to put up the planned mid-rise school building at the Marikina Science High School (MarSci). 

The planned building is part of the three buildings eyed to rise in Marikina, Pasig and Bacoor, funded under DepEd’s P2 billion infrastructure budget for 2024.

MarSci, Quimbo’s proposed site, is situated in the compound of the Marikina Polytechnic College (MPC) whose board agreed to put the site on offer under a usufruct agreement. The agreement, which will allow the Deped to temporarily use the site for the construction of an estimated P660-million building, was forwarded to the DepEd Regional Director Wilfredo Cabral in January 2023 and acknowledged by the Office for its review but without a further response.  

“I just want to put on record the very unclear process that the DepEd has followed for this. Ang tagal nang walang building ang Marikina Science students, ang tagal na ng panahon na na-waste dahil lamang sa paghahanap ng alternative site when in fact matagal na mayroong superior site in a secluded, peaceful area (It’s been a long time since Marikina Science students have had no building, so much time has been wasted just because they were looking for an alternative site when in fact there was a superior site in a secluded, peaceful area),” Quimbo said. 

Quimbo’s proposed site and the DepEd’s chosen site — the parking lot between the City Hall and Hall of Justice — are distanced apart by a mere 250 meters. However, Quimbo pointed out that keeping the new school building integrated within the MPC compound could have invited more student interaction and Wi-Fi sharing, with MPC being one of the country’s campuses powered by smart technologies. 

Uncertain land ownership

Sought for clarification for not utilizing the usufruct agreement, DepEd’s Sites and Titling Office Director Christian Rivero said “there was hesitation” on the part of the DepEd division overseeing the matter, citing an alleged ownership dispute between Marikina City and MPC. 

Quimbo refuted this, notifying the committee that she has the copy of titles, and emphasized: “It is very clear in these documents that MPC owns the land. MPC purchased the land from the National Housing Authority from 1981. They clearly own the land.”

For his part, DepEd Undersecretary for School Infrastructure and Facilities Epimaco Densing III clarified there has always been only one site — that of the parking lot in front of the Marikina City Hall — as the proposed MarSci site did not meet the minimum requirement of 2,000 meters for a mid-rise building. This is contrary to Quimbo’s claim that DepEd was initially considering MarSci as one of the two sites for Marikina.

Additionally, Densing said that the proposed site required demolition of an existing school building, stressing that DepEd could not afford any delays.

Densing further said that DepEd, in fact, abandoned last week the initial site considered for Pasig after finding that the board-piling process alone at the site would add a delay of 250 days to its construction timeline of one year. 

“We’re really fast-tracking everything right now,” Densing stressed, saying the Department “is now looking at two or more sites that are implementation-ready.”

Irked by Densing’s response, Quimbo insisted that “we would have demolished [the old MarSci building] and obtained the number of square meters” required for the construction of the new school  building had the DepEd acted on the MPC’s 2023 usufruct proposal.

Quimbo is now asking DepEd to hasten the final design of the three buildings to come up with the final costing and provide a clearer picture of the unused amount that may be given to other LGUs. While DepEd claims that all three buildings will have a standard design, Quimbo insisted that the cost for the Marikina building is likely to rake in a smaller funding given the fewer student population it would cater to. 

“Ang importante is magkano ba ang magiging unused fund by the end of the year kasi nga yung tira nga ay mabigay sana sa mga [other LGUs] na nangangailangan ng classrooms (What’s important is to know how much will be the unused fund by the end of the year so we can give it to other LGUs in need of classrooms),” Quimbo added.

Densing said the DPWH is now finalizing the specific design, with the DepEd meeting with the contracted building designer more intensively in the past three months as the DPWH targets to bid out the projects by June and hold the groundbreaking by July.