CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY -- With the start of the limited face-to-face classes on Monday, Aug. 22, one of the challenges faced by some of the schools here was the shortage of classrooms, a high-ranking official of the Cagayan de Oro City Schools Division said.

Lorebina Carasco, assistant superintendent of Cagayan de Oro City Schools Division, told Manila Bulletin in a phone interview on Monday, Aug. 22, that some of schools here that experienced shortage of classrooms are the central schools, where huge numbers of students are enrolled.

With the guidance of the City Schools Division, the schools made a strategy to accommodate all the students in the first face-to-face classes since social gatherings were suspended in March 2020 upon the declaration of pandemic.

“Kulang man ta sa classrooms, so ang nahitabo adunay shifting nga gihimo. So set A and set B. So ang usa ka lawak-saringan, duha ang magklase niini ( lack of classrooms, what happened was there is a shifting. So, set A and set B. So in one classroom, there are two classes),” Carasco said.

The City Schools Division has continuously coordinated with city government, through the Local School Board to address the said concern.

On July 12, during the management committee meeting of the Department of Education (DepEd) region 10-Cagayan de Oro City Schools Division, city mayor Rolando Uy presented his priority projects this year to help the education sector.

These include the building of 86 more classrooms - 48 classrooms for the first district, 38 classrooms for the second district and laboratories for the East Gusa National High School and Agusan National High School respectively.

Among the schools in the first district that will have new classrooms are the Man-ai Elementary School, Pagalungan Elementary School, West City Central School, Bulua National High School, Iba Integrated School and Magayad Integrated School.

Meanwhile, the Palalan Integrated School, Camaman-an Elementary School, East City Central School and FS Catanico Elementary School are the schools that will have new classrooms for the second district.

As of 4:45 p.m. of Aug. 22, the DepEd-10 has already tallied 128,893 enrolled students (from kindergarten to senior high school) in all public schools in Cagayan de Oro for this school year.

Carasco said they are still expecting the number of students to increase for this school year since public schools are still accepting late enrollees.

With the start of classes, the City Schools Division of Cagayan de Oro has directed the school heads as well as the teachers to instill to the students the importance of minimum public health standards against Covid-19.

This is to ensure that the resumption of limited face-to-face classes in the country would not be a super-spreader event of the virus.