CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY -- Some members of a group of mothers in Mindanao are opposing a plan to revert the school year calendar to its pre-pandemic schedule as suggested by a national lawmaker, saying ‘it will add another burden of adjustment to systems countrywide.’ On March 28, Senate Committee on Basic Education chair Sherwin Gatchalian said schools should go back to a June-to-March school year calendar, following the hospitalization of several students in Laguna due to heat exhaustion after attending a surprise fire drill. Nadine Casiño, founder of the Modern Nanays of Mindanao, pointed out that extreme heat and extreme storms wouldn’t be stopped unless the root cause —climate change — is addressed. "What we can do is be prepared for calamities brought about by extreme weather in our country, both heat and rains," Casiño told the Manila Bulletin in a text message on Tuesday, April 10. Reverting to the old academic calendar, Gatchalian said, would allow students a break during the summer months. The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines conducted a survey of the 11,706 public school teachers nationwide from March 24 to 27 this year, and 87% of them said that ‘students cannot focus on their lessons due to intolerable heat in classrooms.’ Apart from that, about 37% of the survey respondents said that the summer heat triggered the existing medical conditions of teachers and students, and there were 40% of respondents who noted that more learners have been missing classes since the summer months started. In an article from CNN Philippines, Department of Education (DepEd) spokesperson Michael Poa said on March 29 that there were no plans at the moment to go back to the pre-pandemic school calendar, although the department is open to studying the call to revert. Casiño also stressed that changing the school calendar wouldn’t improve the educational system, adding that it can only be solved with ‘evidence-based interventions and not just randomly deciding and reacting to recent events.’ “Our policymakers should become design thinkers and not reactive responders. They should get insight from experts and the whole of society to solve the issue," she added. *A personnel from the Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) Region 10 provides lectures to the elementary students of West City Central School in Cagayan de Oro City during the Fire Drill and Fire Prevention Information Dissemination on March 6, 2017. (File photo courtesy of BFP-10)*
The group’s founder clarified that the statement she provided was only based on some of the opinions of the group's few members, as there were also other members who expressed full support for the suggestion to revert the school calendar. “There were other members who were in favor of reverting because of the heat of summer in classrooms which is unbearable,” Casiño said in a mix of English and vernacular. The changes in the academic calendar started due to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the school year 2020-2021, the class opened on August 24, 2020. For the school year 2021–2022, it started on September 13, 2021, and on August 22, 2022, it started the school year 2022–2033. One of the group members had suggested that the DepEd can choose whatever date for the school's opening but expressed hope that it should be the same for all schools across the country and at all levels. "Because it is so hard if the public and private schools have different school breaks, and for elementary, secondary, and tertiary levels," one of the members said. The Modern Nanays of Mindanao is a group of mothers who primarily advocate breastfeeding, babywearing, and cloth diapering. It’s a budding group consisting of over a thousand members, comprising stay-at-home moms, working moms, pediatricians, obstetricians, advocates, and families believing in the importance of these three principles.