HOTSPOT
As I write this, the Manila Science High School community, including alumni and former faculty and staff, are giving honors and tributes to Mrs. Daisy H. Banta, the principal from 1988 to 2000 — the longest in MaSci history.
Mrs. Banta passed away on April 27 at her North Caloocan home. She was 88.
Student honor guards in bright blue-and-white uniforms stood straight near her casket. Later, at the gravesite, the final commendation would be made by Vergel Dalangin, a batchmate who has since become a priest.
I went rather late to the final night of the wake on Thursday at the new St. Peter Chapels along Scout Chuatoco in Quezon City. I thought the tributes had finished, but I was mistaken.
Not only was I able to listen to testimonies from former teachers and alumni from other batches; we together actually sang the MaSci hymn “Batis ng Diwa.”
We, the Class of 1993, were technically the first batch of MaSci students to start and finish the special science curriculum under her watch and that already says a lot. We have many stories to tell about the experience (some would say trauma) but as I said on Thursday night, whether good or bad, the long years since give us new ways to look back. As for me, our MaSci experience would have been incomplete or boring without Mrs. Banta.
Seriously, I think the city council of Manila should honor Mrs. Banta with a resolution recognizing and thanking her record-setting service to Manila Science and other city schools.
Those of us who are sons and daughters of public school teachers feel that not only are our parents often under-compensated, but also under-appreciated and largely unrecognized by the state.
Mrs. Banta, formerly Ms. Holgado, had come a long way from the town of Polo in Oriental Mindoro, also the birthplace of broadcaster and former vice president Noli de Castro and of actor-turned-vice governor Ejay Falcon.
She was in elementary during the war, graduating with honors in 1949 from Polo Central School. Perhaps a sign of things to come, she graduated as valedictorian in 1953 from Don Mariano Leuterio Academy.
After obtaining her Associate in Arts certificate, with distinction, in 1955 from Mindoro College, she enrolled in the University of Santo Tomas where she graduated in 1958 with a degree of B.S.E. in English, cum laude. She went on to take postgraduate studies at UST and the University of the Philippines, some on scholarship.
It might not be a surprise that Mrs. Banta was inducted to Pi Gammu Mu Honor Society at UP, but she also listed in her CV her membership in UST’s Alpha Sigma Epsilon Sorority, something that might perk the interest of some of my batchmates.
She received her teachers’ certification in 1965 and spent her first years as teacher in Oriental Mindoro. She would later enter and serve in Manila public schools until retirement.
By 1982, she became assistant principal at Lakandula. She became principal at Fugoso in 1986, and at Laurel in 1988. Later that year, she would be the principal of MaSci, the country’s first science high school.
In her curriculum vitae, she listed as her accomplishments topping the National Secondary Assessment Test, 100 percent passing rate in the yearly NSAT and National College Entrance Examination, the 1994 construction of the MaSci computer science building, yearly cash incentives for teachers and staff, among others.
She bowed out as MaSci principal in 2000, or over 40 years since she first became a classroom teacher in 1959 at her native Pola, Oriental Mindoro.
Mrs. Banta’s husband Artemio passed away in 2022. Mrs. Banta leaves behind her siblings, son Roderick, daughter Sarah Jane and grandchildren CJ, Ackie, Nathan and Kirstie. We send our condolences to them and thank them for Mrs. Banta’s service.