Parañaque City 2nd district Rep. Brian Raymund Yamsuan has welcomed Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Sonny Angara's directive for the conduct of structural inspections on schools affected by the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that recently struck Mindanao.

The June 8 earthquake damaged many structures down south, including school buildings. Incidentally, that date coincided with the nationwide opening of school year 2026-2027 in public schools.

Classes were promptly suspended afterward as Angara personally led the inspection on schools in the area, including Cotabato City.

Yamsuan pointed out that the classroom backlog, which as of January this year was more than 144,000, would further be exacerbated by the growing number of deteriorating school buildings.

According to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom II), about 122,000 classrooms nationwide have already exceeded their prescribed lifespan, with an additional 51,222 classrooms to be declared condemned structures by 2028.

A report by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) showed that by 2040, without major repairs and rehabilitation, only 18.6 percent of public school buildings are projected to remain in good condition.

While Congress has made significant steps to accelerate school infrastructure development by increasing the Basic Education Facilities Fund (BEFF) for fiscal year 2026 to more than P85 billion, the lack of legal property rights for many public school sites could become a major obstacle to the DepEd’s goal of resolving the looming classroom crisis, Yamsuan said.

“While not an engineering safeguard, our proposal to secure government ownership of land housing public schools would greatly contribute to the unhampered implementation of long-term safety measures for these structures, such as earthquake retrofitting, rehabilitation and other improvements which often require clear legal rights over the land they stand on,” Yamsuan said.

Yamsuan said his proposed legislation—House Bill (HB) No. 9477—seeks to fast-track the titling, registration and protection of public school sites under the name of the DepEd and streamline these processes among government agencies to cut through bureaucratic delays that have historically stalled the transfer of ownership for decades.

The neophyte district representative said his measure would ensure that there would be no impediment to the DepEd's classroom-building acceleration program and guarantee that investments made by the government on the retrofitting and major repairs of public schools would not face any legal obstacles.

“No amount of funding or accelerated construction of school buildings will resolve our perennial classroom backlog if the lands for public school sites remain open to dispute because of incomplete documentation and lack of legal property rights,” Yamsuan said.

“Kailangan nang malinis na titulo sa lupa para walang problema ang DepEd sa pagpapatayo ng school buildings, at pag-upgrade o pag-expand ng facilities para matiyak na ligtas at maayos ang paghahatid ng de-kalidad na edukasyon.

(Clean land titles are needed to ensure that the DepEd does not encounter any problems when it builds school buildings, and upgrades or expands school facilities to ensure the safe and efficient delivery of quality education.)

The DepEd can’t do what needs to be done if it continues to be burdened with missing deeds, donated lots that lack proper legal documentation, overlapping claims or decades-old usufruct agreements,” said the solon, who has also filed HB No. 7362 or the proposed Classroom Building Acceleration Program Act.