AMONG the moves Capitol suggested so the Department of Education Cebu Province doesn’t have to organize a Provincial Meet is to have athletic meets organized by the Philippine Sports Commission. And to make sure the next Cebu Province delegation to the regional meet will be sure winners is to identify by sending scouts to the schools.
The first one is wrong and the second one is damn near impossible.
The PSC’s mandate, among other things, is to manage the national teams and not take over the sports program of the DepEd.
“Haha! Sayop sad Capitol ana. That’s a DepEd event,” PSC commissioner Ramon Fernandez told me when I asked if Capitol or DepEd Cebu Province have asked him to take over the holding of the provincial meet.
It was sort of the answer I expected also. And at last count, PSC Visayas has three employees. They can’t run the athletic meets for DepEd Cebu if they want to.
The second suggestion, well, it’s like this. If you’re in a table in Starbucks Ayala and want to get to the next table in front of you, what’s the most efficient way? Would you go to Starbucks SM, Seaside, Raintree Mall and all the other Starbucks before heading back to Ayala to sit in that table fronting your previous table?
Because that’s what sending scouts to the schools in the province to form the delegation for the regional meet would be like.
Consider this. Say you want to find out the best sprinter for 100 meters in Cebu Province by sending a scout. Such scout will have to set up some sort of a trial per school and record the time. He has to do that on a weekend so as not to disrupt classes.
How many schools do you think he can visit in those months before the Cviraa? And that’s just for one event in one sport. Athletics has what, 20 events in the Cviraa? How about swimming?
Then there’s the team sports. How would a scout even begin to fathom how to identify the best basketball, football or volleyball players in the province just by visiting the schools? What sort of parameters must he use to even come close to identifying one?
Why insist on having the Provincial Meet when the governor is against it? Well, it’s not about insisting on a Provincial Meet. It’s an annual program of the department that DepEd Cebu Province has to follow.
The Capitol wants safety assured, citing the accident because of the use of a dump truck to transport students to a DepEd event. Well, can’t it not insist on LGUs providing safe transportation—the Suroy-Suroy Sugbo buses perhaps—for students instead of barring them from joining athletic meets? And why not use the Special Education Fund for one of its purposes, the holding of athletic meets?
I think it’s time for the DepEd Central Office to step in and assist its Cebu Province officials in providing funds for the provincial meet and help fund the delegation’s participation in the Cviraa. I mean, if Capitol gets away with this, what will prevent other governors from doing the same just because they are not happy with their DepEd officials?
Let’s see what they will do.