CANDABA - A group of school heads from this municipality echoed its call to revert the opening of school year to June.
The school heads, who asked for anonymity, cited the effects of heat indices to the students and also teachers as reason for their appeal.
“As much as we want to adapt to the new school calendar, our classrooms are not designed to be conducive for staying in, let alone learning during summer season. The minimal ventilation really aggravates the high indices,” one principal said.
In the school clinic logs shown to Sun.Star Pampanga, at least 30 students have complained of different sickness such as dizziness, nose bleeding, headache, and asthma attack since May 10 until May 15 alone.
The teachers cited the “extreme heat” inside classrooms during the said days as reasons for the students’ sicknesses.
To minimize the effects of the weather, some schools have started implementing blended learning modality where students only spend half day in school.
“We are very grateful that the Department of Education allowed us to implement blended distance learning arrangements this week. This helped prevent students and teachers from experiencing extreme discomfort and suffering sickness due to hot weather,” they said.
Despite the new learning arrangement, the schools still record some students manifesting heat-related sickness.
This prompted the school heads to appeal to the government to revert to the old school calendar which opens every June.
“If this will be an annual occurrence, the learning of students will be affected. We are asking for the government to reconsider and bring back the old school calendar,” they said.