Скачать или смотреть Work: Visited the temporary office of ACI at Batangas City

#littlethingsimgratefulforeveryday

We had been posting on the page of ACI with regard to waiting for updates and continuous meetings with CHED for our college students and possible requests that can be made with DEPED regarding our students and the school.

I attended a consultative meeting with CHED at Diliman together with 3 other affected schools 1 week after the volcano erupted, and at De La Salle Lipa, with all Higher Education Institution's in our region the week after that, to discuss the current scenario and the possible solutions, remedies and recommendations to how the institutions could go about in resuming classes.

The management of ACI has already met and is also trying to find solutions, that is a bit more conducive to our students, faculty, and staff, with regard to K-12, than the DEPED order that has been released.

We have already searched for a temporary office, and we thank our kinakapatid Kuya Chris and Ate Mitch, for lending us the space on their building at Batangas City.

The first order of business is to secure the important office files, and the records of our students, and to get the computers of the staff so as to ensure business operations, while we are trying to get back up on our feet.

We have also arranged for the cleaning of the grounds and the stage to remove the heavy ashfall that has covered our area.

We will be waiting for the report on the structural integrity of our buildings after engineers will be done with their assessment.

For the meantime that the volcano is still on Alert Level 3, we are slowly working towards starting up and rising again but we are vigilant in ensuring the safety of the student body, faculty and staff so we have not scheduled the resumption of classes yet.

We have received a lot of feedback from parents wanting to wait for ACI to resume classes rather than sitting in at other schools for fear of their children being bullied by the students of said schools.

Almost all of our students, faculty, and staff are from Agoncillo, if not, they come from neighboring towns like Laurel, San Nicolas, Lemery, and Taal, all of which are affected by the eruption. Most of the students and teachers are still in evacuation centers or are living with relatives outside Agoncillo, until such time that the volcano will be less likely to erupt, evidenced by lower Alert level from Philvolcs, and until they could have already cleaned their premises or have already built or repaired their houses.

ACI can be considered as a safe haven for our student body and we cannot blame our students and their parents for not wanting to send their children to other schools.

Parents have signified that they dont mind waiting and offsetting the summer vacation to this time, and the children to go to school during the actual summer break, so as to finish the required number of school days before advancing to the next level.

We have received news that one student tried to sit in for 3 days in another school, but the student does not want to go to that school anymore after that.

Another one is that the parent of one student even bought a uniform and shoes for the student but the parent was not succesful in convincing the student to go to the school near their evacuation area.

With what has happened to us in Agoncillo: 1) scared to death as we were shaken by never before experienced kind of earthquakes, for most of us, that does not only move from side to side, but also up and down, which can be likened to walking on a raft on stormy waters; 2) staying in one evacuation area after another because there were times when the place we initially evacuated to was also declared a danger zone; 3) the fear of not knowing where to go or if we can ever go back because of the continuous news that possible volcanic eruption is imminent; 4) the continuous stress and depression during the time that our town is on lockdown and we dont have a way of feeding our livestock, which is our source of livelihood; 5) the ashfall that is still in our air because not all can clean up right away; 6) visible cracks and damages in our houses that needs to repaired; 7) some lost their homes beyond repair; 8) business establishments are closed so a lot of locally employed people have no source of income at the moment; 9) many sold their livestock at half the price or even lower just to get some cash during the lockdown in fear that the animals will just die because there is no more food and water and no one is allowed inside to at least feed them; and 10) a lot of people dont have enough money to start up with, to name a few reasons why we need more time and consideration from our government institutions with regard to our students.

We feel for our dear parents and students and we would not want the attendance of our students from June 2019 to the first school week of January 2020 to go to waste. All this will be part of our appeal to help us make solutions to the situation we are in.