Osmeña takes over school board

CEBU CITY — Frustrated with its poor showing, City Mayor Tomas Osmeña will take over the local school board as its chairman.

Osmeña feels the urgency to take over the board’s operations now that two of his projects have been delayed three years after entrusting the chairmanship to councilor Manuel Legaspi.

Legaspi sits not only as a board member in his capacity as the chairman of the city council’s committee on education but also as the mayor’s representative.

"In the next meeting of the school board, I will be taking over and I will be running it myself because there are so many lapses of which I am very, very disappointed," Osmeña said.

Osmeña will create a management team that will take care of the administrative functions of the local school board.

Under this set-up, the members of the board could take part in the deliberations and give advice but they cannot make decisions.

Osmeña said his staff has identified eight City Hall employees, who have undergone training provided by the city’s Services and Procedures Rationalization and Improvement in Government, which the mayor has referred to as the "SWAT team" against red tape in City Hall.

The eight graduates will be split into two teams: the first will tackle the administrative problems of the city’s public schools, and the second will take care of the "administrative function of engineering" by seeing to it that the schools’ infrastructure projects are well-implemented. — Freeman News Service