Manila school denies shortage of chairs

MANILA, Philippines — The division of city schools in Manila denied reports that a public school lacked chairs and had its Grade 7 students sit on the floor on the first day of the resumption of face-to-face classes.

The Manila city public information office on Monday night posted a quote card on Facebook tagging the reports as “fake news,” but deleted the post as of yesterday.

The deleted post also contained the division’s “Information Bulletin No. 12” which contained its “Official Statement on a tweeted post of lacking armchairs in a Manila secondary school.”

The division was referring to social media posts about Grade 7 students seated on the floor at the Jose Abad Santos High School in Binondo, Manila. The video posted on Twitter went viral with over 430,000 views.

The division sought comment from the teacher who said she “deliberately rearranged the chairs to suit group activity for orientation and psychosocial support tasks,” the division said in the statement, which was also forwarded to the Viber group of reporters covering the Department of Education (DepEd).

The division claimed the video was intended to “malign” them and “was not authorized nor consented.”

The division quoted the school property custodian as saying that they are equipped with 1,859 armchairs, 1,200 chairs with desks and 120 laboratory chairs.

“Having 62 instructional classrooms and the number of chairs available, it is appropriate to note that the school has an average of 51 chairs per classroom, which is more than enough to accommodate the learners,” the division said, adding that it provided support to all the 107 public schools in Manila.

In an ANC interview yesterday, DepEd spokesperson Michael Poa said the department will resolve the country’s classroom shortage of 40,000 rooms. In another interview, he also said the Jose Abad Santos High School had to borrow chairs from another school ahead of the opening of classes.