P50 M school deal signed

By Dennis Carcamo

PAOAY, Ilocos Norte – The Department of Education signed Monday a counter-parting agreement with the Ilocos Norte provincial government for the construction of school buildings to ease classroom shortage in the area.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro signed the counter-parting deal with Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos to build 44 classrooms in Paoay Lake National High School and Paoay Central Elementary School, allocating P50 million for the project.

To date, nine provincial and another nine city governments have signed an agreement with DepEd to build a total of 1,347 new classrooms for a total local government unit share of some P616 million.

Including the share of DepEd, the total counter-parting fund now runs to some P1.129 billion.

Classroom shortage is a perennial problem in public school owing to the unabated population growth such that the department has to accommodate at least a million new students to public schools each year.

"We welcome this latest addition to the growing number of LGUs that want to participate in the counter-parting program," said Luistro.

DepEd has signed a memorandum of agreement with the League of Cities, League of Municipalities and League of Provinces of the Philippines and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) for the implementation of the classroom construction counter-parting scheme.